Yesterdays in the Philippines

by Joseph Earle Stevens

In days gone by, when cholera decimated Manila’s numbers, when people died faster than they could be buried, when business was at a standstill and the city one great death-house, were the times that tried men’s souls. But now that those big water-mains which run along the ground bring fresh water from far up into the hills, the natives have given up the deadly practice of drinking from the river, and, thanks to the good supply system, no longer give the cholera free admittance.

Besides small-pox, then, fever is about the greatest enemy, and certain types of the malarial variety seem so common that the sufferers from them often walk into the club, drop into a chair, and say, “Got the fever again. Means another lay-off.” If they can keep about, the old stagers never give up; but novices buy thermometers and cracked ice, and either go through a terrific siege, like my friend, whose eight weeks’ struggle shrunk his head so that in convalescence his hat touched his ears, or escape with a week’s initiation. Typhoid seems also common, and there is generally one member of the colony, for whom the rest are anxious, stretched out in ice-baths and wishing he had never seen the Philippines. The old hands—who, by the way, seem to be regular sufferers from the fever—all say the only way to be safe is to drink plenty of whiskey, but so far I have found that the less one takes the better off he is.

Someone in the States has suggested that if things get too hot it would be well to run over to Hong Kong for a change of scene. But if there is any place in the world that is hotter, stickier, more disagreeable than Hong Kong, in the months from May to October, let us hear from it. It is far worse in summer than Manila, for, completely shut in as it is by the mountains, it does not receive the benefit of the southwest monsoon, which blows with great force over the Philippines during the above months. Even Japan itself gets a good roasting for the two or three months of the hot season, and there is not much left to do but to seek cold weather in Australia. Our only very hot months here are said to be April and May; sometimes part of June. The sun now is directly overhead and going fast to the north of us, but so far the temperature has never been unbearable. The mercury stands at about ninety-five from twelve to three each day, but somehow or other one does not feel it so much in the cool white suits, unless he attempts to fall asleep on some of the sheet-iron roofs. The nights are still cool and comfortable, and what with a cold snap now and then, such as I spoke of above, fans are having a poor sale. In the afternoon, walking, rowing, and tennis are still possible, and the bands of the Luneta still have enough wind left to give us the “Funeral March” or “Prize Song.”

The Little Native School under the Big Mango-tree.

See page [92].

April 28th.

Manila fare, like Manila life, is not unwholesome, but it lacks variety, and one rather tires, now and then, of soup, chicken, beefsteak, and toothpicks—four staples. But fortunately for us who like variety, though unhappily for five or six hundred other people, there occurred a vast conflagration yesterday afternoon that sent about five or six hundred houses sailing off through the air in the form of smoke.

As we were getting ready to leave the office for the day, clouds of smoke suddenly began to rise over the iron house-roofs to the eastward, and we knew that one of Manila’s semi-annual holocaustic celebrations was in progress. The church bells began to ring, and all sorts of people and carriages started toward the centre of interest.

The Manila Fire Department consists of about six hand-engines and a few hose-carts, and if a fire gets started it generally burns along until an open field, a river, or a thick mass of banana-trees stops its progress. The English houses, to be sure, have recently gotten out from home one of their small steam “garden-pumps,” and many of the young Britons have had weekly practice in manipulating its various parts. When the alarm for the present fire rang you might have seen several servants, employed in their respective homes by the members of the new Volunteer Fire Department, slowly wandering toward the shed where the engine was kept, with some nicely folded red shirts, coats with brass buttons, helmets with Matterhorn-like summits, and axes that shone from lack of work. These youths did not seem to be in any hurry, and it turned out that when they reached the engine-house, when their masters had togged up sufficiently well to impress the spectators, and when the engine finally got to the fire, the buildings had been translated into their new and rather more ethereal form.