Part 2 (2/2)
In strong contrast with this mode of life is that of the _tao_. His diet consists almost wholly of rice and small uncleaned fish boiled together. As a rule knife, fork, plate, and spoon find no place in his household. The rice and fish are boiled in a pot and then allowed to cool in the same vessel or poured out to cool in a large earthen or wooden bowl. Then Mr. Tao together with Mrs. Tao and all the young Taos squat on their heels around the mixture and satisfy that intangible thing called the appet.i.te. They do not use chop sticks as the Chinese do, but the rice and fish are caught in a hollow formed by the first three fingers of the right hand. The thumb is then placed behind the ma.s.s. It is raised up and poised before the mouth, with a skill coming from the evolution of ages, when a contraction of the muscles of the thumb throws the ma.s.s into the mouth with a skill that is marvelous to any but a Filipino. To judge from the most reliable information, the poorest cla.s.s do not have an abundance of food, although it would seem that such a condition of things would be well-nigh impossible. However, in a census of one hundred school children there were found six boys and four girls who declared that they had never had enough to eat, and the native teacher stated that this was probably true.
The wide gulf between the _tao_ and the rich man is filled by the great middle cla.s.s of Filipinos.
CHAPTER VIII.
VISIT TO A LEPER COLONY.
Not far from our town was a leper colony and the first Sat.u.r.day that could be spared was set aside for a trip to the place. It happened that none of the other Americans were at leisure on this particular morning, but, rather then delay the trip or miss it altogether, the writer, armed with a revolver, started out alone.
The road had been described so accurately by one who was supposed to know it that it was deemed well-nigh impossible to miss the way. The main highway was followed to the point where the by-path supposed to lead to the settlement turned off through some bamboo thickets and a low tropical wood. This path led straight away towards the sea-coast where the houses of the colony were said to stand in a cocoanut grove by the beach.
Upon arriving at the settlement, a very inhospitable reception was received from a mangy cur that growled and showed a very uninviting set of sharp, white teeth behind his snarling lips. The growling of the dog had attracted the attention of an old man who, with age-bent back, was pounding rice in a mortar about fifty yards away. He turned slowly around and, upon seeing an intruder into the primitive quiet of the place, gave a sharp, far-reaching call. The sound had scarcely rung through the grove when from about a dozen of the little gra.s.s houses dotted here and there fifteen or twenty men armed with bolos came out and gathered around the old man. A sense of my danger flashed upon me. Three miles from town and alone in a tropical jungle, I could be almost instantly overcome by this band of bolo-men, and the only report that would ever reach my people would be that I had ”disappeared.” Of course, attack was by no means certain, but the potentiality of the situation was thrilling. A drawn revolver and the gleaming of its s.h.i.+ning barrel had the effect of stopping the men, who seemed to be hesitating as to a course of action, until a somewhat dignified retreat was made to an open s.p.a.ce in the rear from where a less dignified and a more hasty retreat began which did not stop short of Bacalod.
Enough had been seen, however, even in this short visit, to give convincing proof that the settlement visited was no colony of lepers; so, that afternoon two servant boys being taken as guides and interpreters, another attempt was made to reach the goal desired.
This attempt was successful, and, after about two hours of walking, a little cl.u.s.ter of gra.s.s huts snugly hidden by the sea-coast came into view. As we approached, one would have thought it a gala-day. Some few children, apparently from six to thirteen years of age, almost wholly nude, were romping and playing in the open s.p.a.ce around which the huts stood, and no one would ever have thought that any cloud so horrible as leprosy could hover over a place apparently so happy.
By the side of the path as we pa.s.sed was a man and his wife setting out potato plants. His hands were so puffed and his fingers so short that he could scarcely use them, but he was working along as best he could. His wife's feet were so swollen and twisted that she walked only with the greatest difficulty. We pa.s.sed them by and entered the open s.p.a.ce above referred to.
The children now saw us, and those of them who could darted away like frightened rabbits, each to his own burrow. An old man who was sitting in the warm afternoon sun on the little bamboo platform before his hut was aroused from his lethargic repose by the scampering away of the children. He arose, trembling upon his tottering limbs, all drawn and twisted, and hobbled away into his hut.
The children soon recovered from their fright and began to reappear at the doors of the houses, from which now also came the men and women of the settlement. In a few moments we were surrounded by a circle of human beings at once so repulsive and so pitiable that its graphic vividness can never be accurately portrayed.
The old man referred to above, having put on a pair of snow-white pantaloons, appeared now at the doorway of his hut, followed a few moments later by his wife who had evidently clothed herself in the best raiment she had. At a call from the old man, all the men, women, and children in the settlement came out of their huts and stood in a line before us. The old man was spokesman and in his native visayan tongue made a heart-rending appeal for aid which we were powerless to give. Attention was called to a leper woman, apparently about twenty-five years of age, whose face had been attacked by the disease and whose appearance was truly pathetic. Upon her hip was a child about a year and a half old and, strange to say, the child showed as yet no signs whatever of the disease.
What an indissoluble enigma is life! Here in a little cl.u.s.ter of gra.s.s huts in a secluded nook of a secluded island of an all but secluded archipelago was gathered together a little community of wretched natives, driven by their loathsomeness from a.s.sociation with others even of the same half-savage race. Yet here, men and women loved and were married, by mutual trust if not by law, and children were born of the union to live forever under the unspeakable horror that overshadowed the unfortunate parents. Love, hatred, sorrow, and joy--every pa.s.sion that enters into the complex structure of the human heart even here, in this scene of sadness and despair, was playing apparently as freely as where misfortune and disease had never crossed the portals of life.
CHAPTER IX.
A ”HIKE.”
We were lounging lazily in our hammocks at Jimamaylan one evening in April. Supper was just ended, and the soldiers in the post were collected in groups here and there spinning yarns to pa.s.s away the time, when a Filipino clad only in a loin cloth came down the street at a steadily swinging run and stopped in front of the sentry. He brought the announcement that a band of ladrones had just burned a sugar mill and were advancing to sack a barrio about fifteen miles away.
The invitation of the commanding officer to go on a ”hike” was eagerly accepted, and, in ten minutes after the message was given, the troops were on the march followed by two adventurous pedagogues.
Darkness was just closing in as we left the town, but a resplendent tropic moon soon made the night almost as brilliant as the day. The trail we followed led over rough and rocky country. Sometimes for a distance of a mile or more we pa.s.sed over barren wastes of volcanic slag poured out in anger by some peak whose convulsions have long since ceased. Again we would descend into a tropical jungle from the dense foliage of which the ladrones could have leaped at any moment, had they known of our coming, and annihilated our little band. We forded rapid streams with the water at our b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and halted only once in that rapid march of fifteen miles.
About a quarter of a mile from the town we met a man who was standing guard against a surprise by the ladrones. Nothing could well have been much more grotesque and nothing could much better ill.u.s.trate the absolutely primitive condition of the Filipinos in the interior of the islands than the appearance of this guard. A pair of knee pants, a conical gra.s.s hat, and a hemp s.h.i.+rt formed his entire apparel. A long flat wooden s.h.i.+eld, a bolo, and a long bamboo spear with a sharp, flat, iron point, completed his equipment for battle.
Here stood the first and the twentieth centuries side by side. The Filipino who had advanced only a stage beyond the condition of primitive man with his knife, spear, and wooden s.h.i.+eld, stood side by side with the American soldier, a representative of modern life with his magazine rifle, his canteen, his knapsack,--with every article of his clothing made to give him the highest possible efficiency as the unit of a military organization.
A few yards farther on we met another guard equipped similarly to the first. Upon reaching the town, news had just been received that a detachment of troops from another post had intercepted the ladrones and fought a skirmish with them. The ladrones had escaped and we set out in pursuit of them on a chase wilder than a Quixotic dream. We wound our way into the mountains behind the town, inquiring at every gra.s.s hut we pa.s.sed whether the band of ladrones had pa.s.sed that way, but only once was even a trace of them found. Then it was learned that at a certain place they had separated into groups of three or four and gone glimmering through the dream of things that were. This place was in a secluded nook of the mountains where in years gone by some adventurous Spaniard had erected a primitive water mill to grind his sugar-cane. We had now marched about twenty miles and the feet of the pedagogues were a ma.s.s of blisters. They had reached the point where that form of military maneuvering called ”hiking” ceased to possess any alluring charms. So a native was persuaded to come out of his lone mountain hut and hitch up his carabao and cart. He was then made to get on the carabao's back, while the aforesaid pedagogues lay down on the sugar-cane pulp that had been put into the body of the cart, and the driver was instructed to start for the post we had left hours before, and not to stop until he got there. Being uncertain but that some of the ladrones would learn of our having left the body of troops and would try the metal of our steel, we at first agreed that neither of us should go to sleep, but it was later decided that probably the driver had no greater desire to cross the Styx than his pa.s.sengers had and that in case of danger he would awaken us, so both took a revolver in each hand, stretched out supinely and went to sleep.
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