Yesterdays in the Philippines

by Joseph Earle Stevens

Plaza de Cervantes, Foreign Business Quarter.

See page [8].

I spent my first night in Manila at the Spanish Hotel El Oriente, and it was here that I became acquainted with that peculiar institution, the Philippine bed. And to the newly arrived traveller its peculiar rig and construction make it command a good deal of interest, if not respect. It is a four-poster, with the posts extending high enough to support a light roof, from whose eaves hang copious folds of deep lace. The bed-frame is strung tightly across with regular chair-bottom cane, and the only other fittings are a piece of straw matting spread over the cane, a pillow, and a surrounding wall of mosquito-netting that drops down from the roof and is tucked in under the matting. How to get into one of these cages was the first question that presented itself, and what to do with myself after I got in was the second. It took at least half an hour to make up my mind as to the proper mode of entrance, when I was for the first time alone with this Philippine curiosity, and I couldn’t make out whether it was proper to get in through the roof or the bottom or the side. After finally pulling away the netting, I found the hard cane bottom about as soft as the teak floor, and looked in vain for blankets, sheets, and mattresses. In fact, it seems as if I had gotten into an unfurnished house, and the more I thought about it the longer I stayed awake. At last I cut my way out of the peculiar arrangement, dressed, and spent the decidedly cool night in a long cane chair, preferring not to experiment further with the sleeping-machine until I found out how it worked.

Next morning my breakfast was brought up by a native boy, and consisted of a cup of thick chocolate, a clammy roll, and a sort of seed-cake without any hole in it. How to drink the chocolate, which was as thick as molasses, seemed the chief question, but I rightly concluded that the seed-cake was put there to sop it out of the cup, after the fashion of blotting-paper. Fortified with this peculiar combination, I started on my second business day by trying to remember in what direction the office lay, and wandered cityward through busy streets, often bordered with arcaded sidewalks, which were further shaded from the sun by canvas curtains.

After beginning the morning by ordering a dozen suits of white sheeting from a native tailor—price $2.50 apiece—I was introduced to the members of the English Club, and began to feel more at home stretched out in one of the long chairs in the cool library. It seems that the club affords shelter and refreshment to its fourscore members at two widely separated points of the compass, one just on the banks of the Pasig River, where its waters, slouching down from the big lake at the foot of the mountains, are first introduced to the outlying suburbs of the city, and the other in the heart of the business section. The same set of native servants do for both departments, since no one stays uptown during the middle of the day and no one downtown after business hours. As a result, on week-days, after the light breakfast of the early morning is over at the uptown building, the staff of waiters and assistants hurry downtown in the tram-cars and make ready for the noon meal at the other structure, returning home to the suburbs in time to officiate at dinner.

At the downtown club is the 6,000-volume library, and after the noonday tiffin it is always customary to stretch out in one of the long bamboo chairs and read one’s self to sleep. This is indeed a land where laziness becomes second nature. If you want a book or paper on the table, and they lie more than a yard or two from where you are located, it is not policy to reach for them. O, no! You ring a bell twice as far off, take a nap while the boy comes from a distance, and wake up to find him handing you them with a graceful “Aquí, Señor!” In fact, I have even just now met an English fellow who, they tell me, took a barber with him on a recent trip to the southern provinces, to look after his scanty beard that was composed of no more than three or four dozen hairs, each of which grew one-eighth of an inch quarterly.

On the day before Christmas one of the guest-rooms at the uptown club was vacated, and I moved in. The building is about two and a half miles out of the city, and its broad balcony, shaded by luxuriant palms and other tropical trees, almost overhangs the main river that splits Manila in two. The view from this tropical piazza is most peaceful. Opposite lie the rice-fields, with a cluster of native huts surrounding an old church, while, blue in the distance, sleeps a range of low mountains. To the left the river winds back up-country and soon loses itself in many turns among the foothills that later grow into the more adult uplifts on the Pacific Coast, while to the right it turns a sharp corner and slides down between broken rows of native huts and more elaborate bungalows.

The club-house is long, low, and rambling. The reading, writing, and music rooms front on the river, and the glossy hard-wood floors, hand-hewn out of solid trees, seem to suggest music and coolness. It is possible to reach the city by jumping into a native boat at the portico on the river bank, or to go by one of the two-wheel gigs, called carromatas, waiting at the front gate, or to walk a block and take the tram-car which jogs down through the busy highroad.

It is very difficult to absorb the points of so large a place at one’s first introduction, so I won’t go further now than to speak of that far-famed seaside promenade called the Luneta, where society takes its airing after the heat of the day is over.