Iloilo, April 30, 1905.

We went last Sunday to spend the day at Nagaba, a native village opposite Iloilo, in the island of Guimaras. We took the trip at the invitation of some friends who had gone to spend Saturday to Monday in a native house which happened to be empty and available for hire. I have often wanted to visit some of the places about, but the great difficulty is how to put up, for there are no inns, and no lodgings to be had in the villages. One can’t go anywhere and back in a day, unless just across to Guimaras, but even that entails going out in the heat of the day, which is never very pleasant or very safe.

We were lucky, however, in this trip to Nagaba, as the sky was cloudy and the breeze very fresh, and, though we left as late as ten in the morning, we did not suffer from the heat. I am constantly reminded of a certain book of adventure, which as children we used to love, called The Coral Island. It is by Ballantyne, I think—you remember it, I am sure? Do you remember the pictures of the three boys in the Tropic Island, standing in white sunshine, and wearing loose caps or no hats at all? and all the stories of their adventures, and how they set off at “about the middle of the day” in a canoe with sufficient meat and vegetables to last for a week, and how they went in this fashion to other small islands? This did not seem to me odd as a child, of course; and I daresay I saw nothing peculiar in the daily life of The Swiss Family Robinson, either; and probably should have raised no objections to any of these stories a few months ago, or minded a bit being told that English boys went about unscorched and alive with no protection from the tropic mid-day sun, or that meat was fit to eat after one day in a canoe, much less one week!

Well, we got over to Guimaras in a very short time, landing from the launch in a small boat, from which C—— and I and the friend who was with us were carried ashore by our servants, who had come with us—we had also, by request, brought our plates, knives, forks, and tumblers!

The house we were going to was situated on a small rocky steep leading up from the beach, a few hundred yards from a tiny village of brown nipa huts amongst the green bushes and palms in a bay at the mouth of a river. The house was a regular native dwelling, built on high poles of bamboo, with walls of nipa, and floors of pieces of split cane half an inch or so apart for coolness. The whole abode consisted of one very big room, part of which was partitioned off as a bedroom, while all along one side of the house towards the sea ran a broad balcony, built out over the rocks, and shaded by tall thickly-leaved trees, with a glorious view of the blue bay, the open green sea, and a bit of rose-purple Panay in the distance. I don’t think I ever saw a more lovely spot, and I could not help reflecting how different life in the Philippines must be to those who can live in such places as Nagaba instead of a street in a town. Though, to be practical, I suppose the food would be even worse, and ice—but one could not get less ice than we do now in the town.

Some of us spent all the morning loafing about and talking on the balcony, enjoying the deep shade and the fresh breeze blowing straight in from the open sea. One of the men of the party had contrived to catch the anting-anting lizard of the house, such as I described to you as having a call like a cuckoo and being considered very lucky by the Filipinos. He had tethered the creature by a piece of cotton tied round its body, so as to keep it for me to see when I arrived, and it was much larger than I had expected—about a foot long—and not unlike the desert lizards one sees dried in the bazaars in Upper Egypt, only the skin of the “Philippine cuckoo” is all a pattern of green and red. The poor thing was tame enough, but very shy, and inclined to get behind furniture or skirts, so when I had had a good look at it, they let it go again, when it vanished into the thick fringe of nipa that protected the sides of the balcony. This nipa, when one sees it close at hand, is a sort of palm leaf folded in two, lengthways, and tied to frames of bamboo, but it makes very nice, cool houses, and is absolutely waterproof.

One of the trees that shadowed the house was an Ylang-Ylang, from which the scent of that name is extracted; a tall, naked, light brown, smooth stem, with thin branches spreading out at the top, and leaves like an acacia. The perfume is in the small green blossom, which is not at all unlike that of a lime, and with infinite difficulty one or two of these were pulled down by means of a fishing-rod, and given to me to dry and put in my linen-cupboard in the native fashion. They dried up in a very few hours, but kept their delicious scent, and when I came home, I put them amongst my handkerchiefs, which are sweetly perfumed with them already.

Some of the men spent a riotous morning in a fresh-water swimming bath in a grove near the house. There is a spring of perfect water, which is brought in pipes past the house and out in long bamboo pipes on stands in the shallow water, where ships come and take it in to supply steamers, or to sell over in Iloilo. The flow of water is very great, enough to supply a city, and the main pipe is so contrived that by pulling out a plug one fills the swimming bath, which is a wonderful luxury.

We heard the others splashing and shouting in the swimming bath all the morning, and when lunch time came, they appeared radiant and starving, and I have not seen men do such justice to their food since I came to the Philippines.

After lunch we all settled down in various chosen nooks for a siesta, and our servant Sotero, who is a native of Nagaba, came and asked permission to go away for the afternoon, which surprised our friends very much, for they said they had never heard of a Filipino servant taking anything but “French leave.”

I have not yet been able to acquire the habit of sleeping in the middle of the day, which is perhaps one of the reasons why I never feel well out here. So I sat about, and looked at some picture papers, and felt very tired—I could cheerfully have gone round to the sleeping forms and done them some injury simply because they could sleep!

About four C—— awoke, so we went a little walk amongst the rocks close to the house, and thought we were exploring the whole island!

We wandered about amongst scrub and rocks above the shore, where we came suddenly to a tiny hut perched up amongst big grey boulders, with fishing nets spread out to dry and a native lounging in the window-space. It looked such a nice little hut, just one large palm-thatch room on high poles, with a rickety step-ladder up to the door, where a round comfortable cat was sitting watching the fowls pecking about below. A little farther on we came to the banana patch, with brilliant green plants growing on a nook of dark earth amongst the grey rocks. All the rocks were very sharp; volcanic, with rough edges, which cut our shoes, even when we followed a tiny winding track. After we got to a little height, we could look down on the village and the sea and bay, which all appeared most bright and beautiful in the long rays of the low sun, and all so peaceful and quiet.

We turned back again by a path which struck more inland, past some more little banana fields and another little hut with its back to a tiny precipice. It is strange how near the towns the primitive sets in, for the people in both lots of huts were quite shy of us, and the children ran away and hid; while in the village, through which we passed, by making a round across some rice-fields, the people were quite country-folk, not a bit like the cheeky, independent loungers in the towns; answering one quite civilly and even happily when one spoke to them.

The village was delightfully quaint, all built on high poles planted in the sand of the shore, with many cheerful brown folk hanging out of the open sides of the houses, while mangy dogs with pups and fat old sows with immense families sprawled about down below. There are always quantities of pigs in a Philippine village, for, as I think I told you, they are the scavengers, and though the natives are not more unkind to those benefactors than to any other animals, to call one of them a pig is a frightful insult. In spite of all this, the favourite and most esteemed Filipino delicacy is sucking-pig, roasted whole.

Beyond the village we went across a field of emerald grass, bordered by a deep green hedge of curious bushes with no flowers on them. Our friends told us that these plants come into bloom in the wet Monsoon. Now, with the hot weather a very beautiful tree is in flower everywhere, called the Fire tree, which was only naked brown branches for a long time, and then burst into huge bunches of brilliant scarlet blossoms, rather like orchids, and very handsome at a distance, but coarse and common close at hand. The effect of these masses of showy red against the vivid green palms is wonderful and almost too bright. There is one of these Fire trees in the garden of the house opposite to us, here in Iloilo, which is a gorgeous display, and a delight to me just to look at as I sit here writing.

But, to get back to Nagaba, though there is not much to tell you, except that some of our friends joined us, and we ended our walk by a stroll through a cocoanut grove, where we saw an old man in a loin-cloth going up a tree to get the sap from which they make the tuba.[7] He had a long vessel made of a section of bamboo tied across his back, and a little round bowl of half a cocoanut tied in front of his body, with a big sharp knife beside it. He ran up the tree by means of notches cut all the way up the trunk, and at the top he tied the vessel under a bunch of buds, putting in it some of the stuff out of the bowl, which was red bark to dye the drink pink. This beverage I think I have mentioned to you before. One sees it anywhere, and the long tumblers of pink liquid are a feature in every little native shop.

This vessel they leave there for twelve hours, during which the sap drips out of the palm, and in the morning the man goes up and takes down the bamboo, now full of tuba, which is very fresh and nice, and tastes of cocoanut and water, and is very wholesome, not to say medicinal. If it is left, however, the tuba rapidly ferments, and by the evening is a very strong intoxicant, which constitutes the peculiar devil of the Philippines, and is the cause of most of the deterioration, physical, moral, and mental, of the race.

When the American Army first came out to the Philippines, the temperance enthusiasts in the U.S.A. hearing that a good deal of drinking was going on out here, started an agitation, by means of which they got the Army Canteens in the Philippines abolished. The result of this drastic mothering was that the soldiers went off and got tuba, about which, of course, the good folk in America knew nothing. Frightful scandals happened, which unfortunately did harm to the American prestige, and even the restoration of the canteens has not swept away the folly and evil which were thus begun.

This cocoanut grove, by the way, is kept for tuba, as are most of the palms one sees near the houses, for when the sap is taken in this way no fruit appears. Growing cocoanuts is one of the most lucrative speculations in the Philippines, as a tree bears fruit when it is six or seven years old, about a hundred nuts a year, the income yielded by a tree being about 2 pesos. So a grove of ten thousand trees or so is a very paying concern, if only the planter does not make the mistake, which I, myself, have often noticed, of placing his trees too close to one another, so that they do not get enough room to spread out at the top and find light and air.

We turned back from the cocoanut grove by a different path, and went back to the house along the beach. As the tide was far out, we walked across the firm, damp sand, where there were myriads of tiny crabs of bright metallic blues and reds and greens, which all darted sideways into holes as soon as one got within a yard of them.

After tea we loafed on the balcony, watching a lovely gold and rose sunset, while sailors and others took boxes and things down to the boat; and the man carrying our gear slipped on the rocks, and our plates and tumblers fell out and smashed to a thousand pieces. When it was almost dark, we returned in the launch to Iloilo, quite enchanted with our day at Nagaba and with the house on the rocks. We are determined to go over there one Saturday to Monday by ourselves, for it is a delightful change.