I said: “But surely they are also the followers of Christ? Only they do not interpret His sayings quite as we do ourselves.”
“No, no, they are wicked people! The Filipinos must be saved! Do, do, when you are out there, interest yourself in this noble work. I will send you little books——”
Strange, isn’t it? And of course about the people, the laws, the climate, she knew less than nothing, though I am sure the poor old soul gave many a shilling out of her miserable income towards the fund that gives the missionary’s well-dressed wife a “nice little holiday in Japan.”
In these civilised (?) parts of the Philippines there is a good deal of religious trouble and dissension already, without missionary enterprise to stir it up, as a very determined patriot of the name of Aglipay has cut himself adrift from the authority of Rome and started a church called La Iglesia Filipina Independiente, which title, I am sure, needs no translating. His followers are numerous, in fact it is generally believed that they now out-number the orthodox; and the whole movement is known to be the outward and visible sign of inward and hidden fires of Insurrection and Independence. The Aglipayanos, as these independent thinkers are usually styled, have churches of their own, and processions and ceremonies almost indistinguishable from those of the Papists. Do you remember a procession I described to you when we were in Manila? The bringing down of the Virgin of Antipolo? I now learn that that was all to do with this quarrel amongst the followers of the gentle Christ, though to which side the Virgin of Antipolo belonged, and who was to be galvanised into loyalty by the contemplation of her journey, I am not quite clear, and do not much care, for the fate of the little old wooden doll is uninteresting—it is only the people who are ready to fly at each other’s throats about it who are remarkable. What poor “worms that bite and sting in the dust!”
LETTER XIV.
VOYAGE TO MANILA
S.S. “Butuan,” March 1, 1905.
I am launched, you see, and on my journey to Manila after all, though I do not feel at all well again yet; but that is not surprising, as it takes such a long time to pull round in this climate. It is not that the climate is so much worse than any other, as long as you keep well, but as soon as you get ill you go all to pieces, and the first thing to be done is to ship you off to Hong Kong or Japan as soon as possible. The climate of the Philippines is very much abused, more than it really deserves, I think, for the chief causes of all illness are anæmia or liver, both arising more from the dreadful food and the lack of fresh vegetables, fruit, milk, and good meat than from the actual climate; though, of course, the illnesses arising from each bad diet are aggravated by the heat. The amount of tinned things the people eat would be trying in any climate, but out here they must be simply deadly. I have just been reading a book by a traveller, who announces that there is nothing the matter with the Philippine climate at all, because he tore round the Archipelago in record time, crossing the islands on foot at astounding speed, and living on native food—and he was not ill. Naturally, he was not ill; but then his experience is of little value to men who have to work for their living, sitting in offices for eight hours a day on six days of the week, whose food is the sort of provisions one can get in the towns, and their houses rooted on ill-drained mud-flats.
Everyone would like to rush about and live a free, wild life, and, no doubt, if they did, there would be fewer illnesses and less human wrecks; but the trouble is that no one would pay them for doing it; and men must work out here just the same as in other climates—in fact they seem to me to work longer hours and harder than anywhere I ever saw; and the wonder to me is, not that they are ill, but that so many of them survive at all. Undoubtedly the only billets worth having in the tropics are those of a tea-planter, a British officer, or a professional traveller.