As Manila had heretofore represented to these native priests the apotheosis of urban magnitude, it may well be imagined how delighted they were with their first glimpse of our larger cities. How excitedly they talked and gesticulated over the elevated railways and cable-cars; the height of the buildings; the suspension bridges; the magnificent private residences, which at first it was hard to convince them were not in reality hotels; the theatres, parks, and churches, though they shook their heads sadly at so many of Protestant denomination. When, however, they were told how many Catholic churches were in New York alone, they regained their lost interest, and grew more enthusiastic than ever, while the English-speaking padre, in his excitement, fairly screamed his uncertain vocabulary in our direction, though when he addressed his confrères in Spanish his voice was of normal register.
A few days later, as an evidence of their enjoyment aboard ship, the padres sent each of us a silver medal of the Santo Niño and a history of the image written in Spanish, con superior permiso; a lithographic picture of the Holy Child in its shrine, giving but a faint idea of its appearance; and a queer stone jar, the shape, if not the size of those in which the forty thieves were hidden. These jars were full of those delicious pastry cakes already mentioned, ojaldres, they are called, made by the sisters of the Convento Maria Natividad de Albero. Rich the cookies were, and crisp, fairly melting on the tongue, but each one, wrapped in its protecting bit of tissue-paper, was “a gastronomic delusion and a dyspeptic snare,” to be treated as were the forty thieves themselves by the implacable Ali Baba.
It is not at all impossible that some of our distaste for Cebu arose from the fact that, on the several occasions of our visits there, we were coaling, a circumstance which would detract from the Pearly City itself. No sooner were we at anchor than huge cascos came alongside and the coaling would begin.
Inky black shapes flitted back and forth through great clouds of dust, each carrying a basket on its head. Hoarse commands were shouted, demoniacal voices answered somewhere from the pit, and then would come a period of comparative quiet, followed by what seemed to be a burst of frenzied rage from the different lighters, though in reality I believe the natives were on the best of terms, and were just inviting each other to dinner. This state of affairs continued without intermission for eight days on each of our several visits there. For eight days the soot fell alike on the quarter-deck and the forecastle. The ship became a black abomination. The very towels in our staterooms left grimy, unpremeditated streaks on face and hands.
During this period I do protest that we suffered those torments usually reserved for the unregenerate, and as the furnace over which the town is built was several degrees hotter each trip than on the previous visit, we were thus precluded from going ashore to either of the badly managed hotels for which the place is infamous.
So dangerous was the country around Cebu in those days that one afternoon on a little drive to an encampment about four miles from the town, we were escorted there and back by a guard of armed soldiers on horseback, some of them heading the cavalcade, the others bringing up the rear. It was a most unusual day for Cebu, as the slightly overcast sky made the temperature quite endurable. The country passed on our drive was unusually fine, with its groves of palms and plantains; its tall cottonwood-trees by the road-side, the ripe pods on the bare branches bursting and showing the soft, white fluff within; its giant mango-trees with bonfires built beneath them, as a quick method of ripening the fruit for market. Then there were acres of corn and fields of rice ready for harvesting, proving conclusively, as some one suggested, that the natives of Cebu could raise something besides h—-, though he had never believed it before.
At our destination we were cordially welcomed by the officers of the infantry company stationed there, a native band shrilled its salute, and the big American soldiers stopped their preparations for an approaching march against the enemy to stare at us long and undisguisedly. There were several women among us, a rare departure in those days, one of them being the wife of the young captain who was to command the detachment going into the field that night. She had arrived from America but a few days before, bringing with her a splendid boy nearly three years old, whom up to that time the young father had never seen. Even after so long a separation the husband and wife were together but seldom, as she was obliged to live in town because of insurrectionary troubles, nor did she ever know from day to day what the next tidings might be from the little camp of San Nicolas.
Before our return to Cebu the officers took us to see the fortifications made by the Spaniards after Admiral Dewey’s victory in Manila Bay, fortifications they expected to use as a last defence against invading Americans. Not far from these earthworks was an old nipa church, most picturesque in its decay. It was nipa within as well as without, the floor and ceiling being of braided bamboo and the walls of the nipa-palm. Its high altar was innocent of any attempt at decoration save for some faded paper flowers stuck into empty beer bottles, while the niche above was unfilled by patron saint of any description. At the very door grazed a lean carabao, completing a picture of the desolation and ruin in the wake of an army.
And now as to cable work, for even here, where we had expected only to coal, the Signal Corps was kept busy, as it was found on investigation that an old cable landing two miles up the beach at Mabola was in such bad condition and the line so insecure that the cable must be put directly into the Cebu office, thus avoiding the defect of a shaky land terminal. So prisoners were engaged to dig a trench from the office to the beach, where the cable was landed, after which it was placed in the trench and so laid up to the very door of the telegraph station, the lead covered wire being inserted there into an iron tube lashed to an upright pole, and thence into the window where the operator had his desk. Surely a novel way to lay a shore end! It reminded one of that nice old lady’s suggestion to the London Times in 1858, just after the Atlantic cable failure, that in future it should be laid above the ocean instead of in it, mentioning that in her opinion the rock of Gibraltar, peak of Teneriffe, and the Andes should be used as points of suspension.
This work, coupled with the entire refitting of the office, took several days, and meanwhile on board ship the cable was being turned over from one tank to the other in search of faults, and numerous experiments were made in splicing, so that much learned conversation might be heard anent the necessity of homogeneity in core joints and the like.