A Trip to the South—Contents of the “Puchero”—Romblon—Cebu, the Southern Hemp-Centre—Places Touched At—A Rich Indian at Camiguin—Tall Trees—Primitive Hemp-Cleaners—A New Volcano—Mindanao Island—Moro Trophies—Iligan—Iloilo—Back Again at Manila. December 23, 1894. I have just returned from the south, and feel able enough to begin the narrative. On Saturday, December 1, thick clouds obscured the sky, and gusty showers of rain continued to fall until evening, when they formed themselves into a respectable downpour. It was objectionable weather for the dry season just commencing, but the northwest monsoon was said to be heavy outside, and the rain on our east coast evidently slid over the mountains back of Manila, instead of staying where it belonged. Such was the day of starting, while, to cap the climax, just before the advertised leaving-time of the Uranus, word came from the Jesuit observatory that a typhoon was apparently getting ready to sail directly across the course we were to take, and up went signal No. 3 on the flag-staff at the mouth of the river. Philosophers, however, must not be bothered by At half after seven in the evening the whistle blew, the visitors departed, and the Uranus slowly began to back down the narrow river into the black night. She is one of the largest and newest “province steamers” in the Philippines, and it took a great deal of manipulation to turn her around and get her headed toward the Bay. As large, perhaps, as one of our coasting boats that runs to the West Indies, she has a flush deck from stem to stern, and is ruled over by a very jolly, stubby, little Spanish captain who looks eminently well fed if not so well groomed. We got out of the river at eight o’clock, saw the three warning, red, typhoon lanterns glaring at us, and started full speed ahead for Romblon, our first calling-port, eighteen hours away. Dinner was served on deck from a large table formed by closing down the huge skylights to the regular dining-saloon below, and the eaters took far more enjoyment in their Spanish bill of fare under the awnings than they would have done had the same victuals been dished up downstairs. I say “victuals,” for the word seems During the night we all waited in vain to hear the sizzling of the typhoon that came not, and got up next morning to find the scare had been for nothing. The clouds and rain were clearing away, and the prow of the Uranus was headed directly for a region of blue sky. By breakfast-time there was hardly a cloud in the heavens, the rooster up for’ard began to crow, the mooly-cow which we were soon to eat began to moo, the islands in front A Citizen from the Interior. A Citizen from the Interior. We stayed in this little Garden of Eden until after three o’clock, then pulled out to the steamer, and left again for the south, over a calm sea and beneath a glorious sky. Some of us slept on deck in the moonlight, but, finding it if anything too cool and breezy, were up betimes to see the island of Cebu looming on our right hand. Our early six-o’clock breakfast finished, we sat up on the bridge in easy-chairs, beneath the double awning, as the Uranus poked down along the mountainous coast toward the city of Cebu. At ten o’clock we passed through the narrow channel that leads between a small island and its big brother Cebu, and soon saw the white houses of the town lapping the harbor’s edge. Two American The local excitement was limited, and, except that a Chinaman had been beheaded by some enemy the night before as he was walking home through the street, news was scarce. Numerous people, however, were gathered together outside the police-station, looking at the remains, and several sailors from the American ships, who had swum ashore during the night to get drunk, were being returned to their vessels in charge of the civil guard. The Uranus was not to stop long, and most of the through passengers returned early to the steamer to enjoy a view tempered by rather more breeze and less smell than that which the narrow streets afforded. Cebu, from the deck, was worthy of a sonnet; the white houses and church spires were set off against the dark-green background of mountains, and as the sun got lower the place did not have the broiled-alive aspect that it bore during the middle of the day. At four the stubby little Captain came aboard, and soon we turned northeast for our next stopping-place, Tuesday morning the sun rose over the lofty mountains on the island of Leyte, and the Uranus shaped her course for Catbalogan, another of the larger hemp-ports. The steam up the bay blotched with islands was perfection, and by ten o’clock the anchor hunted round for a soft bed in the ooze, some eight hundred yards off a sandy beach, above which lay the town. Those of us who had energy enough to bolt our hearty breakfast were taken by the jolly-boat onto the mud flats, and were carried through the shallow water on oars to dry land. On the slopes of the higher mountains, behind the town, the hemp-plants (looking exactly like banana-trees), grew luxuriously, and in front of many of the houses in Catbalogan the white fibre was out drying on clothes-lines. A short taste of the hot sun easily satisfied our curiosity as to Catbalogan, and we were off to the ship again for more breakfast, just as several hungry-looking From Catbalogan to its sister town, Tacloban, four hours to the south, the course leads among the narrow straits between high, richly wooded islands, and the scenery was most picturesque. Here and there little white beaches gleamed along the shore, and in front of the nipa shanties that now and then looked out from among the trees hung rows of hemp drying in the sun. Off and on the big waves, kicked up by the forward movement of the Uranus in the land-locked waters, woke up the stillness resting on the banks, and nearly upset small banca loads of the white fibre which was perhaps being paddled down to some larger centre from more remote stamping-grounds. From the bridge our view was most comprehensive, and it wasn’t long before the steamer actually entered the river like strait that separates the islands of Samar and Leyte. We twisted around like a snake through the narrow channel, on each side of which were high hills and mountains, richly treed with cocoanuts and hemp-plants, and, just as the sun was getting low, hauled into Tacloban, situated inside an arm of land that protects it from the dashing surges of the Apostles’ Bay beyond. At Tacloban there was little to see. A high range of hills rose behind the town, and in the evening half-light everything looked more or less attractive. We climbed a small knoll that looked off over the Bay of St. Peter and St. Paul to the south and down over the village. The strait through which we came stretched up back among the hills like a river, and in the foreground lay the Uranus. A number of hemp store-houses lined the water-front, and as usual the ever-present Chinese were the central figures of the commercial part of the community. At eight the anchor came up once more, and we left Tacloban to steam religiously down the bay of St. Peter and St. Paul for Cabalian, eight hours to the south. Cabalian is another little hemp-town, at the foot of a huge mountain; but in the starlight of the very early morning we stopped there only long enough to leave the mail and drop a pony overboard. Sunrise caught us still steering to the south, but nine o’clock tied our steamer to a little wharf in Surigao, directly in front of a large hemp-press and store-house belonging to the owners of the ship on which we were journeying. Some of the best hemp that comes to the Manila market is pressed at Surigao, and all around were stacks of loose fibre drying in the sun or being separated into different grades by native coolies. Several of us left the ship and walked to the main There was the customary hill behind the town, and at the risk of going entirely into solution during the effort, two of us climbed to the top for a breath of air and a panoramic view. Dinner came along as usual at five; but I must say that the more I ate of those curiously timed meals the less I could accommodate my mental powers to the comprehension of what I was doing. Everybody knows what a difficult psychological problem it is to determine the exact numerical nature of the feeling in the second and third toes of his feet, as compared with that in the fingers of his hands. On your hands you can distinctly feel the first finger, the middle finger, and the fourth finger; but on your feet your second toe doesn’t feel like your first finger nor as a second toe should naturally feel. The great toe corresponds in sensation to one’s first finger, and all the other toes save the last seem to be muddled up without that differentiated sensation which the fingers have. And so with these meals aboard ship. A ten o’clock breakfast was neither breakfast nor luncheon, and it bothered me considerably to know what in the dickens I was really eating. In fact, it affected my mind to such a degree that somehow the food tasted as if it did not belong to any particular meal, but came from We left Surigao an hour before midnight, sailed away over moonlit seas toward the island of Camiguin, and when I stuck my head out of the port-hole at half after five next morning, the two very lofty mountain-peaks which formed this sky-scraper of the Philippines were just ridding themselves of the garb of darkness. Three of us went ashore at seven, and were introduced to a rich Indian, who, although the possessor of four hundred thousand dollars, lived in a common little nipa house. He invited us to see the country, fitted us out with three horses and a mounted servant, and sent us up into the mountains, where his men were working on the hemp-plantations. We started up the sharp slopes, and were soon getting a wider and wider view back over the town and blue bay below. First the path was bounded with rice-fields, but, as we rose, the hemp plants which, as before said, look just like their relatives, the banana-trees, began to hem us in. Now and again we came to a little hut where long strings of fibre were out drying in the sun, but our boy kept going upward until we were rising at an angle of almost forty-five How the World’s Supply of Manila Hemp is Cleaned. Capacity, Twenty-five Pounds per Diem. How the World’s Supply of Manila Hemp is Cleaned. Capacity, Twenty-five Pounds per Diem. See page 159. Leaving our host with a promise to come ashore again and use his horses in the afternoon, we went down to the long pier and rowed off to the Uranus in one of the big ship’s boats that was feeding her empty forehold with instalments of hemp. In the early afternoon we again went ashore, took other ponies and started off up the coast toward a remarkable volcano, which, though not existing in 1871, has since been business-like enough to grow up out of the sandy beach, until it is now a thousand feet high. A whole town was destroyed during the growing process, but to-day the signs of activity are not so evident. The path up the mountain-side was terrifically stony and somewhat obscure. Long creepers frequently caught us by the neck, or wound themselves about our feet, in attempts to rid the ponies of their burden. It was a laborious undertaking, and it didn’t look as if we should reach the crater before dark, but we kept on Late the same evening the Uranus left, sailed around the island’s western edge in the moonlight, and turned southward for Cagayan, on Mindanao Island, the last of the Philippines to resist subjection by the Spanish and now the scene of wars and conflicts with the bloodthirsty savages who are indigenous to the soil. Morning introduced us to a shaky wharf and to a group of gig-drivers, who said the town was fully At the bridge we fell into talk with a pleasant Spaniard, who was the interventor or official go-between in affairs concerning Governor and natives. We asked him as to the prospects of finding some Moro arms, knives, and shields in the settlement for being in a district upon which a recent descent had been made it seemed as if the town should be rich in bloody curios. He gave us some encouragement, and off we trotted across the central plaza with its old church, on an expedition of search. It seems that all the houses around this plaza were armed to the teeth, and in time of need the whole place could be transformed into a fort. Every house in the pueblo had one of the newest type of Mauser rifles standing up in the corner, and in fifteen minutes fifteen hundred men could be mustered ready armed to fight the savage Moros. We really felt as if we were in one of the Indian outposts of early American days, and were quite interested in the conversation of our guide, who seemed to take a great liking to two foreigners. We went into several little huts where knives and spears were hung upon the doors, and succeeded in exchanging many of our dollars for rude, weird weapons with waving edges or poisoned points. We passed several “tamed” Moros in the street and took off some bead necklaces, turbans, and bracelets which they had on. For dinner we went to the house of the interventor to lunch on some grass mixed with macaroni, canned fish, bread and water, and if I hadn’t been so much occupied with our Spanish conversation I might have felt hungry. After the meal our host wanted me to take a photograph of him and his wife dressed up in a discarded theatrical costume, and it was quite as ludicrous as anything on the trip. An upholstered throne—part of the stage-setting in their play of the week before—was rigged up in the back yard, and the seÑor and seÑora, robed as king and queen of Aragon, put on all the airs of a royal family as they stood before the camera. These good people pulled the house to pieces to show us wigs, crowns, and wooden swords, and it seemed as if we should never get away. Later, however, our good friend borrowed a horse in one place, a carriage in another, helped us to go around and collect our various purchases, presented me with a shield which he took down off his own wall, and drove us back to the steamer. Here Toward midnight the Uranus steamed out of the Bay of Cagayan and headed for Misamis, still farther south. Another calm night, and Saturday morning saw us approaching a little collection of nipa huts presided over by an old stone fort and backed up by the usual high range of mountains. Two Spanish gunboats, the Elcano and Ulloa, all flags flying, in honor of Sunday or something were at anchor in the Bay, and at eight o’clock we pulled ashore to fritter away an hour or so in looking about an uninteresting village. There was a saying here that no photographer ever lived to get fairly into the town, for the only two who had ever come before this way were drowned in getting ashore from their vessels. As I walked about the streets, several Indian women stuck their heads out of the windows of their huts seeming quite amazed to see a live picture-maker, and asked in poor Spanish how much I would charge for a dozen copies of their inimitable physiognomies. Misamis business detained the Uranus but for a While I paddled across a creek to get a photograph of some friendly savages on the other bank, one of my steamer friends went up to the Government house to make a formal visit. It seems he found no one at home except the wife of one of the high department officials, and she was reading the latest letters just fresh from the mail-bag of the Uranus. As I got back from across the river I heard a tremendous pandemonium going on in the upper story of the building in question, and soon my fellow-passenger came bolting down the stairs and out into the street below. The poor woman, on reading in her freshly opened letter that her husband, who had but recently gone up to Manila for a week’s stay, was an absconder The Moros themselves are sturdy beggars, though most picturesque ones, and the tame specimens that came into Iligan were curious in the extreme. Dressed in native-made cloths of all colors, their heads were ornamented with turbans of red and white and blue, while gaudy sashes gave them an air of aristocratic distinction which few of their northern brothers possessed. Some of them black all their teeth, others only put war-paint on their two front pairs of ivories, and while some looked as if they had no chewing machinery at all, others appeared as if they might only have played centre rush on a modern foot-ball team. For years now Spain has sent men and gun-boats down to Mindanao to wipe out the savages and bring the island under complete subjection, but without avail. Young boys from the north have been drafted into native regiments to go south on this Moro Chiefs from Mindanao. Moro Chiefs from Mindanao. See page 167. We left Moro land at eight o’clock in the evening, after dining various officials who came aboard to see what they could get to eat, and by Sunday morning at sunrise had crossed northward to the island of Bohol, dropping anchor in Maribojoc, a small uninteresting place with an old church, a Spanish padre who had not been out of town in thirty years long enough ever to see a railroad or a telephone, and the Next, a second stop at Cebu for the mails bound Manilaward, a good-by for the second time to our friends, and the Uranus now kept back down the coast toward Dumaguete, a prosperous town on the rich sugar-island of Negros. At ten o’clock that night we were off again, and Tuesday noon ushered us in to Iloilo, the second city of the Philippines. A lot of “go-downs” (store-houses) and dwellings on the swampy peninsula made a fearfully stupid-looking place, and the glare off the sheet-iron roofs was blinding. Scarcely a foot above tide-water, Iloilo was far less prepossessing than Manila, but everyone seemed cordial, and friends were so glad to see us that we appeared to confer a favor in stopping off to see them. The surroundings of Iloilo are far more picturesque than those of Manila, and just across the bay a wooded island, whose high altitude stands out in bold contrast to the marshes over which the city steeps, gave an outlook from the town that compensated for the inlook over dusty streets and dirty quays. The English club occupied its usually central position in the commercial section of the city, and formed an “Where the latitude’s mean and the longitude’s low, Where the hot winds of summer perennially blow, Where the mercury chokes the thermometer’s throat, And the dust is as thick as the hair on a goat, Where one’s throat is as dry as a mummy accursed, Here lieth the land of perpetual thirst.” The afternoon-tea hour is perhaps more carefully observed among the English business houses here than in the capital to the north, and we left the very good little club, with its billiard-tables and stale newspapers, to join one of the regular gatherings in the large office of a friend. But tea, toast, jam, and oranges had no sooner been set before us than the deep whistle of the Uranus sounded, and those of us who were going north had to make a hurried adjournment to the neighboring wharf. Then, as everybody on deck began to say “adios,” and everybody on shore “hasta la vista,” the stubby little captain roared out “avante” and our steamer started for Manila, two hundred and fifty miles away. Next morning we got our first taste of the monsoon, and it came up pretty rough as we crossed some of the broad, open spaces between the islands. There were three dozen passengers aboard ship, and everybody, including four dogs, was desperately sea-sick. But sheltering islands soon brought relief to the prevailing misery, the dogs recovered their equilibrium enough to renew the curl in their tails, and the heaving vessel grew quite still. We touched again at Romblon, on our way up, long enough to get the mail and bring off an unshaven padre or two, bound up to the capital for spiritual refreshment, and for the last time headed for Manila. The monsoon apparently went down with the sun; we were not troubled further with heaving waters, and early on Thursday morning passed through the narrow mouth of Manila Bay, just as the sun was rising in the east, and the full moon setting over Mariveles in the west. The Uranus made a short run across the twenty-seven miles of water to the anchorage among the shipping, and everybody bundled ashore in a noisy launch, almost before the town had had its breakfast. In the afternoon, when the steamer came into the river, I brought all of my arms, armor, and shells ashore to the office, and the American skippers who were waiting for free breezes from the punkah began outbidding each other with offers of baked |