March 8.
I have been out shopping this morning, going out at such an unusual hour because heavy rain had fallen in the night, and the air was fresh in the morning. It is nice to have a fresh morning, for the early part of the day here is heavy, and day dawns thick and foggy. At least, the mornings are thick and foggy in comparison with the exquisite clearness of the dawn and early hours of the day in Iloilo. Talking of that, I am much struck by the colour of the sky here—all over the Philippines, I mean, or rather, all over where I have been—for though it is very blue, it is a whity-blue, a thick sort of colour, not a bit transparent like the sky of Southern Europe or North Africa. I can’t quite describe it, but when one looks up at the zenith one does not seem to be looking into illimitable spaces of transparency, and the thick white of the horizon stretches far upwards.
On this shopping expedition I went to buy some things for the house that I thought I might be able to get cheaper and better here than in Iloilo. The principal street of shops is, as I told you, the Escolta, and the next in importance is the Calla Rosario, where the shops are kept by Chinamen and one or two Japanese.
On the way there I saw a steamer on fire, which was a great sight, but rather alarming. When the carriage was passing over the bridge spanning the Pasig, I saw crowds running and looking down on the river, so I told the coachman to stop, and stood up and saw a fairly large coasting steamer drawn out from the other vessels at the wharf and pulled across the stream, where it lay in a huge wall of flames like Brünnhilde in the opera of Siegfried. When I first caught sight of it, there was a complete steamer, but it burnt up with amazing rapidity, and as I looked, the machinery suddenly sank through the hull, the bows and stem rose up to meet each other, and the whole thing doubled up and vanished beneath the water. Of course there was no one left on board, but all the same it was a gruesome sight, and one I know I shall think of all the way back to Iloilo in that fearful little Butuan with its wobbly candlesticks.
In the evening we drove out to pay some calls, and then took a little turn out beyond Santa Mesa, which is a big residential suburb on some low hills inland. The people living there have told me that the air is appreciably cooler than down in Manila, and there are far fewer mosquitoes. The latter alone would be sufficient reason for living there, as the mosquitoes here are awful, and always hungry night and day.
Bird’s-Eye View of Inland Suburbs of Manila.
We drove a little beyond Santa Mesa (which is, being translated, The Holy Supper) over abominable roads through little scrubby coppices. At one place we saw a most curious sight of hundreds of white-clad native people, in the sunset light, passing along a broad field-path bordered with trees; and I at first thought we had come across a religious procession. But when we got nearer, I saw that it was a crowd returning from the cock-pit; for every second man carried a cock under his arm; some sitting comfortably; some draggled with blood, wounded and miserable; some limp and dead.
I can’t tell you what a feeling of sickness came over me, for I thought it one of the most horrible sights I had ever witnessed; and I was glad when the procession was out of sight, and I could no longer see the animal-like, degraded faces of the men and their miserable, blood-stained, dying birds.