A Woman's Impression of the Philippines

by Mary H. Fee

We talked little, and were content to drink in the silence and the strangeness, till by and by the wind fell cooler and we knew the dawn was at hand. It seemed to come suddenly, bursting out of the east in a white glare, without the pearly tints and soft gray lights that mark our northern day births. Then the white glare changed to red, to a crimson glow that painted the world with its glory, and dying, left little nebulous masses floating in the azure, tinted with pink, gold, and purple.

With the first touch of light we turned out of the main river, which was now a broad estuary as it neared the sea, and fled down a water lane not over fifteen or twenty feet wide, absolutely walled with impenetrable nipa growths. From this we emerged just as the day played its last spectacular effects, and found ourselves in a deep oval indentation, glassy as an inland lake, whose bosom caught the changing cloud tints like a mirror, and whose deep cool green borders were alive with myriads of delighted birds, skimming, chattering, calling. Half a mile away, at its farther end, the surf leaped frothily over a bar, and beyond that the open sea tumbled and flashed in the first sun-rays. It was idyllic—and on our left a mere stone’s throw, it seemed, behind the embowering forest, the mountain of our quest thrust a treeless, grassy shoulder into the blue.

Mr. L——, however, warned us that our way was still long and circuitous. We crossed the lagoon and went wandering off down a green, silent waterway which rejoiced in the appellation of “kut-i-kut” and proved itself unworthy of the same. The tide was going out rapidly, and the water mark oh the tree trunks was growing high. Sometimes we met a baroto on its way to market with a cargo of three chickens, five cocoanuts, two bunches of bananas, one head of the family, four children, and several women unaccounted for. The freight was heaped at one end, and the passengers all squatted in that perfect, uncommunicative equilibrium which a Filipino can maintain for hours at a time. Sometimes we came out where there were almost a hundred square yards of ground and two or three houses and the stir of morning life. Ladies with a single garment looped under their arm pits were pouring water over themselves from cocoanut shells, and whole colonies of game-cocks were tethered out on the end of three feet of twine, cursing each other and challenging each other to fights. The male population almost to a man was engaged in the process of stroking the legs of these jewels, to make them strong, and some of the children were helping.

As a rule, our advent generally disturbed these morning devotions, for American women were still comparatively new and few in the province at that time. A shout, “Americanas!” usually brought the whole village to the waterside, where they bowed and smiled and stared, proffering hospitality, and exchanging repartee with the lieutenant, who used the vernacular.

Meanwhile the tide went out and out, and we sank lower and lower in kut-i-kut till we were in a slimy ditch with four feet of bank on each side. The turns and twists grew narrower, and the difficulty of steering our long baroto around these grew greater. The men got but and waded, pushing the baroto lightly over the soft ooze. But finally this failed. It was eight o’clock, the sun climbing higher and burning fiercer, when we stuck ignominiously in the mud of kut-i-kut.

Filipino Children “Going Swimming” in the Rio Cagayan

After a short consultation the lieutenant sighed, cast a glance at the mud and his clean leather puttees, then went overboard, taking a man with him. They disappeared in the nipa swamps, but came back in half an hour with three carabaos, their owners, and an army of volunteers.

Our motive power, being hitched tandem, now extended round a couple of bends, and there ensued the wildest confusion in an endeavor to get them all started at the same time. Apparently it couldn’t be done, and we wasted a half-hour, in which every native in the swamp seemed to be giving orders, and the overwhelming desire of the carabaos was to swarm up the bank and get out, without regard to the effect on the baroto. The lieutenant had come aboard and was sitting on the high prow dangling his muddy leggins ahead. To him Mr. L—— in disgust suggested that the taos were making little real effort and that he “stir ’em up,” Soothe lieutenant drew his revolver and at a season of discord aimed it carefully in the high distance and fired.

The effect on the humans was just what he desired, but he did not allow for the nervousness of the carabaos on hearing a revolver shot in a locality where it is distinctly not native. The unanimity thait had so long been sought swept like an epidemic into our lumbering steeds, and our baroto started ahead with a firmness of purpose that sent the author of this book flying into the mud, and bumped us all up most gloriously as we lunged round the corner. The good work once begun was not allowed to fall slack, however. The lieutenant caught up and climbed aboard, and we swept through the three miles of kut-i-kut in a wild cavalcade, rolling like a ship in a storm. At its end we struck upon water, and parted from our long-horned ayudantes.