One fact, striking fact about the shops in this country is that the largest and most important are those of the jewellers, and the reason of this is that the Filipinos and Eurasians have a mistrust of banks and investments for their spare cash, with which they buy jewels partly for love of the glittering ornaments, and partly from some muddled idea of having their money safe in a portable form. I was talking about this to a very civil Frenchman in one of the biggest jeweller’s here this morning, while I was waiting for a ring they had been repairing, and he was very interested to hear I had come from Iloilo, for he told me he had travelled all about Panay selling jewellery a year or more ago, and that he knew that island quite well. I asked him if he had done well there, and he said yes, very good business indeed; and when I asked him what sort of things he sold, he showed me beautiful diamonds set in rather red gold, and said I would be astonished if I saw the “types” who could buy such ornaments. He said he rode a horse, as the roads were only rough tracks with broken bridges, but I don’t suppose he really did go all over the island, and fancy he must rather have gone in coasting steamers and ridden about the suburbs of the towns, for there are no inland towns in the Philippines, and no market, even for the best diamonds.
Talking of Mestizos reminds me of an account I heard, from a friend at the reception, of an English-Mestizo wedding, which may amuse you, and is extraordinarily characteristic of these people. The bridal party assembled in church in the orthodox fashion, but the bride’s Filipino and Eurasian relations, instead of remaining in their pews, all crowded up to the altar and stood in a mass amongst the wedding-group and bridesmaids; and after this astonishing ceremony, the happy couple marched down the aisle to the strains of “The Washington Post.”
LETTER XVI.
MANILA AND ITS INHABITANTS
Manila, March 5, 1905.
I wrote in the morning yesterday, and after the heat of the day we drove outside the town to a nursery garden. To get there we passed through long streets of untidy suburbs, not of palm-thatch huts and bamboo groves like those in Iloilo, but very broad and treeless, with mean, low houses at intervals, and bits of waste ground strewn with lean dogs and rubbish. There are not scavenger pariahs here as in Turkey and the Near East, and I suppose they could not exist in such a climate, where the rubbish would be too putrid even for their savoury taste. There are a good many hawks about, but they don’t scavenge either, like the hawks in Egypt; all they seem to do is to hover over poultry, and every now and then get away with a young fowl or chicken. When we were driving round between Molo and Jaro a week or two ago, near the village of Mindoriao, we heard a great squawking and a scream, and looked round in time to see a hawk rise up from near a nipa hut with a fair-sized hen in his claws. The people rushed about the plantation and sang out, and the hawk staggered once or twice, and nearly fell with the hen, which was very big and heavy for him; but he got away at last, and the people were left gazing after him into the sky, like in the picture of “Robert with his Red Umbrella” in Struwwelpeter. But the scavenging is, or should be, done by the half-wild pigs with which the native quarters teem—lean, rough, black and white animals, generally very mangy, and with long legs and snouts.
A Street in Manila.