A Woman's Journey through the Philippines Part 1

A Woman's Journey through the Philippines.

by Florence Kimball Russel.

Chapter I

INTRODUCTORY STATEMENTS

Life on a cable-ship would be a lotus-eating dream were it not for the cable. But the cable, like the Commissariat cam-u-el in Mr. Kipling's "Oonts," is--

"--a devil an' a ostrich an' a orphan child in one."

Whether we are picking it up, or paying it out; whether it is lying inert, coil upon coil, in the tanks like some great gorged anaconda, or gliding along the propelling machinery into some other tank, or off into the sea at our bow or stern; whether the dynamometer shows its tension to be great or small; whether we are grappling for it, or underrunning it; whether it is a sh.o.r.e end to be landed, or a deep-sea splice to be made, the cable is sure to develop most alarming symptoms, and some learned doctor must constantly sit in the testing-room, his finger on the cable's pulse, taking its temperature from time to time as if it were a fractious child with a bad attack of measles, the eruption in this case being faults or breaks or leakages or kinks.

The difficulty discovered, it must be localized. A hush falls over the ship. Down to the testing room go the experts. Seconds, minutes, hours crawl by. At last some one leaves the consultation for a brief s.p.a.ce, frowning heavily and apparently deep in thought. No one dares address him, or ask the questions all are longing to have answered, and when his lips move silently we know that he is muttering over galvanometer readings to himself. During this time everyone talks in whispers, and not always intelligently, of the electrostatic capacity of the cable, absolute resistances, and the coefficients of correction, while the youngest member of the expedition neglects her beloved poodle, sonorously yclept "Sn.o.bbles," and no longer hangs him head downward over the ship's rail.

At last the fault is discovered, cut out, and a splice made, the tests showing the cable as good as new, whereupon the women return to their chiffons, the child to her games, and the men, not on duty, to their cigars, until the cessation of noise from the cable machinery, or the engine-room bell signalling "full speed astern" warns us something else may be amiss.

In the testing room, that Holy of Holies on board a cable-ship, the fate of the _Burnside_ hangs upon a tiny, quivering spark of light thrown upon the scale by the galvanometer's mirror. If this light jumps from side to side, or trembles nervously, or perhaps disappears entirely from the scale, our experts know the cable needs attention, and perhaps the ship will have to stop for hours at a time until the fault is located. If the trouble is not in the tanks, the paying-out machinery must be metamorphosed into a picking-up apparatus, and the cable already laid will be coiled back into the hold until the fault appears, when it will be cut out and the two ends of cable spliced. After this splice grows quite cool, tests are taken, and if they prove satisfactory, we again resume our paying out, knowing that while the spot of light on the galvanometer remains quietly in one position, the cable being laid is electrically sound, and we can proceed without interruption.

As may be imagined everyone on the ship got to think in megohms, and scientific terms clung to our conversation just as the tar from the cable tanks clung to our wearing apparel, while few among us but had wild nightmares wherein the cable became a sentient thing, and made faces at us as it leapt overboard in a continuous suicidal frenzy.

The cable-ship _Burnside_, as some may remember, was one of the first prizes captured in the Spanish War. She had been a Spanish merchant ship, the _Rita_, trading between Spain and all Spanish ports in the West Indies, and when captured by the _Yale_, early in April, 1898, was on her way to Havana with a cargo of goods. There is little about her now, however, to suggest a Spanish coaster, save the old bell marked "Rita" in front of the captain's cabin. The sight of this bell always brings to mind the wild patriotism of those early days of our war with Spain, when love of country was grown to an absorbing pa.s.sion which made one eager to surrender all for the nation's honour, and stifled dread of impending separation--a separation that might be forever--despite the rebel heart's fierce protest. The _Rita's_ bell reminds one also of a country less fortunate than our own, and sometimes when looking at it, one can almost fancy the terror and excitement of those aboard the Spanish coaster when the _Yale_ swept down upon her on that memorable April afternoon. But it is a far cry from that day to this, and the _Burnside_, manned by American sailors, flying Old Glory where once waved the red and yellow of Spain's insignia, and laying American cable in American waters, is a very different ship from the _Rita_, fleeing before her pursuers in the West Indies.

When the _Burnside_ left Manila on December 23, 1900, for the cable laying expedition in the far South Seas, there were eight army officers aboard, six of whom belonged to the Signal Corps, the seventh being a young doctor, and the eighth a major and quartermaster in charge of the transport. Besides these there were civilian cable experts, Signal Corps soldiers, Hospital Corps men, Signal Corps natives, and the ship's officers, crew, and servants. The only pa.s.sengers on the trip were women, two and a half of us, the fraction standing for a young person of nine summers, the quartermaster's little daughter, whom we shall dub Half-a-Woman, letting eighteen represent the unit of grown-up value.

Half-a-Woman was the queen of the ship, and held her court quite royally from the Powers-that-Be, our commanding officer, down to the roughest old salt in the forecastle. Having a child aboard gave the only real touch of Christmas to our tropical pretence of it. Everything else was lacking--the snow, the tree, the holly and wreaths, the Christmas carol, the dear ones so far away--but the little child was with us, and wherever children are there also will the Christmas spirit come, even though the thermometer registers ninety in the shade, and at the close of that long summer-hot day we all felt more than "richer by one mocking Christmas past."

Half-a-Woman was also obliging enough to have a birthday on the trip, which we celebrated by a dinner in her honour, a very fine dinner which opened with clear turtle soup and ended with her favourite ice and a birthday cake of gigantic proportions, decorated with ornate chocolate roses and tiny incandescent lamps in place of the conventional age-enumerating candles, cable-ship birthday cakes being eminently scientific and up-to-date. Other people may have had birthdays _en route_, for we were away from Manila many weeks, but none were acknowledged; modesty doubtless constraining those older than Half-a-Woman from making a too ostentatious display of tell-tale incandescent lights.

It was a very busy trip, everyone on the ship being occupied, with the exception of the women who spent most of their time under the cool blue awning of the quarter-deck, where many a letter was written, and many a book read aloud and discussed, though more often we accomplished little, preferring to lie back in our long steamer chairs and watch the wooded islands with cloud shadows on their s.h.a.ggy b.r.e.a.s.t.s drift slowly by and fade into the purple distance.

Now we would pa.s.s close to some luxuriantly overgrown sh.o.r.e where tall cocoanut-palms marched in endless procession along the white beach; now past hills where groups of bamboos swung back and forth in the warm breeze, and feathery palms and plantains, the sunlight flickering through their leaves, showed myriad tints of green and gold and misty gray; these in turn giving place to some volcanic mountain, bare and desolate. Then for hours there would be no land at all, only the wonderful horizonless blue of water and sky, the sunlight on the waves so dazzlingly bright as to hurt the eyes.

But nearly always in this thickly islanded sea there was land, either on one side or the other, land bearing strange names redolent of tropic richness, over whose p.r.o.nunciation we would lazily disagree. Perhaps it would be but a cliff-bound coast or a group of barren islands in the distance, bluer even than the skies above them; perhaps some lofty mountain on whose ridges the white clouds lay like drifted snow; or perhaps a tier of forest-grown hills, rising one above the other, those nearest the water clothed in countless shades of green, verging from deepest olive to the tender tint of newly awakened buds in the springtime, those farthest away blue or violet against the horizon.

Golden days these were when Time himself grew young again, and, resting on his scythe, dreamed the sunlit hours away. Until eventide the summer skies above us slept, as did the summer seas below us, when both awakened from their slumbers flushed and rosy. On some evenings the heavy white clouds piled high in the west seemed to catch fire, the red blaze spreading over the heavens, to be reflected later in the mirror-like water of the sea. Then the crimson light would gradually change to amethyst and gold, with the sun hanging like a ball of flame between heaven and earth, while every conceivable colour, or combination of colours, played riotously over all in the kaleidoscopic shifting of the clouds. At last the sun would touch the horizon, sinking lower and lower into the sea, while the heavens lost their glory, taking on pale tints of purple and violet. A moment more and the swift darkness of the tropics would blot out every vestige of colour, for there is no twilight in the Philippines, no half-tones between the dazzling tropic sunset and the dusky tropic night.

Then there were other evenings when the colours lying in distinct strata looked not unlike celestial _pousse-cafes_, or perhaps some delicately blended shades of pink and blue and mauve, suggested to a feminine mind creations of millinery art; or yet again, when a sky that had been gray and sober all day suddenly blazed out into crimson and gold at sunset, one was irresistibly reminded of a "Quakeress grown worldly."

And then would come the night and the wonderful starlit heavens of the tropics--

"--unfathom'd, untrod, Save by even' and morn and the angels of G.o.d."

Every star sent a trail of light to the still water, seeming to fasten the sky to the sea with long silver skewers; wonderful phosph.o.r.escence played about beneath us like wraiths of drowned men luring one to destruction; while in the musical lap of the water against the ship's side one almost fancied the sound of Lorelei's singing. And then there were starless nights with only a red moon to shine through cloudy skies; and nights no less beautiful when all the world seemed shrouded in black velvet, when the dusky sea parted silently to let the boat pa.s.s through, and then closed behind it with no laugh or ripple of water to speed it onward, breathlessly still nights of fathomless darkness. The ship's master, burdened with visions of coral reefs on a chartless coast, failed to appreciate the aesthetic beauty of sailing unknown seas in limitless darkness, and either anch.o.r.ed on such nights, or paced back and forth upon his bridge, longing for electric lighted heavens that would not play him such scurvy tricks.

And there were gray days, too, which only served to make more golden the sun-kissed ones; days when no observations could be taken with the s.e.xtant, to the huge disgust of the officer in charge of such work; days when the distant mountains loomed spectre-like through the mist, their sharp outlines vignetted into the sky. Occasionally the fog would lift a bit, just enough to reveal the rain-drenched islands around us, and then suddenly wipe them out of existence again, leaving the ship alone on a gray and sh.o.r.eless sea.

As for amus.e.m.e.nts, these were not lacking, what with reading, writing, bag-punching, and playing games with the small girl while under way; and when at anchor there was always shooting, hunting, and fishing for the men, and for us all swimming off the ship's side. This last was often done in shark-ridden waters, to the great disapproval of the ship's officers, some of whom would stand on the well-deck, revolver in hand, while more than once a swift bullet was sent shrilling over our heads at some great fin rising out of the sea beyond. On our trip to and from Bongao, one of the Tawi Tawi Islands, on a wrecking expedition to save the launch _Maud_, stranded there on a coral reef, all the Signal Corps officers were at liberty, too, which made life on the ship even more agreeable, the delightful experience being again repeated on our return trip to Manila from Pasacao, Luzon.

When one considers that the ship laid approximately five hundred knots of cable, and travelled over three thousand knots on the trip, which does not include the Bongao wrecking expedition, it will be seen how difficult the work was, in that in every instance, save from Zamboanga, Mindanao, to Sulu, on the island of Sulu, we had to make a preliminary trip, sounding and taking observations, before the cable could be laid, the Spanish charts being worse than unreliable. Then, too, a government transport dragged our cable with her anchor at one place, a fierce tropical storm wrecked it at another, while careless Moro trench diggers bruised it with stones at a third, which meant many extra days of work for the Signal Corps at each of these places, and for us idle ones a continuation of pleasant experiences, the whole trip taking in all three and a half months.

Three and a half months of ideal summer weather from the last of December to the middle of April, and real summer weather at that, not the sham midwinter summer of the tourist who has his photograph taken attired in flannels and standing under a palm-tree in California, Florida, or the Mediterranean, only to shiveringly resume his normal attire as soon as possible. The Philippine winter climate is quite different, what some one has defined as the climate of heaven, warmth without heat and coolness without cold, when men sport linen or khaki continuously, and women wear lawns and organdies throughout the season, with a light wrap added thereto at night--if it chances to be becoming.

In a few years it will be to these southern seas that the millionaire brings his yacht for a winter cruise; it will be in these forests that he hunts for wild boar and deer, or shoots woodc.o.c.k, duck, snipe, pigeons, and pheasants; in these waters that he fishes for the iridescent silver beauties that here abound. It will be on these sunlit sh.o.r.es invalids seeking health will find it, and here that huge sanitariums should be built, for despite the tales of pessimistic travellers, no lovelier climate exists than can be found in Philippine coast towns from the middle of November until the last of March. After that it becomes unbearably hot, and then one is in danger of all kinds of fevers or digestive troubles, and should, if possible, go to j.a.pan to get cooled off.

Of course, even during the Garden-of-Eden months, one must take the same care of himself that he would in any country, and most of the travellers who write against the Philippine climate have, according to their own statements, lived most unhealthfully as regarded diet, shelter, exposure, and the like. During the hot season itself one can get along very comfortably in the Philippines, if he makes it a rule to live just as he would at home, only at half speed, if I may so express it.

But aside from its possibilities for the leisure cla.s.s, what a world of interest the Philippines has in store for us from a governmental and commercial standpoint! What a treasure-trove it will prove to the historian, geographer, antiquarian, naturalist, geologist and ethnologist. At every stopping-place my little note-book was filled with statistics as to trade in hemp, cane-sugar, cocao, rice, copra, tobacco, and the like. I even had a hint here and there as to the geology of the group, but ruthlessly blue-pencilled out such bits of useful information, and while it may not be at all utilitarian, rejoice that I have been privileged to see these islands in a state of nature, before the engineer has honeycombed the virgin forest with iron rails; before the great heart of the hills is torn open for the gold, or coal, or iron to be found there; before the primitive plough, buffalo, and half-dressed native give way to the latest type of steam or electric apparatus for farming; before the picturesque girls pounding rice in wooden mortars step aside for noisy mills; before the electric light frightens away the tropic stars, and dims the lantern hanging from the gable of every nipa shack; before banking houses do away with the cocoanut into which thrifty natives drop their money, coin by coin, through a slit in the top; before the sunlit stillness of these coast towns is marred by the jar and grind of factory machinery; before the child country is grown too old and too worldly-wise.

Chapter II

DUMAGUETE

Our first stopping place after a two days' trip from Manila was Dumaguete, on the southeast corner of the island of Negros. We reached there at seven o'clock on Christmas morning, and found it a tropically picturesque little town, surrounded by forest-grown hills, and built mostly of nipa, with the exception of the church, _convento_, watch-tower, and _tribunal_, which were of wood painted a dazzling white.

All day long men and boys, innocent of even an excuse for clothes, hovered about the ship in _bancas_ or dugouts, chattering volubly with each other in Visayan, or begging us in broken Spanish to throw down coins that they might exhibit their natatorial accomplishments, and, when we finally yielded, diving with yells of delight for the bits of silver, seeming quite as much pleased, however, with chocolates wrapped in tin-foil as they had been with the money, and uttering shrill cries that sounded profanely like "Dam'me--dam'me," to attract our attention.

When a coin was thrown overboard every one dived for it with becoming unanimity, and the water being very clear, we could see their frog-like motions as they swam downward after the vanishing prize, and the good-natured scuffle under water for its possession. Laughing, sputtering, coughing, they would come to the surface, shaking the water out of their bright eyes like so many c.o.c.ker spaniels, the sun gleaming on their brown skins, their white teeth shining, as they pointed out the complacent victor, who would hold the money up that we might see it, before they would again begin their clamour of "Dam'me--dam'me,"

and go through a pantomime of how quickly each personally would dive and bring it up, did we throw our donation in his direction.

When the supply of coins and candies had been exhausted, some one bethought him of throwing chunks of ice overboard, and as none among the natives had ever seen ice before, their amazement may well be imagined. The first boy to pick up a piece of the glittering whiteness let it drop with a howl, and when he caught his breath again warned the others in shrill staccato tones that he had been burned, that it was hot, _muy caliente_, wringing his hands as if, indeed, they had been scorched. Presently, finding that the burn left no mark and had stopped hurting, he shamefacedly picked up the ice again, shifting it from one hand to the other with the utmost rapidity, and occasionally crossing himself in the interim.

Meanwhile more ice had been thrown overboard, and the rest of the natives, not at all deterred by their comrade's warning, examined the strange substance for themselves. Very excited were their comments, those in the far _bancas_ scrambling over the intervening boats to see with their own eyes the miracle of hard water so cold that it was hot. They smelled and tasted of it, like so many monkeys, chattering excitedly the while, and they rubbed it on each other's bare backs amid screams of genuine fright, while many tumbled overboard to escape the horrible sensation of having it touch their flesh, the superst.i.tious being reminded, no doubt, of all the tales the padres had ever told them of h.e.l.l or purgatory.

Some thrifty and unimaginative souls tied up their bits of ice in cloths or packed them in small boxes, to take back to the village, while others, engrossed in their examination of the strange substance, transferred it from one hand to the other until, miracle of miracles, it had entirely disappeared. Others, emulating the laughing people on the big boat, put their pieces of ice into their mouths, but not for long at a time, as the intense cold made their teeth ache; while still others piously crossed themselves and refused to have aught to do with so manifest an invention of the Evil One.

Meanwhile, despite the fact of its being Christmas, the Signal Corps officers, men, and natives were hard at work establishing an office in the town, digging a trench for the sh.o.r.e end of the cable, and setting up the cable hut, packed in sections for convenience in transportation. Thirty Dumaguete natives were employed at twenty-five cents a day to help dig the trench and put up the hut, and they seemed very willing in their work and thought the remuneration princely.

So heavy was the surf in the early morning that the officers and soldiers going ash.o.r.e had to be carried from the rowboats to the beach on the backs of natives, but it fortunately calmed down enough before we women went over in the afternoon to allow of our entering Dumaguete in a more conventional manner.

Being a _fiesta_, the town was full of natives from the provinces, all smartly dressed and all beaming with good-natured curiosity at the advent of two and a half American women,--the only _Americanas_ most of them had ever seen,--and quite an escort gathered around us as, accompanied by the officers of the post and those from the ship not otherwise engaged, we walked down the dusty streets toward the c.o.c.kpits, where in honour of the day there was to be a contest of unusual interest. At every corner came new recruits to swell the ranks of our followers. "Merry Christmas," cried everyone in Spanish or Visayan, and "Merry Christmas" we responded, though June skies bending down toward tropical palms and soft winds just rustling the tops of tall bamboos, so that they cast flickering fern-like shadows over thatched nipa roofs, but ill suggested Christmas to an American mind.

The c.o.c.kpit reached, we found it to be a rudely built circular shack of nipa, fairly crowded with natives in gala attire, and a sprinkling of khaki-clad soldiers from the post. Native policemen, in uniforms that strongly reminded one of the _insurrecto_ insignia, showed us to our seats, and a few moments after our arrival two fine c.o.c.ks, matched as nearly as possible in strength and weight, were brought into the ring by their respective owners, while the onlookers discussed the birds' relative points. The two c.o.c.ks, still held by their masters, were then allowed to peck at each other's combs until fully angered, when they were put into the ring a short distance apart, and while each owner held the tail feathers of his bird, the c.o.c.ks made futile efforts to reach each other, giving vent the while to derisive crowing.

The audience, after watching this performance a moment or two, began making their bets, both individually and through the agency of the "farmer," who, standing in the centre of the ring, cried out chaffingly in Visayan to faint-hearted gamesters. Then circles were drawn on the earthen floor of the pit, and the money put up on each c.o.c.k deposited in one or the other of these rings. At the end of the fight some one appointed cried out the name of the victorious bird, and the winners swarmed down into the pit where they collected their money and the original stakes. There is never any cheating at such affairs, a sort of bolo morality existing among the natives, and all is as methodical and well-behaved as the proverbial Sabbath school.

It was the first c.o.c.k-fight most of us cable-ship people had ever seen, and it was hard to understand the wild enthusiasm of the natives when, after unsheathing the steel gaffs on the roosters' legs, the birds were allowed to make their preliminary dash at one another. For a moment they walked around the ring with an excessively polite air, each keeping a wary lookout on his antagonist, but frigidly impersonal and courteous. One might almost fancy them shaking hands before the combat should begin, so ceremonious was their att.i.tude. Then there would come a simultaneous onslaught of feathered fury. Again and again they flew at one another, while the volatile audience called out excitedly in Spanish, "The black wins--No, the speckled one's ahead. Holy Virgin, give strength to the black!" In a very few moments one c.o.c.k is either dead, or perhaps turned coward before the cruel gaff of his opponent, and victor and vanquished leave the arena to new combatants, while the clink of coin changing hands is heard throughout the c.o.c.kpit.