We women were asked innumerable questions as to our respective ages, the extent of our incomes, our religious beliefs, and other inquiries of so personal a character as to be quite embarrassing. They seemed, though, to be very genuine in their admiration of us, and evinced great interest in our clothes, especially those of the quartermaster’s wife, who, being a recent arrival in the Philippines, had yet the enviable trail of the Parisian serpent upon her apparel. One heavy cloth walking-skirt of hers, fitting smoothly over the hips and with no visible means by which it could be got into, animated the same inquiry from these people as good King George is said to have made anent the mystery of getting the apple into the dumpling, a problem of no little difficulty, as any one will agree. At more than one stopping-place we were called upon to solve the riddle of that skirt, and I verily believe that, being women, they were even more awed at the thought of a garment fastening invisibly at one side of the front under a very deceptive little pocket than at all the electrical marvels shown them on the ship.
While in Dumaguete we were driven around the town and far out into the country surrounding it, finding everything much more tropical and luxuriant in growth than in Manila or its vicinity. There were giant cocoanut-palms, looking not unlike the royal palm so often spoken of by travellers on the Mediterranean, clusters of bamboo and groups of plantains, flowering shrubs and fields of young rice, green as a well kept lawn at home.
Picturesque natives saluted us from the roadway, or from the windows of their nipa shacks; naked brown children fled at our approach, and wakened their elders from afternoon siestas that they might see two white women and a yellow-haired child drive by; carabao, wallowing in the muddy water of a near-by stream, stared at us stolidly; fighting-cocks crowed lustily as we passed; and hens barely escaped with their cackling lives from under our very wheels.
A native lazily pounding rice in a mortar rested from his appearance of labour and watched the carriage until it became a mere speck in the distance. Two women beating clothes on the rocks of a little stream stopped their gossip to peep at us shyly from under their brown hands. Weavers of abaca left their looms and hung out of the windows to talk with their neighbours about the great event. Heretofore they had thought the Americans were like Chinamen, who came to the country, yes, and made money from it, but never settled down as did the Spaniards, never brought their families with them and made the islands their home. But here were two American women and a little girl—surely evidences of domesticity.
Everyone was friendly and peaceably disposed, everyone seemed glad to see us, if smiles and hearty greetings carry weight, and there was apparently no race prejudice, no half-concealed doubt or mistrust of us. Yet in a few days thereafter that very road became unsafe for an unarmed American, while the people who had greeted us with such childlike confidence and delight were preparing a warmer reception for the Americans under the able leadership of a Cebu villain, who had incited them to insurrection by playing upon their so-called religious belief, this in many instances being merely fetishism of the worst kind.
This instigator of anarchy boasted an anting-anting, a charm against bullets and a guarantee of ultimate success in battle, which consisted of a white camisa, the native shirt, on which was written in Latin a chapter from the Gospel of St. Luke. But notwithstanding his anting-anting, and the more potent factor of several hundred natives in his ranks, he was easily defeated by a mere handful of soldiers from the little fort, and when last heard of by our ship was lying in the American hospital at Dumaguete awaiting transportation to Guam. His former army was mucho amigo to the Americans, and once again the pretty drives around Dumaguete were quite safe, and once again the native, when passing an American, touched his hat and smilingly said good day in Visayan, a greeting which sounds uncommonly like “Give me a hairpin.”
On the evening of our second day in Dumaguete, the natives of the town gave a ball in honour of the cable-ship, at the house of one of the leading citizens. There, on a floor made smoother than glass with banana leaves, we danced far into the night to the frightfully quick music of the Filipino orchestra. One would hardly recognize the waltz or two-step as performed by the Visayan. He seems to take his exercise perpendicularly rather than horizontally, and after galloping through the air with my first native partner, I felt equal to hurdle jumping or a dash through paper hoops on the back of a milk-white circus charger.
Their rigadon, a square dance not unlike our lanciers, the Filipinos take very seriously, stepping through it with all the unsmiling dignity of our grandparents in the minuet. The sides not engaged in dancing always sit down between every figure and critically discuss those on the floor, but while going through the evolutions of the dance, it seems to be very bad form to either laugh or talk much, a point of etiquette I am afraid we Americans violated more than once. Another very graceful dance, the name of which I have forgotten, consists of four couples posturing to waltz time, changing from one partner to another as the dance progresses, and finally waltzing off with the original one, the motion of clinking castanets at different parts of the dance suggesting for it a Spanish origin.
At midnight a very attractive supper was served, to which the presidente escorted us with great formality. As is customary, the women all sat down first, the men talking together in another room and eagerly watching their chance to fill the vacant places as the women, one by one, straggled away from the table. The supper consisted for the most part of European edibles, but there were several Visayan delicacies as well, all of which I was brave enough to essay, to the great delight of the native women, who jabbered recipes for the different dishes into my ear, and pressed me to take a second helping of everything. All of them ate with their knives and wiped their mouths on the edge of the table-cloth, having Spanish precedent for such customs, and all were heartily and unaffectedly hungry after their violent exercise in the waltz and two step.
It was very late when we finally left the baille, amidst much hand-shaking and many regrets that our stay in Dumaguete was so short, while great wonder was shown by all that we should be able to sail at daylight on the morrow, it seeming well-nigh incredible to the native mind that so much could have been accomplished in so short a time; for, despite the fact that we had been in Dumaguete less than two days, everything was completed—a marvel, indeed, when one considers the tremendous current which made the landing of the shore end a hazardous proceeding.