MARIVELES VILLAGE AND MOUNTAIN, FROM MANILA BAY.
Although the smell of even a clean pig under the dining-room table is rather objectionable at first, as is the crowing of two or three roosters early in the morning, it is surprising how soon one becomes accustomed to these little annoyances, and it simplifies domestic science considerably to be able to throw, from one's seat at table, banana skins and other scraps through a convenient hole in the floor and have them immediately disposed of by the pig and chickens beneath.
OUR RESIDENCE ON "WASHINGTON STREET."
The dining room, as in many American houses, also served as a kitchen. The stove was a large box, elevated two or three feet from the floor, lined with baked clay upon which the fire is made. Large iron spikes, arranged in groups of three, may be imbedded in the clay to hold one or more pots of different sizes. There was no chimney, but a convenient window carried out the smoke quite effectively. The fire-wood was stored under the house in the pig-pen and consisted chiefly of short sticks of such diameter as could be easily cut with the large knife or bolo that the natives wear suspended from a belt at the waist. The sticks, when the cooking is done, are simply withdrawn from beneath the pot and lie ready
to be pushed in again when the fire is lit for the next meal. A very few sticks will thus serve for cooking a large number of the simple native meals. Opening from the kitchen was the front door, leading to the ground by a flight of stairs or a ladder. Thanks to the United States Mariveles is supplied with abundant water, piped from some miles up in the mountains, and some of the better houses of the barrio have a private faucet on the back porch, which is luxury indeed. The main room of the house was used as a living room and bedroom. In such houses there are usually large windows, without sash of course, which are shaded by day and closed by night and in severe storms by a hinged awning of nipa, seen in the photographs. In spite of the warmth nearly all natives close the window shades tight when they sleep, so that, in spite of the numerous cracks, the ventilation must be very bad; this may partly account for the prevalence of tuberculosis on the islands.
NATIVE GIRL CARRYING BASKET OF CLOTHES.
Around the better houses in such a barrio is usually seen a high fence generally made of closely set vertical saplings, driven into the ground and bound together with rattan at the top; this fence serves to keep the chickens in, and, at night, to keep prowling animals out.