Yesterdays in the Philippines

by Joseph Earle Stevens

Cocoanut Rafts on the Pasig, Drifting down to Manila.

See page [69].

Next morning, on coming down to the office, several of my business friends asked me if I had felt the severe earthquake shock during the night. I said “No,” and inquired as to the particulars. It seems that the shock lasted some forty-five seconds, and my chum was awakened by his bed commencing to rock around and by the four walls of his room attempting to move in different directions. Nothing in the city was much injured, I believe, and next day the really excellent observatory, conducted by the Jesuits, gave out a full illustrated description of the affair.

Up at our new bungalow, the only incidents worthy of note have been the attempted stealing of my pony and the consumption of my best shoes by one of our house-rats.

A Philippine burglar, curiously enough, takes off his clothes, smears his dark skin with cocoanut-oil, and prowls around like a greased pig that cannot be caught. One of these slippery thieves got into our stable, unhitched my pony, and took him almost to the front gate before the sleepy coachman found his wits. But prompt action saved the day, and the lubricated robber escaped, leaving his booty pawing the ground.

But with my shoes I was not so fortunate. I woke up suddenly to hear something being dragged across the floor. Thinking it was only a rat making off with a boot-jack with which to line his nest, I refrained from tempting Providence by leaving the protection of the mosquito-netting. Next morning I found that one of these rodents had pulled a pair of my patent-leather shoes off a low shelf beneath the bed, dragged them out into the hallway behind a hat-rack, and eaten up the most savory portions of the bindings. Complimentary to the prowess of the rat or to the lightness of my shoes—which? I keep them now as articles on which the patent has run out—worthless, but curiosities.

Otherwise things have run smoothly, and each evening we lie in the long chairs on the broad veranda, watching the Southern Cross come up over the hills, or the score of brush-fires of dried rice-stalks that illuminate the darkness away off toward the mountains. The music from our piano seems to give much delight to the members of the servants’ hall, now nine in number, besides several puppies and game-cocks. The other night, although in the midst of the hot season, we had a prodigious cold snap again, when the thermometer went down to sixty, after being ninety-five during the day, and two blankets were not at all uncomfortable.

I see by the papers that there are at least two cases of small-pox in Boston, that everybody is alarmed and hundreds are getting vaccinated. Curious state of affairs—isn’t it?—when every day out here you see small children running around in the streets, covered with evidences of this disease. Nobody thinks anything about small-pox in Manila, and one ceases to notice it if a Philippine mamma sits opposite you in the tram-car, holding in her lap a scantily clothed child whose swarthy hide is illuminated with those unmistakable markings. Some weeks ago there were even four hundred deaths a week in Manila from this disease alone; and from the way in which the afflicted mix with the hale and hearty, you can only wonder that there were not four thousand. But small-pox flourishes best in the cool, dry days of our winter months, and is now being stamped out by the warmer weather. An effort is being made to have everybody vaccinated, and the steamers from Japan have brought down whole cargoes of lymph, but the natives do not see any reason why they should undergo this experiment, and would much prefer to have the small-pox than to be vaccinated. And this being the case, it is no wonder that almost seventy-five per cent. of them bear those uncomplimentary marks of the disease’s attention.

Now that I have inoculated my page with a reference to this rather unpleasant subject, it is only a bit of sad truth to tell of the only fatality caused by the malady in our little Anglo-Saxon colony. Recently I went into the Bay with a young Englishman who had always lived in terror of this one disease, and had avoided both contact with the natives and excursions into the infected districts. The launch took me to the vessel which we were loading, and then carried him on to that receiving cargo from his concern. Later she returned with him, picked me up, and together we went ashore to stop a moment at the club before going home for the day. I never saw him again, poor chap, though I did take over his stable, for next morning he was taken with black small-pox and died in a week.

The families of the lightermen in the Bay—crowded as they are into the hen-coops over the stern of the bulky craft—are full of it, and hence the fatal ending to our little afternoon excursion. As a rule, however, the members of the English-speaking colony get so used to this disease that they have no especial fear in suddenly turning a sharp corner of running into some native sufferer.