July 4th.

The mails have been badly snarled up lately, and although nobody has received any letters for nearly two weeks, none are expected for about ten days. The other morning began the first real storm of the rainy season, and we came very near having a bad typhoon, but someone turned the switch, and it swirled up the back coast on the Pacific side and crossed through a notch in the mountains, some distance to the north of Manila, giving the city only four days of monstrous winds and floods of rain. The streets were two feet deep with water in the business section, and down at our house by the sea the wind blew so hard that it carried the tin from our roof off to visit the next suburb. Then it was that those sturdy windows of small sea-shells set into hardwood lattice seemed far more secure than glass, and I doubt if anything less well constructed would have stood the blast that surged in from the broad bay.

Going downtown in the morning, my carriage was slid clean across the road by the force of the wind, and once it seemed as if I might be lifted up into the low clouds that scudded close to the tops of the bamboo-trees. Huge seas came tumbling ashore on the beach, and the vessels in the great exposed Bay had all they could do to hang to their anchors, as the surf sometimes dashed as high as their lower foreyards.

The natives never carry umbrellas in the rain, but march along and do not seem to mind getting wet to the skin. They do indeed look bedraggled in their thin clothes, that cling like sticking-plaster, and it seems as if they would get the fever. During the present blow, the single pony hitched to a tram-car often found his load moving him astern, and it was only by leaving the whole car wide open, so that the air could have free passage through from end to end and side to side, that he now and then made headway against the blast. This was not pleasant for the passengers, but made less demand on the motive-power. The bands at the Luneta have played when they got a chance, but the wind howls in from the Bay, as a rule, louder than the tunes bowl out of their brass instruments.

To-day seems to be the Glorious Fourth, and my colleague and I have just come back from the shipping, where the Captain of the Helen Brewer asked us to eat a celebrative dinner. All the ships in the Bay were dressed with flags, and the Brewer, which possessed more than her share, had a long line stretched from the bowsprit over the three masts down to the stern. Everybody was interested in the feast, and the Captain with the false teeth, who comes from New Hampshire, sent over a goose and some mince-pies. Eight of us sat down in the cozy saloon and partook of a meal altogether too hearty for the climate. The day was cool and overcast, and we spent a lazy afternoon on deck, listening to yarns told by two old salts who seemed to have had more than their share of wrecks, typhoons, and other adventures.

When we came ashore, at about sunset, there was gathered up from the remains of the feast the “seven basketsful,” and we each went back in the launch, decorated with a bag of doughnuts under one arm and a bag of mince-pies under the other.

One of our small family of dogs was run over by the tram-car the other morning, in front of the house, and now rests in peace in a little grave down on the beach, hard by the rhythmic cadence of the waves. His little brother, who was suffering at the time from the distemper, was so grieved at the loss that he too speedily faded away, and now lies close beside the other victim of circumstances. On the tombstone is a touching epitaph:

Most of the large army of dogs that make a Manila night hideous are of that mongrel order, which is always looking for something to eat, but now and then one sees a good many of the so-called Chinese “chow”-dogs about the streets, and with their black tongues, long hair, and peculiar bushy tails that curl sharply up over their backs, they are quite as interesting, as unaffectionate. Over in China they make very good eating up to the age of three months, and from this fact derive the “chow” part of their name. Although they are very susceptible to changes of locality and climate, we are now making negotiations to have one brought over to take the place of the dear departed eulogized above. And later, I may even try the experiment of having one for Sunday dinner—if he doesn’t make a good pet.

The doughnuts which I brought home from the Brewer have proved very interesting to my cook, and I have been obliged to count them each day for purposes of security. He now watches me closely as I make away with one or two for breakfast, to see just what effect these marvellous looking “fried holes” have on my intellect. I notice he looks to see if there are any crumbs left, from which he might gather an inkling as to the composition of these curios; but so far there haven’t been any crumbs. As he is cooking for us now, instead of the Chinese gentleman that we originally had, this curiosity is but natural, and some day he will probably try to furnish us with the native-made article. In fact he has already tried the experiment of concocting a mince-pie after the general appearance of one of the earlier donations made by a captain in the Bay, and the result was worthy of description. As I arranged to measure the original pie after each meal, before locking it up in our safe, in order to protect it from disappearing, my faithful cook could only guess as to its composition by sundry glances from afar. But being of an inventive mind he conceived the idea of chopping up some well-done roast beef, mixing with it some sugar and raisins, roofing it over with a thatch of pastry, and serving it for dessert. And then as we came to the course in question he stood in the doorway waiting for our verdict. His effort was worthy of all praise, but his pie was damnable, and pieces of it went sailing out the windows.

July 28th.

On the 20th instant a steamer arrived from Hong Kong, and had the honor of being the first vessel to come in from that port in thirty days. She was supposed to have three American mails aboard, but it turned out that they were down to arrive by the vessel coming in six days later. I came to the office the other morning, and looking toward my desk, found it almost invisible. It looked as if somebody in the neighborhood were the editor of a paper, and as if all the spring poets in the universe had sent their manuscripts for inspection. The desk groaned beneath the bulky chaos of three mails from the United States, delayed in transmission by the black plague, and fumigated together down the bay. But no sooner had we gotten through the first course of an epistolary feast than the captain of a large four-masted ship shuffled into the room and deposited a huge pot of steaming baked beans, just fresh from his steward’s galley-stove, on the table. What with beans, letters, magazines, and comic papers, it might be said our day was a red-letter one.

The other day my colleague and I took dinner off aboard the Nagato Maru, a smart steamer just in from Japan, and captained by an American who knows what it is to set a good table. It seems that the China-Japan war has actually broken out in all its glory, and as there is a vague rumor that a Chinese war-ship is waiting outside to capture this very same steamer, she is going to stay here for awhile.

The Japanese have sunk several Chinese transport ships already, and one of the unfortunate craft used to come here to Manila. In other directions the Chinese are said to have beaten the Japs badly on land, but over in this slow old moth-eaten place the daily papers will publish cablegrams from Spain by the page, that give out nothing but official stuff and Government appointments; and when it comes to something of real interest, like a war, they will either be without any news whatever, or tell the whole story wrong side out in a single line, that may or may not be true. And so you are probably getting better news of this whole affair, twelve thousand miles away, than we are, who are almost on the field of action.

Our Manila papers consist of four pages, the first two of which are especially reserved for advertisements. Half of one of the inside leaves is likewise reserved, and the remaining half is covered with blocks full of gloomy sentiments which relate to the decease of this or that person. There is a little black frame of type around each square, and at the top is a cross, with a “R.I.P.” or “D.O.M.” under it. Below comes the name of the defunct, with hour, minute, day, and year of his birth and death, and below his virtues are extolled and his friends invited to pray for the repose of his soul. Every year, each person that has died the year before has his anniversary, both in church and in the newspapers; and when you recollect that out of a population of 350,000 a good many depart each twelvemonth, it is hard to see why the whole paper shouldn’t consist of these notices. The other inside page contains the news, and we learn that a bad odor has been discovered up some side-street; that a dog fell into the river and was drowned; that a perfumery store has received a new kind of liquefied scent; that it will probably rain in some part of the island during the day; and that the band on the Luneta ought not to be frightened off merely by a few drops that fall from some passing cloud. And so it goes until the French or English mail comes in, and then the progressive dailies copy all the news they can find, out of the foreign papers, and serve it up cold, Æt. one month.

I met General Blanco, Governor of the islands, the other evening, and he seemed to enjoy the good music and good supper which one of our popular bank-managers and his wife provided for some of us in the colony on the occasion of a birthday. He is an elderly man, and kindly, and appears milder in disposition than would seem advisable for one occupying so important a position. I should think he might let some of those sharp eyed little ministers of his run him, and he appears almost too modest, too kind-hearted, to be the ruler that he is. Suffice to say the General is modest in dress and modest in manner. He often walks up and down the Malecon promenade by the Bay in the afternoon, saluting everyone that passes, and when the vesper bells ring out the hour of prayer from one of the old churches inside the city walls he stops, removes his tall gray stove-pipe and, as do a host of other pedestrians, bows his head. To tell the truth he has little of the Spanish aspect about him and is just the kind of a man one would go up and speak to on the Teutonic or Campania. In sharp contrast is he to the Archbishop, who drives about behind his fine white horses and looks as keen as well-nourished. But who knows! Appearances are deceitful, and foolish he who trusts to them.

August 11th.

Two steamers have just come in from Hong Kong and are tied up in quarantine down at Marivelis, at the mouth of the Bay. The mail ought to be here in forty-eight hours, but two days is a very short time to give Manila postal authorities, for they really are slow enough to desire four—one in which to make up their minds to send a launch, two in which to go, three in which to come back, and four in which to distribute the results of their camphorated fumigation.

The most noteworthy thing that has happened in the way of excitement since the last mail was the operating of the new American fire-engine, which we imported from the States for the wealthy proprietor of our hemp-press, who is part Spaniard, part native, and part Chinese. It seems he was up in our office one day, and on the centre-table saw a catalogue containing pictures of a collection of our modern fire-fighters. He asked what those things were, and, on being told that they were used to put out fires, said he wanted one at once, the biggest we could get him, in order that he might reduce the insurance he was paying on his large store-houses and still go on collecting the premiums from those whose goods were in his charge.

Although ours is an exporting business, and we do not know much about fire-engines, yet the occasion seemed auspicious, the prospect of payment sure, and the outlook interesting. The result was that we forwarded the order to New York by the first mail, and the other day, after four months of waiting, the pieces of the big engine came over on the Esmeralda, in big cases. They were very heavy, and the natives began the exhibition by nearly dropping the boiler into the river as they attempted to hoist it into a lighter. To skip over the difficulties which were encountered in hoisting the cases onto the quay in front of the offices of our well-to-do purchaser, we come to the mental hardships that were encountered in putting the machine together; for no one in Manila had ever seen a Yankee fire engine before, and although we had a full description of the complicated mechanism, with drawings of the parts, and numbers where each piece was to fit onto some other piece, there was no one in town who could help us much in getting it into working order.

Fortunately, the hemp business was dull and my colleague and I were thus enabled to give more attention to this Chinese puzzle than if the fibre market had been booming. The red wheels with gold stripes were the first thing to be adjusted, and the eyes of the onlookers who happened to be strolling up and down the quay opened to large dimensions as the covering was stripped from the nickel-plated boiler and the process of establishment went on. At last the big machine was on its feet, with valves and gear adjusted, and with the slight assistance which we got from a Spanish engineer who knew something about marine machinery, we found out that the whistle ought not to be screwed onto the safety-valve.

Several Englishmen who happened to come by in the early stages of our efforts made sarcastic comments on the appearance of our new toy, and could not see how an affair with so much gold paint on the wheels and so much nickel on the boiler was going to work successfully. But we did not say much, since we were well occupied in trying to find out the proper way to fill the boiler. Someone suggested pouring the water down the whistle, and so, mounted on a step-ladder, one to us began the interesting experiment. The water seemed to run in all right, as it gurgled down through the pipes, and did not leak out of the bottom. As there did not seem to be any other loophole to the boiler, we concluded this must be the right method, and took turns for an hour in emptying the contents of an old kerosene tin into the whistle-valve.

Next, with great trepidation, we started a fire in the grate, and were rejoiced to see that the new engine was soon fuming away like an old veteran. It quite spruced us up to hear the fire crackle under the boiler; but our heads became even more swelled when steam enough was generated to tickle the feed-pump into taking care of all the vacant lots in the boiler-tubes.

When our friend Don Capitan found that the engine was going to work and knew its business, he said we must have a big trial and let all Manila see the show. To this end he sent around printed programmes of what was going to take place, to all the prominent people in the city—for he was an Alderman, by the way—inviting them to inspect the working of the engine and partake of a collation afterward in the spacious buildings of the hemp-press.

Wednesday, the fatal day, arrived, and the great American fire-engine stood out on the quay glistening in the sun, the centre of an admiring crowd of open-mouthed natives. The Englishmen in the background rather put their heads together and shook them the wrong way, as they often do at anything American, but the natives allowed their lower lips to drop from overwhelming admiration. Everybody was curious, and all were expectant, from the small kids dressed in nothing but the regulation Philippine undershirt, who played shinney with the coal for the boiler and looked down the hose-nozzle, to Don Capitan himself, who went around shaking by the hands all the high and mighty officials who had come to see his latest freak. My associate and I felt fairly important as we gruffly ordered the police to clear the ground for action and blew the whistle to scare the audience. The huge suction-hose was run into the river, and our host made his pet servant jump in after it to hold the strainer out of the mud. Ten natives were stationed at the nozzle of the four-inch hose, which was pointed up the small plaza running back from the quay, and while I poked up the fire to give us a little impressive smoke, Rand rang the bell and turned on steam.

The affair worked admirably, and the big stream of yellow water went so far as to gently soak down a lot of baled tobacco that was lying on a street-corner at the next block, supposedly beyond reach. The owner of the tobacco, thinking that a thunder-storm had struck the town, came to the door of his office, just behind, to see what was up, and, as the engine suddenly began to work a little better, the stream of water somehow knocked him over and played around the entrance to his store-house. At the rate things were going it looked as if the exhibition would prove expensive and, to avoid diplomatic complications, we shut off steam long enough to shift the hose over for a more unobstructed spurt along the river.

In a few moments after the change had been made an open throttle made a truly huge torrent belch from the long nozzle with such force as to make the ten hose-men feel decidedly nervous, but it did not stop them from turning the stream toward a lighter which was being polled down the Pasig by two Malays. The foremost was washed backward into the lighter, and the hindmost swept off into the river as if he had been a cockroach. A Chinaman who was paddling a load of vegetables to the Esmeralda in a hollow tree-trunk suffered the same fate. He and his greens were swished out of the banca, in an instant, and he found himself sitting on his inverted craft floating helplessly down-stream.

Then suddenly, as we opened the throttle to the last notch, the hose men, in their excitement to wet some coolies loading hemp, far up the quay, tried to turn the torrent back onto the pavement, but, with its force of fifteen hundred gallons to the minute, it was too quick for them, and with one mighty “kerchug” broke away to send the nozzle flying around like a mill-wheel. Before they knew what struck them the ten men holding the nozzle were knocked prostrate, and two small boys in undershirts, who were playing around in the mud-puddles near by, were whisked off into the river like so much dust. A dozen lightning wriggles of the hose, and the frenzied cataract shot a third boy through the wire door into the office of our friend, Don Capitan. Inside the door, on a wooden settee, were sitting some of the family servants holding their infants, and the same stream on which the boy travelled through the door washed the whole party, settee and all, across the hallway into a heap at the foot of the stairs.

Outside, the audience stampeded, and the man in the river, holding on to the suction hose, had hard work to prevent being drawn up through the strainer and pumped out the other end in fragments. All this took place in a quarter of the time it takes to tell of it, and events followed each other in such quick succession that the hose had started to turn over on its back and charge on the engine before one of us rushed in to shut off steam. The two boys washed into the river were fished out more dead than alive, but more frightened than hurt, and the native Philippine policeman on duty at the front arrested them promptly for daring to be drowned. The boy blown through the screen-door had his ear badly torn, and was likewise arrested for not entering the house in a more civilized manner. The natives nursed their bare feet stepped on in the rush; the Englishmen, who had been sarcastic several days before, said nothing; but the Spaniards asked where the collation was, and, waterlogged though they were, began to eat like good ones. The policeman marched the three boys in undershirts to the station-house, and next morning the daily newspapers devoted more space than was usual in describing the wonderful machinery that came from America, for the benefit of their readers, who, like that English dude of old, “didn’t weahlly dweam that so much wattah could come out of such a wehwey diminootive-looking affaiah.”

Otherwise, in Manila we are now enjoying the so-called veranillo, or little summer, which every year comes along about the middle of August, and which consists of two or three weeks of cool, pleasant weather, that comes between the rains of July and the typhoon season of September. And fine weather it is, with a jolly breeze blowing in from the China Sea all day, with delightful afternoons, moonlight nights, and fresh mornings.

September 20th.

There has been no opportunity to start letters off for the other side of the globe since the early days of the present month, on account of a typhoon which has visited our fair capital, and which has so delayed steamers that all connections seem to have been scattered to the four winds. I have long been waiting to become acquainted with one of these aËrial disturbances, and at last the meteorological monotony has been broken.

Early in this eventful week, warnings came from our most excellent observatory, run by the Jesuit priests, that trouble was brewing down in the Pacific to the south and east, and by Friday signal No. 1 of the danger system was displayed on the flagstaff of the look-out tower. The news about the storm was indefinite, but the villain was supposed to be slowly moving northwest, headed directly for Manila. Saturday up went signal No. 2, and in the afternoon No. 3, and by evening No. 4. Still everything was calm and peaceful, and Sunday morning dawned pleasant but for the exception of a dull haze. Early in the afternoon up went signal No. 5, which means that things are getting pretty bad, and which is not far from No. 8, the worst that can be hoisted.

Everybody now began to get ready for the invisible monster. All the steamers and ships in the river put out extra cables, and the vessels in the Bay extra anchors. No small craft of any kind were permitted to pass out by the breakwater, and later navigation in the river itself was prohibited. Still everything was calm and quiet, but the haze thickened and low scud-clouds began to sail in from the China Sea. Shortly after tiffin at our residence by the seaside, our gaze was attracted by a native coming down the street, dressed in a black coat with shirt-tails hanging out beneath, and wearing white trousers and a tall hat. He carried a decorated cane, wore no shoes, and marched down the centre of the street, giving utterance to solemn sentences in a deep musical voice. In short, he was the official crier to herald the coming of the typhoon, and as he marched along the bells up in the old church beyond our house rang out what poets would call “a wild, warning plea.”

The natives opposite began hastily to sling ropes over the thatch of their light shanties, and one of the Englishmen who lived not far back of us had already stretched good solid cables over the steep-sloping roof of his domicile. A sort of hush prevailed, and then sudden gusts began to blow in off the bay. The scud-clouds increased and appeared to be in a fearful hurry. The roar of the surf loudened, and one after the other of our sliding sea-shell windows had to be shut and bolstered up for precaution. The typhoon seemed to be advancing slowly, as they often do, but its course was sure. Our eight o’clock dinner-hour passed and the wind began to howl. Before turning in for the night, we moved out of our little parlor such valuable articles as might be most missed if they decided to journey off through the air in company with the roof, and later tried to sleep amidst a terrific din of rattlings. But slumber was impossible. Our house trembled like a blushing bride before the altar, and for the triumphal music of the “Wedding March” the tin was suddenly stripped off our rain-shed roof like so much paper. And then the racket! Great pieces of tin were slapping around against the house like all possessed; the trees in the front garden were sawing against the cornices, as if they wanted to get in, and the rush of air outside seemed to generate a vacuum within.

At 3 A.M. things got so bad that it seemed as if something were going to burst, and my chum and I decided to take a last look into the parlor before seeking the safety of the cellar. No glass would have withstood the gusts that came pouncing in from the Bay, but our sea-shell windows did not seem to yield. The rain was sizzling in through the cracks like hot grease when a fresh doughnut is dropped into the spider, and the noise outside was deafening. As our house seemed to be holding together, however, we gave up going to the regions below, and turned in again, thankful that we were not off on the ships in the Bay. Now and then the wind lulled somewhat, and blew from another quarter, but by early morning came some of the most terrific blowings I have ever felt, resulting from the change of direction. Down came all the wires in the main street; over went half a dozen nipa houses to one side of us, and “kerplunk” broke off some venerable trees that for many years had withstood the blast. The street was a mass of wreckage, as far down as the eye could see, and few signs of life were visible. During the rest of the day the wind blew most fiercely, but from the change of direction it was easy to see that the centre of the typhoon was passing off to the northwest.

I sallied out later in the afternoon, dressed in not much more than a squash-hat, a rubber coat, and a pair of boots, whose soles were holy enough to let the water out as fast as it came in. It was as much as one could do to stand against the blast, but I managed to keep along behind the houses, cross the streets, and reach the Luneta, where all the lamps bent their heads with broken glass, and where the huge waves were flying far up into the air in their efforts to dispose of the stone sea-wall. The clumps of fishing and bath houses which stood perched on posts out in the surf were being fast battered to pieces, and those which were not minus roof and sides were washed up into the road as driftwood. The natives were rushing gingerly hither and thither, grabbing such logs as they could find, while some of the fishermen’s families were crouching behind a stone wall watching their wrecked barns, and sitting on their saucepans, furniture, and babies, to keep them from sailing skyward. The surf was tremendous, the vessels in the bay were shrouded in spray, and several of them seemed almost to be ashore in the breakers. A steamer appeared to have broken adrift and was locked in the embrace of a Nova Scotia bark. But everything comes to an end and as night drew on the winds and rain subsided and comparative quiet succeeded a season of exaggerated movement and din.

The typhoon was wide in diameter, perhaps two hundred miles, and so was not destructive, like the one that laid Manila low way back in the ’80’s. It seems that the larger the diameter of one of these circular storms, the less its intensity, and although the wind at any given time is moving with tremendous velocity within the circle, the whole disturbance is not advancing at a pace much over a dozen miles an hour.

After the typhoon came the floods, and the old Pasig covered the adjacent country. The water concealed the road to the uptown club at Nagtajan under a depth of several feet, and one could without difficulty row into the billiard-room or play water-polo in the bowling-alley. Two of my friends were nearly drowned by trying to drive when they should have swum or gone by boat. The pony walked off with their carriage into a rice-field, in the darkness, and was drowned in more than eight feet of water. The boys only crawled out with difficulty, and just managed to reach “dry land” (that with three feet of water over it) in the nick of time. As it was, one of them practically saved the other’s life, and has since been presented with a gold watch, which does not run.

One of the bank-managers was to give a dinner-dance at his house next evening, to which everyone was invited, when word came that his bungalow could only be reached by boats, and that the festivities would have to be put off until the parlor floor appeared. To the north, where the actual centre of the typhoon passed, the railway was swept away, the telegraph line that connects with the cable to Hong Kong torn down, and the country in general laid under water. But the show is now concluded, and business, which had been paralyzed for a week, once more starts up with the coming of the cablegrams.

Manila life goes on as ever, and it is curious to note how fast the days and weeks slip backward. Everyone agrees that the most rapid thing in town, except the winds of the typhoons, is the speed with which the Philippine to-day becomes yesterday. The secret seems to lie in the fact that there are no landmarks by which to remember the weeks that are gone. The trees are green all the year round, and there are no snow-storms to mark the contrast between winter and summer. There are no class-days, no ball-games, and no coming out in spring fashions to break the orderly procession of the sun, moon, and stars. We wear our white starched suits every day in the year, and one’s wardrobe is not replete with various checks, plaids, and stripes that mark an epoch in one’s appearance. We cannot, like TeufelsdrÖch, in “Sartor Resartus,” speculate much on the “clothes philosophy,” though we may do so on the centres of indifference; for our garments are not complex enough to invite transcendental theorizing. Manila food is alike from Christmas morn to the following Christmas eve, and so, take it all in all, the past is practically without milestones, and seems far shorter than one in which many events make the measured steps more clearly differentiated.

At present everybody dates his ideas from the typhoon, and that will remain a landmark for some time, if the fire which took place the other evening on the banks of the river does not usurp its position. Ten thousand bales of hemp, and a lot of copra, sugar, and cocoanut-oil were sent aloft in less earthly form. Æsthetically the sight was beautiful, and the eye was charmed by the mingling of vast tongues of blue, green, red, and yellow flames, some of which burst forth from the very waters of the river itself on which the inflammable materials had excursioned. Our new fire-engine was on hand for the first time, in actual service, and, together with the small English engine brought out from London, did its duty. America, as usual, was in the lead, and everybody stood aghast to see the big five-inch stream mow down the brick walls of the burning houses like grain before the reaper. One native in particular, whose frail hut was washed to splinters by that big cataract played upon it to save it from the flames, said he’d rather lose his property by fire than to stand by and see the blooming bomba (fire-engine) blow it all to bits. The local department, as usual, lost their heads, and while some began to chop the tiles off the roofs of neighboring houses, others directed the streams from the hand-pumps onto the choppers. Even our gallant friend the American broker, who helps swell the number of Yankee business men in Manila to four, almost got roasted alive by being shut into an iron vault as he tried to rescue some valuable papers belonging to a customer and had to be soused with water, after his miraculous escape, to lower his temperature. But at length Providence and water prevailed, and the damage did not come to more than half a million dollars.