Iloilo, July 14, 1905.

I know you will be sorry to hear that the last of our dear little mongeese is dead—killed by the dogs next door a week ago. We heard squeaking and barking and scuffling in the alley-way one evening, and rushed to the windows, but it was all dark below, and we could see nothing. So C—— and Sotero went down with a lamp, but there was nothing to be seen, and when we sent in to ask the old Tagalo dressmaker about it, they all swore they had heard nothing. So we hoped it was only a rat; but we waited in vain for our poor little pet to come back, and she never appeared again.

I could not bear the sight of the empty cage, and made the boys take it away after a day or two, and now I find it stands on the Azotea, with Sotero’s rooster sitting solemnly on a perch that has been fixed across the middle. This is the same cock, by-the-bye, that travelled back with us from Nagaba, and when C—— asks the boy about it, he always says it is “going to fight for fifteen pesos” on some Sunday—which never comes. The cock is as tame with Sotero as a dog, and allows itself to be combed and stroked the way one sees all the Filipinos do to their fighting-cocks.

In the native huts the fighting-cock is a very precious and sacred person, enthroned on a special perch at one end of the living-room. The night before he fights, this warrior is watched with the greatest care to see which point of the compass he faces, as on that omen hang many events, for if the creature faces the east he is bound to win, but if he is turned towards the west you may as well not take him to the battle at all. A little hope is left, however, for when the cocks all crow before the dawn, he who makes the first scrawk is bound to win, and you can put your last peseta on him.

The poor beasts are taken to the ring, where spurs of curved steel are fastened to the back of their heels, which makes the fight pretty short and decisive, and may be indirectly merciful if it helps towards a swift death. The making of the blades is a fine art, and they are carefully carried about in a small box with a little stone on which to sharpen them. When one sees a Filipino on the way to a cock-fight, with his bird sitting on his arm, there is generally another native walking beside him, carrying this little black box containing the spurs and the little whet-stone.

There is as much roguery and “doping” amongst these cock-fighters as there is about horse-racing amongst “civilised” men, and some of the dodges are really very ingenious, such, for instance, as taking tiny pills of opium or other poison under the finger nail and dropping them in front of your opponent’s bird when it is pecking about before the contest begins.

Before the fight the interested parties are allowed to test the roosters, like looking at a horse in the paddock, only they enjoy advantages which I believe are not to be indulged in a paddock at a race-meeting, for they may form their opinion of a bird by picking the animal up and feeling its muscles, looking at its thighs and examining its feet, of all of which points the Filipino is a wonderful judge, being able to graduate his large bets on the feeling of a muscle with great certainty. All the same, this is the occasion, if he is so minded and the other man is not quick enough, to injure the animal by means of a sharp pin point hidden in the palm of the hand or between the fingers.

I notice that the fighting-cocks here don’t have their breasts pulled bare of feathers like those poor birds we saw in that old man’s house below the walls of the Alhambra. Do you remember how bald and horrible they looked? And how the old villain who kept them told us he pulled the feathers out and rubbed in spirits to keep the skin hard? They don’t seem to do that here, for I have never seen a bare-breasted cock, and never met anyone who has heard of such a custom.

The General has gone off to Samar, the long island parallel to this, and on the other side of CebÚ—though I can only use those terms vaguely, and by way of a general indication to you where to look on a map. The island is now under martial law, owing to the patriotism and enterprise of certain jolly fellows, called Pulajanes, going about with big curved bolos, and old Spanish flint-locks, and in fact anything they can catch hold of. These persons are really patriots of a most irreconcilable type, but it suits the programme of the Government to label them ladrones (robbers), and to refer to their own hard fights with them as “cleaning up the province.” On the strength of this nickname, the Americans cut down these patriots freely (when the Pulajanes do not do the cutting down first), and if they catch them alive the poor devils are hanged like common criminals.[11] The papers continue to publish long eulogiums on the peace and prosperity of the Philippines, and all the time the richest commercial centre of the Archipelago is under martial law, with all its business houses shut down; and soldiers and officers continue to arrive at the hospital here every now and then, with more or less severe wounds. Also waggons occasionally go past from the barracks, piled up with baggage, and followed by troops in service kit, and one hears that they have “gone to the front.”

For some time past the staff of C——’s firm has been increased here, in this Iloilo branch, by the absorption into it of one of their men from Catbologan, the chief town of Samar, as their business there, along with all the others in that island, has had to be shut down.

There is desultory fighting even here, in Panay, but we never hear of it except as an occasional paragraph in a Manila paper.

So much for peace. As to prosperity, there is general scarcity, many districts suffer actual famine. In CebÚ the lower classes are chiefly dependent on an allowance of so many sacks of rice a day, the gift of the Chinamen! In that town, indeed, matters are so bad that siege-like conditions prevail, and amongst other horrible things that happened, a starving native woman lately killed and ate her own baby. This is not hearsay, but sober reports in the Manila Times.

I am paying the penalty of my recklessness in having gone to the Declaration Day ball, for the little walking I did that night made my feet very painful again, and I am laid up in bed once more, reading papers and trying to forget my American friend’s optimistic remarks about tropical ulcers. The doctor tells me I want feeding up to get the poison out of my system, and this I can quite believe, but fail to see how it is to be brought about. I have tried drinking a little wine, but that makes my prickly heat unendurable. The Spaniards here drink tinto—the red Spanish wine one gets at tables d’hÔte in Spain—but it has to be spirited up for export, so out here it is rather heady and sour; but I am sure it must be more wholesome than the whisky and soda of the English people, or the eternal tea of the American women. You will be tired of hearing about my mosquito bites, but I must just tell you one new thing that I have heard about this unpleasant ailment, which is that many people think the poison is introduced by flies—one fly would be quite enough! There were no flies, or very few, when we came here at first, in the dry season, but with the rain they have appeared in black swarms, and we live surrounded by large sheets of sticky paper with Tangle Foot written on them—a delightful American expression! Here again I am reminded of the amount of indifference shown to an animal in proportion to its size—comparative with that of a human being. For can you imagine anyone being tolerated, who caught cats or horses in deep, thick glue and let them slowly struggle to death? Yet what are you to do with flies? You can’t catch each one—first catch your fly, in fact—and then kill it in the quickest and most scientific manner. No. It must be Tangle Foot papers. But even though I find I am simply compelled to have them about the house, when I see a fly trying to haul one foot after the other out of the dreadful Tangle Foot, I can’t help appreciating the poor insect’s point of view.

The old millionaire I told you about is still here, and everyone is trying to be civil to him, but I hear he is very difficult to entertain, for he insists on being the only man to talk, which he does very slowly and in an almost unintelligible accent. He gives considerable annoyance, too, by his bad clothes, dirty hands, and unshaven face, and one can’t help sympathising with the men who are irritated by such slovenliness, or agreeing with them, that it is not much good being a millionaire if you can’t get hold of a decent tailor and a razor and some soap!

I think I told you that our friend Mr —— sent his wife and family off to Hong Kong when the heat began? They have come back, and are giving me so much annoyance by rhapsodies over the climate, the cheapness of everything, and the good food in Hong Kong that at last I had to beg them to say no more! Mrs —— is still comparing prices here with prices there, and she brought back pretty things for her house, which make me wild with envy—or would if we were not soon to pass to happier climes! Her husband went to fetch his little tribe, and he is raving, not so much about the comparison of prices and the joys of fresh milk, fruit, and vegetables as the horrible imposition of being compelled to pay the Philippine Cedula Tax all over again. Five pesos a head—10 shillings each for his wife, the three children, and the nurse! And what annoyed him most of all, I think, was his having been away about three weeks himself and having to pay it again too. However, it has been worth the money to them, I should think, for they all look quite brown and jolly compared to the people here, and quite different beings to the washed-out folk they were when they went away. At this time of year, as I think I told you, all the Hong Kong people who can afford it go home or to Shanghai or Japan, as they consider Hong Kong at this season not fit to live in!