I have wandered away from a walk through the town, which I meant to describe to you—only I never seem to get ahead at all with descriptions here, as there are such endless mazes of side-issues to lure one from the track.
At the end of this street one comes on the Plaza, a very wide square bordered by odds and ends of houses, which include the Police Court, the Y.M.C.A., the Prison, and the Cathedral, the three former buildings being large, ordinary, two-storied houses, the latter a big, plain, grey stone front, with a belfry on each side, not unlike a miniature of the cathedral at Las Palmas, and, as far as I remember, in much the same style.
Spanish Architecture in the Philippines.
An old church at Daraga.
The town must have been quite handsome in the Spanish days, but during the Insurrection the Americans stood off and bombarded it from the open sea, while on shore the natives set it on fire. You see, when the Americans had conquered the Spaniards, and the Philippines had been handed over to the United States, the Spanish garrisons cleared out, leaving the Filipinos in charge to wait for their saviours. But the Filipinos beginning to realise that they had only sailed from Scylla to Charybdis, fought tooth and nail to prevent the American troops garrisoning their towns. So it came about that when the Americans had officially conquered the Spaniards, and fêtes and rejoicings were in full blast in the U.S.A., the trouble here was really only just beginning, for though they had managed to dislodge an alien race like the Spaniards with the full help and concurrence of the natives of the country, it was a very different task to conquer the disaffected people of the soil, even when it was being done “for their own good.” When the American fleet came to take Iloilo, the Filipinos showed fight, and the American Admiral said they must give up the place or he would bombard it, allowing them so many hours to decide in—which hours, by-the-bye, were not unconnected with some complication regarding the Christmas dinners of the sailors, who insisted on eating plum-puddings they had brought with them, or had had sent from America. Well, the Filipinos replied that the Americans might come ashore and fight if they liked, but if the Admiral bombarded the town, they would set it on fire, and make Iloilo not worth the taking.
The end of this exchange of courtesies was that the Admiral chose the alternative of bombardment, whereupon the Filipinos promptly fired the town, and Iloilo was pretty well destroyed, and eventually taken for the Stars and Stripes. The loss of life was one mule and one old woman, neither of whom probably cared two straws who the Philippines belonged to, poor things.
One or two people were wounded, but this was only another instance of the extraordinarily small amount of damage done by a bombardment. I have heard many curious “yarns” about the bombardment and the fire, which took place on Christmas Day, 1899, but I have not time or space to tell you these legends now, even if I could remember them. I wish I could remember all the things I hear—though, I daresay, I remember quite enough for you as it is!
The chief feature of the bombardment stories is the terrible drunkenness and looting that went on; but even if those anecdotes interested you, they are all connected with personal adventures of people you have never met, and would not entertain you. I am glad I was not here though, for the anarchy and misery seem to have been terrible.