Part 1 (1/2)
The Great White Tribe in Filipinia.
by Paul T. Gilbert.
Preface
The legendary white tribe that is said to wander in the mountains of Mindoro is but distantly related to the Great White Tribe now scattered through the greater part of Filipinia. Extending from the Babuyanes off Luzon, to Tawi-Tawi and Sibutu off the coast of Borneo, the Great White Tribe has made its presence felt throughout the archipelago.
The following pages are the record of my own impressions and experiences in the Philippines. The few historical and geographical allusions made have been selected only as they were significant, explanatory, picturesque. A logical arrangement of the chapters will enable the reader to survey the islands as a great bird hovering above might do--will make the map of Filipinia ”look like a postage-stamp.”
I promise that the reader shall be introduced to all the most important members of the Great White Tribe, as well as to the representatives of races brown and black. We will peep through the hedge together as the savages and pagans execute their grotesque dances or perform their sacrifices to the G.o.d of the volcano. Furthermore, the reader shall attend the Oroquieta Ball with Maraquita and Don Julian, or, if he likes, with ”Foxy Grandpa” and ”The Arizona Babe.”
I ought to dedicate this book to many people,--to that wonderful brown baby Primitivo, who has written that he ”loves me the most best of all the world;” to ”Fres...o...b..ll,” that charter member of the Great White Tribe, with whom I have knocked around from Zamboanga to Vigan; or to that coterie of college men in old Manila who extended me so many courtesies while I was there. I send them all my compliments from the homeland, and ask the reader, if he will, to do likewise.
Cincinnati, Ohio,
_December, 1903._
Chapter I.
In Old Manila.
As the big white transport comes to anchor three miles out in the green waters of Manila Bay, a fleet of launches races out to meet the messenger from the Far West. The customs officers in their blue uniforms, the medical inspectors, and the visitors in white duck suits and panama hats, taking their ease upon the launches without the slightest sign of curiosity, give one his first impressions of the Oriental life--the white man's easy-going life in the Far East. But the ideas of the newcomer are to undergo a change after his first few days on sh.o.r.e, when he takes up the grind, and realizes that his face is getting pasty--that the cool veranda and the drive on the Luneta do not const.i.tute the entire program, even in Manila.
Unwieldy lighters and strange-looking _cascos_ now surround the transport, and the new arrival sees the Filipino for the first time. Under the woven helmet of the nearest _casco_ squats a shriveled woman, one of the witches from Macbeth, stirring a blackened pot of rice. A gamec.o.c.k struggles at his tether in the stern, while the deck amids.h.i.+ps swarms with wiry brown men, with bristling pompadours and feet like rubber, with wide-spreading toes. With unintelligible cries they crowd the gunwale, spurning the iron hull of the transport with long billhooks, as the heavy swell sucks out the water, leaving the streaming sluices and the great red hull exposed, and threatening at the inrush of the sea to b.u.mp the _casco_ soundly against the solid iron plates of the larger s.h.i.+p. A most disreputable-looking crew it is, the ragged trousers rolled up to the knee, the network s.h.i.+rts, or cotton blouses full of holes drawn down outside. Highly excitable, and yet good-natured as they work, they take possession and disgorge the s.h.i.+p, while Chinamen descend the hatchways after dirty clothes.
Off in the hazy distance lies Cavite, or ”the port,” with its white mist of war s.h.i.+ps lying at anchor where the stout Dutch galleons rode, in 1647, to attack the Spanish caravels, retiring only after the Dutch admiral fell wounded mortally; where later, in the nineteenth century, the Spanish fleet put out to meet the white armada, the grim battles.h.i.+ps of Admiral Dewey's line. Where now the lazy sailing vessels and the blackened tramps are anch.o.r.ed, lay, in 1593, the hostile Chinese junks, with the barbaric eye daubed on the bows, the gunwales bristling with iron cannon that had scorned the typhoons of the China Sea and gathered in Manila Bay.
This bay has been the scene of history-making since the sixteenth century. Soon after the flotilla of Legaspi landed the first Spanish settlers on the crescent beach around Manila Bay, the little garrison was put to test by the invasion of the Chinese pirate, Li Ma Hong. The memory of that brave defense in which the Spaniards routed the Mongolian invader, even the disaster of that first of May can never drown. In 1582 the little fleet put out against the j.a.panese corsair, Taifusa, and returned victorious. In 1610 the fleet of the Dutch pirates was destroyed off Mariveles. Those were stirring days when, but a few years later, the armada of Don Juan de Silva left Manila Bay again to test the mettle of the Dutch. Another naval encounter with the Dutch resulted in a victory for Spanish arms in 1620 in San Bernardino Straits. And off Corregidor, whose blue peak marks the entrance to Manila Bay, the Dutchmen were again defeated by the galleons of Don Geronimo de Silva. Now, near the Cavite sh.o.r.e, is seen the twisted wreck of one of the ill-fated men of war that went down under the intolerable fire from Dewey's broad-sides. And in 1899 the Spanish transports left Manila Bay forever under the command of Don Diego de los Rios, with the remnant of the Spanish troops aboard.
The city of Manila lies in a broad crescent, with its white walls and the domes of churches glowing in the sun. On landing at the Anda monument, you find the gray walls and the moss-grown battlements of the old garrison--a winding driveway leading across the swampy moat and disappearing through the mediaeval city gate. This portion of Manila, laid out in the sixteenth century by De Legaspi, occupies the territory on the south side of the Pasig River at the mouth. the frowning walls of the _Cuartel de Santiago_ loom above the bustling river opposite the customs-house.
Here, where the young American army officers look out expectantly for the arrival of the transport that is to bring them their promotions, or to take them home, Geronimo de Silva was confined for not pursuing the Dutch vessels after the sea fight off Corregidor. The crumbling walls still whisper of intrigue and secrecy. The fort was built in 1587, and became the base of operations, not only against the pirate fleets of the Chinese, the Moros, and the Dutch, but also in the riots of the Chinese and the j.a.panese that broke out frequently in the old days. At one time twenty thousand Chinamen were beaten back by an alliance of the Spaniards, j.a.panese, and natives. On this historic ground the treaty was made in 1570 between the Spaniards and the rajas of Manila, Soliman and Lacandola. The walls survived the fire of 1603. The earthquake causing the evacuation of Manila could not shake them. Another prisoner of state, Corcuera, who had fought the Moros in the Jolo Archipelago, was locked up in the _Cuartel de Santiago_ at the instance of his Machiavellian successor. In 1642 the fort was strengthened by additional artillery because of an expected visit from the Dutch. Today a soldier in a khaki uniform mounts guard at the street entrance. The courtyard is adorned by pyramids of cannon-b.a.l.l.s and tidy rows of _bonga_-trees. The soldiers' quarters line the avenue on either side, and bugle-calls resound where formerly was heard the call of the night watchman.
A number of elaborate but narrow pa.s.sages--dim, gloomy archways, where the chain and windla.s.s stand dust-covered from disuse--connect the walled town with the extra-muros sections. The _Puerto del Parian_, on the Ermita side, is one of the most imposing of these gates. Near the botanical gardens on the boulevard, at the small booth where Juliana sells cigars and bottled soda, following the turnpike over the moat, you come to the Parian gate, crowned by the Spanish arms, in crumbling bas-relief. Beyond the drawbridge--lowered never to be raised again--where rumbling pony-carts crowd the pedestrians to the wall, the pa.s.sage opens into gloomy dungeons, with barred windows looking out upon the stagnant waters of the moat. With an involuntary shudder, you pa.s.s on. A native policeman, in an opera-bouffe uniform, stands at the further end in order to dispatch the vehicles that can not pa.s.s each other in the narrow gate. Windowless, yellow walls, upon the corners of the streets, make reckless driving very dangerous, and collisions frequently occur. A vacant sentry-box stands just within the city walls, and, turning here into the long street, you immediately find yourself in an old Spanish town.
Here the grand churches and the public buildings are located; the cathedral, after the Romano-Byzantine style of architecture; the _Palacio_, built after Spanish notions of magnificence, around a courtyard shaded by rare trees; and many other edifices, used for official and ecclesiastic purposes. The streets are paved with cobblestone and laid out regularly in squares, in accordance with the plan of De Legaspi, so that one side or the other will be always in the shade. Beautiful plazas, with their palms and statues, frequently relieve the glare of the white walls. The sidewalks are narrow, and are sheltered by projecting balconies.
The heavily-barred windows, ponderous doors, and quaint signboards give the streets an old-world aspect, while _Calle Real_ is spanned by an arched gallery, like the Venetian Bridge of Sighs. Tailor-shops, laundries, restaurants, and barber-shops, where swinging punkas waft the odor of bay rum through open doors, suggest a scene from some forgotten story-book or the stage-setting for an Elizabethan play. In the commercial streets the absence of show-windows will be noticed. Bookstores display their wares on stands outside, while of the contents of the other shops, one can obtain no adequate idea until he enters through the open doors. The interesting signboards, whether they can be interpreted or not, tend to excite the curiosity. ”_Los Dos Hermanos_” (The Two Brothers) is a tailor-shop, a _Sastreria_; and the shoestore a _Zapateria_. The family grocery-store, _El Globo_, is advertised by a huge globe, battered from long years of service; and _La Lira_, or the music-store, may be known by the sign of the gold lyre.
These streets have been the scene of many a drama in the past. Earthquakes in 1645, in 1863, and 1880, caused great loss of life and property. The plague broke out in 1628, when Spaniards, Filipinos, and Chinese were swept off indiscriminately. Later, epidemics of smallpox and cholera have made a prison and a pesthouse of Manila. Only in 1902 the city suffered from a run of cholera, and the Americans, in spite of all precautions, could not stop the spread of the disease. The streets were flushed at night; districts of native houses were put to the torch, and the detention-camp was full of suffering humanity. The natives, in their ignorance, went through the streets in long processions, carrying the images of saints, chanting, and burning candles, and at night would throw the bodies of the dead into the river or the ca.n.a.l. The s.h.i.+ps lay wearily at quarantine out in the bay, and the chorus of bells striking the hour at night was heard over the quiet waters. Officers patrolled the streets, inspected drains and cesspools where the filth of ages had collected, giving the forgotten corners of Manila such a cleaning as they never had received before.
But there were days of triumph and rejoicing--days such as had come to Greece and Rome; days when the level of life was raised to heights of inspiration. Not only have the streets re-echoed to the martial music of the victorious Americans when Governor Taft or the vice-governor were welcomed, but the town had rung with shouts of triumph when provincial troops had come back from the conquest of barbarians, or when the fleets returned from victories over the Dutch and English and the Moro pirates of the southern archipelago. And the streets reverberated to the sound of drum and trumpet when, in 1662, the special companies of guards were organized to put down the rebellion of the Chinese in the suburbs. But in 1762 the town capitulated to the English, and the occupation by Americans more than a century later, was a repet.i.tion of the scenes enacted then.
Because of the volcanic condition of the island, the houses can not be built more than two stories high. The ground floor is of stone, and contains, besides the storehouse or a suite of living rooms, the stables, arranged around a tiled courtyard, where the carriages are washed. A broad stairway conducts to the main corridor above. The floor, of polished hardwood, is uncarpeted and scrupulously clean. Each morning the _muchachos_ (house-boys) mop the floor with kerosene, skating around the room on rags tied to their feet, or pus.h.i.+ng a piece of burlap on all fours across the floor. The walls are frescoed pink and blue; the ceiling is often of painted canvas. The windows, fitted with translucent sh.e.l.l in tiny squares, slide back and forth, so that the balcony can be thrown open to the light. Double walls, making an alcove on one side, keep out the heat of the ascending or descending sun. The balcony at evening is a favorite resort, and visitors are entertained in open air. In the interior arrangement of the houses, little originality is shown, the Spaniards having insisted upon merely formal principles of art. The stiff arrangement of the chairs, facing each other in precise rows, as if a conclave were about to be held, does not invite conviviality. There are few pictures on the walls,--a faded chromo, possibly, in a gilt frame, representing some old-fas.h.i.+oned prospect of Madrid, or the tinted portrait of the royal family.
The Spanish residents and the _mestizos_ entertain with great politeness and formality. Five o'clock is the fas.h.i.+onable hour for visiting, as earlier in the afternoon the family is liable to be in _negligee_. The Spanish women, in loose, morning gowns, or blouses, and in flapping slippers, present a rather slovenly appearance during morning hours; also the children, in their ”union” suits, split tip the back, impress the stranger as untidy. During the noon _siesta_ everybody goes to sleep, to come to life late in the afternoon. At eight o'clock the chandelier is lighted and the evening meal is served. This is a very formal dinner, consisting of innumerable courses of the same thing cooked in different styles. A gla.s.s of _tinto_ wine, a gla.s.s of water, and a toothpick whittled by the loving hands of the _muchacho_, finishes the meal. The kitchen is located in the rear, and generally overlooks the court, and near by are the bathroom and the laundry.