A Yankee in the Far East

by George Hoyt Allen

We were so grateful to Spain for locating the islands for George that we paid her $20,000,000, because she needed the money.

I hit a prominent official in Washington for a free pass on a transport to the Philippines

I got so excited over the new find that I packed my grip, hit a prominent official in Washington for a free pass on a transport to the Philippines—on the grounds of my being an ultra patriotic American—and made a bee line for the Pacific coast. When I got to San Francisco I learned that the next transport for the Philippines wouldn't leave for a week. There was a liner leaving for the Orient that day, so I forfeited my pass and bought a ticket on the liner—I was in a hurry to see these islands. When I got here, shortly after George had discovered them, the Filipinos tried to stuff me with a story about a fellow by the name of Magellan having discovered the islands way back in 1521—blamed if they didn't try to knock out George's patent with a claim of priority.

I looked the islands over from Luzon to Mindano—had a "lovely" time.

I told the Filipinos I didn't take any stock in that alleged Magellan discovery. On their own story about it that discovery was nearly four hundred years old, and, even if it were true, it was moth-eaten, rust-worn, and had no cutting edge.

If they had been discovered nearly four hundred years ago it was high time that there should be some evidence of that discovery to prove it—they hadn't made any use of the discovery.

Manila was the toughest city in the Orient. Dirty, cholera and plague-ridden, out at the elbows and down at the heel, and that general description would apply all over the islands.

But the Filipinos set some store by that Magellan myth. The shock of a real discovery set them off and stirred them up, and they set up a republic, alla samee melican man, and proclaimed Aguinaldo President.

Aguinaldo was running around in the woods somewhere, current historians didn't seem to know just where, and wasn't having any marked success with his Presidency; and, after some argument, was persuaded to quit the Presidency and go to farming.