Another old Spanish friend of C——’s, a man in business, amused me very much one day, by giving me, as one of his reasons for disliking the Philippines, that he was in constant terror of “los Indianos” coming and “click”—he drew his finger across his throat.
“Really?” I said. “But you don’t, honestly, think that, do you?”
“Señora,” he said, “I know it will happen some day. There will be such an uprising as will wipe us all out. Mi corazon” (my heart) “beats perpetually with terror.”
I thought, however, that this life of secret anguish could not have done much harm to the old fellow’s system, for he looked remarkably flourishing after thirty years of life in the tropics, without any idea of panic at all.
As to this panic, I am surprised to find how prevalent is this notion of a general uprising, for though the Philippines are full of Insurrection, and many of them in a state of open warfare, still one can hardly believe that a reign of horror could sweep over these slow little towns. Not that the Filipinos are not capable of any atrocities when roused—and in the War many terrible and horrible things happened, which are not printed in newspapers or found in books.
LETTER XXII.
A TRIP TO GUIMARAS—AN ASTONISHING PROPOSAL—HOUSEBUILDING
Iloilo, April 14, 1905.