Yesterdays in the Philippines

by Joseph Earle Stevens

How the World’s Supply of Manila Hemp is Cleaned. Capacity, Twenty-five Pounds per Diem.

See page [159].

Leaving our host with a promise to come ashore again and use his horses in the afternoon, we went down to the long pier and rowed off to the Uranus in one of the big ship’s boats that was feeding her empty forehold with instalments of hemp. In the early afternoon we again went ashore, took other ponies and started off up the coast toward a remarkable volcano, which, though not existing in 1871, has since been business-like enough to grow up out of the sandy beach, until it is now a thousand feet high. A whole town was destroyed during the growing process, but to-day the signs of activity are not so evident. The path up the mountain-side was terrifically stony and somewhat obscure. Long creepers frequently caught us by the neck, or wound themselves about our feet, in attempts to rid the ponies of their burden. It was a laborious undertaking, and it didn’t look as if we should reach the crater before dark, but we kept on ascending, thinking each knoll would give us that longed-for look into the business office of the volcano. But in vain. It was now getting so near sunset that we feared to lose the way, and, instead of pushing on farther, we reluctantly turned about and went full speed astern. The descent was unspeakable; the horses’ knees were tired; they stumbled badly; the vines and creepers snarled us up, and everyone muttered yards of cuss-words. On the way down we saw several wonderful views over the hemp-trees to the coast below, met numerous natives cleaning up their last few stalks of fibre for the day, and at last came out once more on the rough pasture-road leading to Mambajao, off which the Uranus was anchored. It was now moonlight, we all broke into a gallop for the three-quarter-hour ride to the village, and everybody, including the jaded ponies, thanked Heaven when we reached the first lights of the town.

Late the same evening the Uranus left, sailed around the island’s western edge in the moonlight, and turned southward for Cagayan, on Mindanao Island, the last of the Philippines to resist subjection by the Spanish and now the scene of wars and conflicts with the bloodthirsty savages who are indigenous to the soil.

Morning introduced us to a shaky wharf and to a group of gig-drivers, who said the town was fully three miles away. We were in the enemy’s country, but nevertheless two of us started off to walk to the village, following quite a party who had already taken the road. It was an hour’s plod along beneath tall cocoanut-palms before we came to the main part of the settlement, surrounding the jail, court-house, and residence of the Spanish Governor. Hard by ran a river spanned by a curious suspension-bridge. It carried the high road to the village and country on the other bank, and in our party from the steamer was an engineer who had come down to inspect this structure, which but a short time ago had utterly collapsed under the strain of its own opening exercises, killing a Spaniard, and cutting open the head of the Governor’s wife. Of late, however, the bridge had been repaired, and the question seemed to be, was it safe? For my benefit, as I walked over the long eight-hundred-foot span, the old bridge wobbled around like a bowl of jelly, and considering that there were alligators in the reflective waters below, I did not feel I was doing the right thing by my camera and friends to stay longer where I was. Some of the secondary cables were flimsy affairs, and inspection revealing the fact that the structure was just one-twentieth as strong as it ought to be, placards were put up to the effect that the bridge was closed except for the passing of one person at a time.

At the bridge we fell into talk with a pleasant Spaniard, who was the interventor or official go-between in affairs concerning Governor and natives. We asked him as to the prospects of finding some Moro arms, knives, and shields in the settlement for being in a district upon which a recent descent had been made it seemed as if the town should be rich in bloody curios. He gave us some encouragement, and off we trotted across the central plaza with its old church, on an expedition of search. It seems that all the houses around this plaza were armed to the teeth, and in time of need the whole place could be transformed into a fort. Every house in the pueblo had one of the newest type of Mauser rifles standing up in the corner, and in fifteen minutes fifteen hundred men could be mustered ready armed to fight the savage Moros. We really felt as if we were in one of the Indian outposts of early American days, and were quite interested in the conversation of our guide, who seemed to take a great liking to two foreigners. We went into several little huts where knives and spears were hung upon the doors, and succeeded in exchanging many of our dollars for rude, weird weapons with waving edges or poisoned points. We passed several “tamed” Moros in the street and took off some bead necklaces, turbans, and bracelets which they had on. Further search revealed shields and hats, and before the morning turned to afternoon we had visited nearly half the houses in the village. Sometimes a tune on the ever-present piano, coaxed out by yours truly, would bring a shield from off the wall, and at others the more telling music coming from the jingling dollars was more effectual.

For dinner we went to the house of the interventor to lunch on some grass mixed with macaroni, canned fish, bread and water, and if I hadn’t been so much occupied with our Spanish conversation I might have felt hungry. After the meal our host wanted me to take a photograph of him and his wife dressed up in a discarded theatrical costume, and it was quite as ludicrous as anything on the trip. An upholstered throne—part of the stage-setting in their play of the week before—was rigged up in the back yard, and the señor and señora, robed as king and queen of Aragon, put on all the airs of a royal family as they stood before the camera. These good people pulled the house to pieces to show us wigs, crowns, and wooden swords, and it seemed as if we should never get away. Later, however, our good friend borrowed a horse in one place, a carriage in another, helped us to go around and collect our various purchases, presented me with a shield which he took down off his own wall, and drove us back to the steamer. Here we unloaded all the stuff, and, surrounded by a curious throng of questioners, went aboard to stow our possessions away. The day had been a prolific one, and, although we had not expected to go into the curio business on the excursion, our respective staterooms were now loaded up with gimcracks that would interest the most rabid ethnographer.

Toward midnight the Uranus steamed out of the Bay of Cagayan and headed for Misamis, still farther south. Another calm night, and Saturday morning saw us approaching a little collection of nipa huts presided over by an old stone fort and backed up by the usual high range of mountains. Two Spanish gunboats, the Elcano and Ulloa, all flags flying, in honor of Sunday or something were at anchor in the Bay, and at eight o’clock we pulled ashore to fritter away an hour or so in looking about an uninteresting village. There was a saying here that no photographer ever lived to get fairly into the town, for the only two who had ever come before this way were drowned in getting ashore from their vessels. As I walked about the streets, several Indian women stuck their heads out of the windows of their huts seeming quite amazed to see a live picture-maker, and asked in poor Spanish how much I would charge for a dozen copies of their inimitable physiognomies.

Misamis business detained the Uranus but for a short hour, and she then turned her head across the Bay eastward for Iligan, the seat of all the war operations in Mindanao. During the two hours and a half that our course led close along the hostile shore, we had breakfast and arrived at Iligan, the most dismal place in the world, about two o’clock in the afternoon. Everything looked down-in-the-mouth except the thermometer, and that was up in the roaring hundreds. The town was like all other Philippine villages, except that around the outskirts were the ruins of an old stockade with observation-towers, and in the streets soldiers, both native and Spanish, held the corners at every turn.