Peregrin Albano,
Councillor.
(Illegible)——Moro, Captain of Volunteers.[8]
Fancy having documents like the foregoing handed you with ever-increasing regularity as you sauntered, morning after morning, from your bath to your coffee and rolls, preparatory to the daily sifting of incidents such as that which included the burning of the American flag on the head of the municipal representative of American authority already mentioned, and other like acts of poor misguided peasants stirred up by trifling scamps representing the dregs of insurrection. Motiong was not only within seven miles of the court-house at Catbalogan, but it was so near to Camp Bumpus, over in Leyte, where the 18th Infantry lay, that an order to them to move in the morning would have made life and property in all that brigand-harried region safe that night and continuously thereafter.
General Wm. H. Carter, Major-General U. S. A., well known to the American public as the able officer who, in 1911, commanded the United States forces mobilized on the Mexican border during the Mexican revolution of that year, that ousted President Diaz and seated President Madero, was in command at the time—the fall of 1904—of the military district of the Philippines which included Samar and Leyte. A word of request to him would have made life definitely safe in all the coast towns and their vicinity within two or three days after receipt of such a request.
Besides Gandara, Catbalogan, Calbayog, and Wright, Lieutenant Calderon’s list included the trio of ill-fated municipalities set forth below, concluding with the illustrious name of Taft:
MUNICIPALITY OF CATUBIG
| Poblacion | September 5 |
| Tagabiran | August 11 |
| San Vicente | August — |
Catubig was toward the north end of Samar. On the day of the burning and sacking of the poblacion of Catubig, September 5th, which was done by a force of several hundred Pulajans, the scouts and constabulary, so it was afterward reported, killed a hundred of the Catubig Pulajans in an engagement. If this report were correct, as is likely, it was the biggest single killing of natives since the early days of the insurrection.[9] But it did not in the least check the Pulajan insurrection, which simply swerved its fury from the Catubig region toward the coast (the Pacific coast), descending upon the towns, villages, and hamlets of the townships of Borongan and Taft, thus:
MUNICIPALITY OF BORONGAN
(Calderon’s List of Barrios Burned, continued)