Recollections of full years

by Helen Herron Taft

My husband had written me that the Philippine horses and the Philippine cockroaches were just about the same size, but I was hardly prepared for the diminutive turn-out to which he proudly escorted me. Two little brown ponies, no higher than my shoulder, and with very shaggy manes and foretops, were hitched to a Victoria which had been built to fit them. When I stepped in and sat down, with Charlie on my lap, I felt twice my natural size and it seemed impossible to me that there was still ample room for Mr. Taft.

On the box were two stolid little men, dignified by the titles of coachman and footman. They each wore white linen trousers and thin shirts which hung outside, making them look as if they had forgotten a most important act in the process of dressing. Their bare feet were thrust into heelless red carpet-slippers, while on their heads were wide, flopping, shapeless straw hats which they did not trouble to take off at our approach.

The streets were full of such conveyances as ours, and others of varieties even more astonishing. Maria, with Robert and Helen, followed in a quilez—a miniature, one-horse omnibus affair into which the passengers climbed from the rear. Then there were calesas, caromatas, carretelas and carabao carts.

The carabao carts interested me particularly, and there seemed to be more of them than of anything else. The cart itself was nothing,—just a few planks nailed together and balanced upon a pair of heavy, broad, wooden wheels,—but the beast attached to it was really extraordinary. The first carabao I saw had horns at least six feet across. Indeed, they all have very long horns, and how they keep from obstructing traffic in the narrow streets I never did understand. They do obstruct traffic, as matter of fact, but not with their horns; only with their slow motions. Nobody can possibly know just what the word slow signifies until he has seen a carabao move. Great, grey, thick-skinned, hairless beast; his hide is always caked with mud, and he chews and walks at exactly the same pace while the half-naked, sleepy driver on the cart behind him gives an occasional jerk on the thin rope attached to the ring in his nose.

It was sometime before I came to know calesas, caromatas and carretelas apart, though their only likeness lies in the fact that each has two wheels and to each is attached one busy little bit of a horse. The calesa and caromata are the better class vehicles, while the carretela is a plebeian public carryall in which there always seems to be “room for one more.” I saw dozens of these packed with Filipinos; the driver—always and inevitably smoking—sitting close up behind his horse and lashing it continually while it struggled sturdily along and looked every minute as if it would be lifted off its feet by the overbalancing weight behind it. It was something of a shock to see many women, in carretelas and on the street, smoking huge black cigars; while I noticed, immediately, that the men, as a rule, smoke only cigarettes.

I didn’t look for speed from our little brown creatures, but I was yet to become acquainted with the Philippine pony. We started off over the rough cobblestones at a pace that was truly terrifying, and everybody else seemed to be going at about the same rate. I expected a collision every moment. Wheels passed wheels without an inch to spare, and without an instant’s slackening of speed. My heart was in my mouth until we got through the maze of narrow streets in the wholesale district near the Custom House and came out into a wide plaza which my husband informed me was the end of the Escolta, the principal business street of the city. I was very glad we didn’t have to drive through that; it was just about wide enough for two carriages to pass, but it had a street-car track right down the middle, and it was thronged. On the track was a jingling little horse-car which seemed to get very much tangled up with the rest of the traffic.

I got an impression of a great variety of colour in which red and yellow seemed to predominate. The soldiers were in khaki, the officers and civilians were in immaculate white linen, while the Filipino men and women of the ordinary class looked as if they had made a heavy draft on the world’s supply of red and yellow muslin, to say nothing of many calicoes of extravagant hues and patterns.

We hurried on around the corner and came again to the banks of the river and the Bridge of Spain. Mr. Taft wanted me to know all about everything right away, so he kept on busily explaining things to me, but using so many unfamiliar words that I got only a hazy impression after all.

But here was the Bridge of Spain, originally built in sixteen hundred and something, the oldest monument to Spanish enterprise in the Islands. And across on the other side we came abreast of the inner wall of the city and whirled along awhile beside a wide, stagnant moat. From the inner side I got a better idea of what the Walled City was like, and I promised myself an early inspection of its mysteries. I wanted to walk across the old drawbridges and through the beautiful gateways which looked so ancient and were so suggestive of piratical and warlike history.

“Those are the Botanical Gardens,” said Mr. Taft—“the man from Cook’s”—making a general sort of gesture toward the other side of the street. What I saw was a small gravelled park with some avenues of fine palms, some other kinds of trees, and a few clumps of shrubbery. We were driving under the low-hanging branches of some magnificent old acacias, but everything looked neglected and run down, and there didn’t seem to be a bit of grass anywhere; just scorching sand and clay. It was really a relief to rest one’s eyes on the awful green scum on the surface of the moat. Manila in those days was not the beautiful, park-like, well-kept city that it has since become. There were soldiers everywhere, and it seemed to me we were being constantly saluted.