The Story of Magellan and The Discovery of the Philippines Part 26

HONG KONG is the market place of the Eastern world. Here the East and West meet in the airy bazaars, and from it, it is easy to find one's way to Luzon, over the bright sea mirrors, the sleepy, dreamy splendors of the China Sea.

But few travelers have written books on Luzon, and those have usually published them in French or in Spanish. Travelers from the East have, as a rule, not remained long on the island, where earthquakes, typhoons, malarial fevers, and the plague itself have been not unfrequent visitors, and where one welcomes gratefully the shadows of the night in the seasons of fervid heat. The rain storms are downpours and deluges that are blinding, but they leave behind their inky tracts a paradise of beauty and bloom.

The morning on the China Sea in serene weather is a royal glory. It has the odors of Araby and the freshness of an Eden. The earth seems waiting. The sails hang listlessly on the gla.s.sy, breathless straits, and the sun sheds its splendor through the pale blue air as powerfully as the clouded heavens poured down the rain.

The Filipinos are a sensitive race, and many of them have a keen sense of injustice. Great numbers of them have a church education, and their views of the world are bounded by what they have learned of India, China, and Malaysia and Iberian peninsula from the priests of Spain.

A recent traveler from Manila said to me:

"The Filipinos have hot blood and are revengeful, but they are quick to discern justice. A boy who attended me at the hotel came to me one day bleeding.

"'My master has beaten me,' he said, 'with a rawhide.'

"'He has abused you,' I said. 'Why?'

"'He took me into the storeroom and lashed me, and the rawhide cut me. I bleed.'

"'Why did he punish you?'

"'The porter told him he found me neglecting my work by hiding away and fighting c.o.c.ks. It was not true. The porter lied; he hates me.'

"'Go to the marshal and make a complaint against the landlord. Go now, before the blood dries. A master has no right to beat one like that. It is inhuman. Justice ought to be done.'

"'But I do not blame _him_; he is not to blame. The porter is to blame.

The porter lied.'

"'But the marshal would hardly take up your case against the porter; he would hold him to be a person of slight consequence.'

"'But wrong is wrong whether it be done by a landlord or his porter. The porter should go to prison for twenty years!'"

The case then dropped, but the boy carried a case for revenge against the porter in his heart. He was quick to discern justice.

c.o.c.kfighting is a favorite diversion among the Filipinos. A traveler says that he has seen Filipinos going to ma.s.s carrying gamec.o.c.ks under their arms to set fighting in the cemetery after the service.

The brutal sport is a pa.s.sion, and is to be seen going on almost everywhere on festal days, and in the evenings in the cool shadows of awnings and palms.

Alfred Marche published a book in Paris in 1887 ent.i.tled Luxon and Palaveran; Six Annes de Voyages aux Philippines. It contains some vivid pictures of the natives, of the habits and customs of the country, of the earthquakes and storms. He describes the earthquake seasons when the earth trembled, and the people rushed wildly into the open courts at the first tremor. As great as the terror was the Chinese did not leave their merchandise unprotected for fear of thieves, showing that the trembling earth did not overcome the nature of the merchant or the native thief.

The one would face death for his goods and the other for his chance of getting plunder.

Monsieur Marche gives some views of the tropic jungles, one of which is ill.u.s.trated by a very curious anecdote and pictorial ill.u.s.tration.

One day one of his native servants told him that he had seen in the woods an immense python, which seemed to have been gorged with some animal that he had swallowed, and so rendered sluggish and resistless.

"I should like to see so large a serpent," said the traveler.

An hour afterward, while he was sitting in the shadow of his bungalow, an extraordinary sight met his eyes. The native had gone into the wood and had put a cord about the neck of the great serpent and attached it to the horns of a buffalo, and the buffalo was dragging the python toward the bungalow. The python was seven meters long (thirty-nine inches to a meter), a distended ma.s.s of folds and flesh (page 356, Alfred Marche's Luzon).

What had he swallowed? What creature was there inside of him that was about to be digested, and that so distorted his folds?

The serpent was harmless in the noose and from the weight of his meal.

The traveler severed the python's vertebrae, rendering it inoffensive, and then made an incision into its abdomen.

A surprise followed. Out of the abdomen came a calf of some months'

growth. The animal's legs were so doubled under its body as to make the latter horizontal. The serpent was prepared for the museum of the traveler.

The same traveler describes earthquakes, after which victims were fed by tubes let down under the ponderous debris.

One of the most interesting books of travel in Luzon that we have ever read is ent.i.tled Aventures d'un Gentilhomme Breton aux iles Philippines, par P. de la Gironiere (Paris, 1855). A part of the work has been translated into English by Frederick Hardman, and from this translation in part we select material for a view of the life of the French savant in Jala-Jala, a very interesting district of the island. The original French work is very vividly ill.u.s.trated. The English abridgment is without ill.u.s.trations. (French edition, Boston Public Library, No.

3040a, 182. English abridgment, 5049a, 69.)

THE ADVENTURES OF DR. DE LA GIRONIeRE IN LUZON.

(After Hardman.)

CHANGING THE HEART OF A BRIGAND.

"JALA-JALA is a long peninsula, stretching from north to south into the middle of Bay Lake. The peninsula is divided longitudinally by a chain of mountains, which gradually diminish in elevation, until, for the last three leagues, they dwindle into mere hills. These mountains, of easy access, are covered partly with wood and partly with beautiful pastures, where the gra.s.s attains a height of between one and two yards, and, when waving in the wind, resembles the waves of the ocean. Finer vegetation can nowhere be found; it is refreshed by limpid springs, flowing from the higher slopes of the mountain down into the lake. Owing to these pastures, Jala-Jala is richer in game than any other part of the island of Luzon. Deer, wild boar, and buffalo, quails, hens, snipes, pigeons of fifteen or twenty kinds, parrots; in short, all manner of birds, there abound. The lake teems with water-fowl, and especially with wild ducks.

Notwithstanding its extent, the island contains no dangerous or carnivorous beasts; the worst things to be feared in that way is the civet, a little animal about the size of a cat, which attacks only birds; and the monkeys, which issue from the forest by troops, and lay waste the maize and sugar fields.

"The lake, which yields excellent fish, is less favored than the land; for it contains a great many caymans, a creature of such enormous size that in a few minutes it divides a horse piecemeal and absorbs it into its huge stomach. The accidents occasioned by these caymans are frequent and terrible, and I have seen more than one Indian fall victims to them.

"At the period of my purchase the only human inhabitants of Jala-Jala were a few Indians, of Malay extraction, who lived in the woods and tilled some nooks of land. At night they were pirates upon the lake, and they afforded shelter to all the banditti of the surrounding provinces.

The people at Manila had given me the most dismal account of the district; according to them, I should soon be murdered: my turn for adventure was such, that all their stories, instead of alarming me, only increased my desire to visit men who were living almost in a savage state.

"As soon as I had bought Jala-Jala, I traced for myself a plan of conduct, having for its object to attract the banditti to me; to this end, I felt that I must not appear among them in the character of an exacting and sordid owner, but in that of a father. All depended upon the first impressions I should make upon these Indians, now my va.s.sals.

On landing, I went straight to a little hamlet, composed of a few cabins.

"My faithful coachman was with me; we were each of us armed with a good double-barreled gun, a brace of pistols, and a saber. I had already ascertained, from some fishermen, to which Indian I ought to address myself. This man, who was much respected by his countrymen, was called, in the Tagal tongue, _Mabutin-Tajo_, translatable as _The brave and valiant_.

"He was quite capable of committing, without the slightest remorse, five or six murders in the course of a single expedition; but he was brave; and courage is a virtue before which all primitive races respectfully bow. My conversation with _Mabutin-Tajo_ was not long; a few words sufficed to win his good will, and to convert him into a faithful servant for the whole time I dwelt at Jala-Jala. This is how I spoke to him:

"'You are a great rascal,' I said; 'I am the lord of Jala-Jala; it is my will that you amend your conduct; if you refuse, you shall expiate all your misdeeds. I want a guard; give me your word of honor to turn honest man, and I will make you my lieutenant.'

"When I completed this brief harangue, Alila (that was the brigand's name) remained for a moment silent, his countenance indicating deep reflection. I waited for him to speak; not without a certain degree of anxiety as to what his answer would be.

"'Master!' he at last exclaimed, offering me his hand and putting one knee to the ground, 'I will be faithful to you until death!'

"I was very well pleased with this reply, but I concealed my satisfaction.

"''Tis good,' I said; 'to show you that I have confidence in you, take this weapon, and use it only against enemies.'

"I presented him with a Tagal sabre, on which was inscribed in Spanish: 'Draw me not without cause, nor sheath me without honor.'

"This legend I translated into Tagal; Alila thought it sublime, and swore ever to observe it.

"'When I go to Manila,' I added, 'I will bring you epaulets and a handsome uniform; but you must lose no time in getting together the soldiers you are to command, and who will compose my guard. Take me at once to him among your comrades whom you think most capable of acting as sergeant.'

"We walked a short distance to the habitation of a friend of Alila's, who usually accompanied him on his piratical expeditions. A few words, in the same strain as those I had spoken to my future lieutenant, produced the same effect on his comrade, and decided him to accept the rank I offered him. We pa.s.sed the day recruiting in the various huts, and before night we had got together, in cavalry, a guard of ten men, a number I did not wish to exceed. I took the command as captain.