Yesterdays in the Philippines

by Joseph Earle Stevens

After thoroughly disorganizing discipline in the establishment, we accompanied the half naked president of the seminary—who had been our guide—to the river, and there washed off such of the day’s impressions as went easily into solution.

And finally, after returning to our hut for tea, we packed up our baskets, whistled for the carromatas and jolted back to Manila through a flood of dust and sunset.

Although the hot season is trying to do its best to scorch us, it has but dismally succeeded, and we have had scarcely any severe weather at all. The thunder-showers, harbingers of the southwest monsoon and the wet season, began two weeks ago, and it rains now nearly every afternoon. The nights are all delightfully cool, and a coverlet is always comfortable. The sun is going well to the north to make hot June and July days for people in the States, and our season of light is growing shorter. When he gets back overhead again, heavy clouds will protect us from his attentions.

Owing to the outbreak of black plague or something else among the Chinese in Hong Kong, the quarantine regulations here in Manila will cause the steamer by which I was going to send the mail to miss connections. It was at first reported there were three thousand deaths in Hong Kong in six days, but I believe they have now taken off one or two ciphers from that amount. At all events Manila seems to be below the zone of this peculiar epidemic and is much better off at this time of the year than Hong Kong, which swelters away in that great unventilated scoop in the mountains.

The men of the big artillery-band that plays at the Luneta twice a week have all been vaccinated lately, and are too broken up to blow their trumpets. The people are objecting, because the infantry band doesn’t make nearly as good music, and only plays twice a week at most. The third regimental band is still fighting the savage Moros with trombones down at the south, although it is rumored they will soon return, and so at present about all the music and fireworks we have are derived from the thunder-storms that play around the sheet-iron roofs as if they meant business. But in spite of the terrific cannonade of sound and the blinding flashes of lightning nothing seems to get hit, and the iron roofs may act as dispersers of the electric fluid even though attracting it.

June 6th.

Several days ago, a number of us went up the railroad line to see a “fiesta” at a little village called Obando. It was a religious observance lasting three days, and pilgrims from many villages thought it their duty to go there on foot. A great dingy old church with buttressed walls yards thick, a large plaza shaded by big trees, and beyond, on all sides, the native houses. Such a crowd I have rarely seen. Everybody seemed to think it his duty to dance; and men, women, old men and children, mothers with babies and papas with kids, shouted, jumped around, danced, joggled each other, and rumpussed about until they were blue in the face, dripping with heat, and covered with dust. Then they would stop and another crowd take up the play. As the circus proceeded the crowds increased; the old church was packed with worshippers who brought candles, and, receiving a blessing, spent an hour or so on the stone pavements in positions of contrite humility. Around the walls of the church were placed realistic paintings of the chromo order, representing hell and the river Styx, and as the natives looked at portraits of devils driving nails into the heads of the tormented, of sulphurous flames that licked the cheeks of the wicked in this world, or serpents that twined themselves into square knots around the chests of a dozen unfortunates, and of countless horned demons who plucked out the heartstrings of the condemned, they counted their beads with renewed vigor and mumbled long prayers.

Countless little booths stood like mushrooms round about outside, and cheap jewellery, made in Germany, found ready sale. The dancing and shouting increased as the sun sank in the west, until the ground fairly shook and the dust arose in vast clouds. Around the edge of the church, under the porticoes, slept sections of the multitude who were preparing themselves to take part in the proceedings when others were tired out. It was a motley crowd, a motley scene, and an unforgettable collection of perfumes.

We left after a few hours’ stay, and got back to Manila to find water a foot deep in some of the streets, as a result of one of the tropical thunder-storms which have now begun in real earnest. And speaking of rain, everything is looking fresh and green, now that the dusty days of the hot season are a thing of the past. All the bamboo-trees have leafed out anew, flowering shrubs have taken life, and all nature seems to have had a bath.

One of the most showy trees in Manila is the arbol de fuego (fire-tree) and this product of nature resembles a large oak in general and a full-blown Japanese cherry blossom in particular. Many of the streets in the city are bordered with groups of these fire-trees, of large and stately dimensions, and at present they are simply one mass of huge flaming red blossoms growing thickly together and showing a wonderful fire-like carnation color. Scarcely any leaves make their appearance on these trees during the season of blossom, and although now and then bits of green look out from the mass of red, yet the general effect is a vast blaze of burning color.