Yesterdays in the Philippines

by Joseph Earle Stevens

Our Manila papers consist of four pages, the first two of which are especially reserved for advertisements. Half of one of the inside leaves is likewise reserved, and the remaining half is covered with blocks full of gloomy sentiments which relate to the decease of this or that person. There is a little black frame of type around each square, and at the top is a cross, with a “R.I.P.” or “D.O.M.” under it. Below comes the name of the defunct, with hour, minute, day, and year of his birth and death, and below his virtues are extolled and his friends invited to pray for the repose of his soul. Every year, each person that has died the year before has his anniversary, both in church and in the newspapers; and when you recollect that out of a population of 350,000 a good many depart each twelvemonth, it is hard to see why the whole paper shouldn’t consist of these notices. The other inside page contains the news, and we learn that a bad odor has been discovered up some side-street; that a dog fell into the river and was drowned; that a perfumery store has received a new kind of liquefied scent; that it will probably rain in some part of the island during the day; and that the band on the Luneta ought not to be frightened off merely by a few drops that fall from some passing cloud. And so it goes until the French or English mail comes in, and then the progressive dailies copy all the news they can find, out of the foreign papers, and serve it up cold, æt. one month.

I met General Blanco, Governor of the islands, the other evening, and he seemed to enjoy the good music and good supper which one of our popular bank-managers and his wife provided for some of us in the colony on the occasion of a birthday. He is an elderly man, and kindly, and appears milder in disposition than would seem advisable for one occupying so important a position. I should think he might let some of those sharp eyed little ministers of his run him, and he appears almost too modest, too kind-hearted, to be the ruler that he is. Suffice to say the General is modest in dress and modest in manner. He often walks up and down the Malecon promenade by the Bay in the afternoon, saluting everyone that passes, and when the vesper bells ring out the hour of prayer from one of the old churches inside the city walls he stops, removes his tall gray stove-pipe and, as do a host of other pedestrians, bows his head. To tell the truth he has little of the Spanish aspect about him and is just the kind of a man one would go up and speak to on the Teutonic or Campania. In sharp contrast is he to the Archbishop, who drives about behind his fine white horses and looks as keen as well-nourished. But who knows! Appearances are deceitful, and foolish he who trusts to them.

August 11th.

Two steamers have just come in from Hong Kong and are tied up in quarantine down at Marivelis, at the mouth of the Bay. The mail ought to be here in forty-eight hours, but two days is a very short time to give Manila postal authorities, for they really are slow enough to desire four—one in which to make up their minds to send a launch, two in which to go, three in which to come back, and four in which to distribute the results of their camphorated fumigation.

The most noteworthy thing that has happened in the way of excitement since the last mail was the operating of the new American fire-engine, which we imported from the States for the wealthy proprietor of our hemp-press, who is part Spaniard, part native, and part Chinese. It seems he was up in our office one day, and on the centre-table saw a catalogue containing pictures of a collection of our modern fire-fighters. He asked what those things were, and, on being told that they were used to put out fires, said he wanted one at once, the biggest we could get him, in order that he might reduce the insurance he was paying on his large store-houses and still go on collecting the premiums from those whose goods were in his charge.

Although ours is an exporting business, and we do not know much about fire-engines, yet the occasion seemed auspicious, the prospect of payment sure, and the outlook interesting. The result was that we forwarded the order to New York by the first mail, and the other day, after four months of waiting, the pieces of the big engine came over on the Esmeralda, in big cases. They were very heavy, and the natives began the exhibition by nearly dropping the boiler into the river as they attempted to hoist it into a lighter. To skip over the difficulties which were encountered in hoisting the cases onto the quay in front of the offices of our well-to-do purchaser, we come to the mental hardships that were encountered in putting the machine together; for no one in Manila had ever seen a Yankee fire engine before, and although we had a full description of the complicated mechanism, with drawings of the parts, and numbers where each piece was to fit onto some other piece, there was no one in town who could help us much in getting it into working order.

Ploughing the Rice-fields with the Carabao.

A copy of which was sent to an American concern, who thought there was business for steam-ploughs in the Philippines. They don’t think so now.

Fortunately, the hemp business was dull and my colleague and I were thus enabled to give more attention to this Chinese puzzle than if the fibre market had been booming. The red wheels with gold stripes were the first thing to be adjusted, and the eyes of the onlookers who happened to be strolling up and down the quay opened to large dimensions as the covering was stripped from the nickel-plated boiler and the process of establishment went on. At last the big machine was on its feet, with valves and gear adjusted, and with the slight assistance which we got from a Spanish engineer who knew something about marine machinery, we found out that the whistle ought not to be screwed onto the safety-valve.