An Englishwoman in the Philippines

by Mrs. Campbell Dauncey

We wandered about amongst scrub and rocks above the shore, where we came suddenly to a tiny hut perched up amongst big grey boulders, with fishing nets spread out to dry and a native lounging in the window-space. It looked such a nice little hut, just one large palm-thatch room on high poles, with a rickety step-ladder up to the door, where a round comfortable cat was sitting watching the fowls pecking about below. A little farther on we came to the banana patch, with brilliant green plants growing on a nook of dark earth amongst the grey rocks. All the rocks were very sharp; volcanic, with rough edges, which cut our shoes, even when we followed a tiny winding track. After we got to a little height, we could look down on the village and the sea and bay, which all appeared most bright and beautiful in the long rays of the low sun, and all so peaceful and quiet.

We turned back again by a path which struck more inland, past some more little banana fields and another little hut with its back to a tiny precipice. It is strange how near the towns the primitive sets in, for the people in both lots of huts were quite shy of us, and the children ran away and hid; while in the village, through which we passed, by making a round across some rice-fields, the people were quite country-folk, not a bit like the cheeky, independent loungers in the towns; answering one quite civilly and even happily when one spoke to them.

The village was delightfully quaint, all built on high poles planted in the sand of the shore, with many cheerful brown folk hanging out of the open sides of the houses, while mangy dogs with pups and fat old sows with immense families sprawled about down below. There are always quantities of pigs in a Philippine village, for, as I think I told you, they are the scavengers, and though the natives are not more unkind to those benefactors than to any other animals, to call one of them a pig is a frightful insult. In spite of all this, the favourite and most esteemed Filipino delicacy is sucking-pig, roasted whole.

Beyond the village we went across a field of emerald grass, bordered by a deep green hedge of curious bushes with no flowers on them. Our friends told us that these plants come into bloom in the wet Monsoon. Now, with the hot weather a very beautiful tree is in flower everywhere, called the Fire tree, which was only naked brown branches for a long time, and then burst into huge bunches of brilliant scarlet blossoms, rather like orchids, and very handsome at a distance, but coarse and common close at hand. The effect of these masses of showy red against the vivid green palms is wonderful and almost too bright. There is one of these Fire trees in the garden of the house opposite to us, here in Iloilo, which is a gorgeous display, and a delight to me just to look at as I sit here writing.

But, to get back to Nagaba, though there is not much to tell you, except that some of our friends joined us, and we ended our walk by a stroll through a cocoanut grove, where we saw an old man in a loin-cloth going up a tree to get the sap from which they make the tuba.[7] He had a long vessel made of a section of bamboo tied across his back, and a little round bowl of half a cocoanut tied in front of his body, with a big sharp knife beside it. He ran up the tree by means of notches cut all the way up the trunk, and at the top he tied the vessel under a bunch of buds, putting in it some of the stuff out of the bowl, which was red bark to dye the drink pink. This beverage I think I have mentioned to you before. One sees it anywhere, and the long tumblers of pink liquid are a feature in every little native shop.

This vessel they leave there for twelve hours, during which the sap drips out of the palm, and in the morning the man goes up and takes down the bamboo, now full of tuba, which is very fresh and nice, and tastes of cocoanut and water, and is very wholesome, not to say medicinal. If it is left, however, the tuba rapidly ferments, and by the evening is a very strong intoxicant, which constitutes the peculiar devil of the Philippines, and is the cause of most of the deterioration, physical, moral, and mental, of the race.

When the American Army first came out to the Philippines, the temperance enthusiasts in the U.S.A. hearing that a good deal of drinking was going on out here, started an agitation, by means of which they got the Army Canteens in the Philippines abolished. The result of this drastic mothering was that the soldiers went off and got tuba, about which, of course, the good folk in America knew nothing. Frightful scandals happened, which unfortunately did harm to the American prestige, and even the restoration of the canteens has not swept away the folly and evil which were thus begun.

This cocoanut grove, by the way, is kept for tuba, as are most of the palms one sees near the houses, for when the sap is taken in this way no fruit appears. Growing cocoanuts is one of the most lucrative speculations in the Philippines, as a tree bears fruit when it is six or seven years old, about a hundred nuts a year, the income yielded by a tree being about 2 pesos. So a grove of ten thousand trees or so is a very paying concern, if only the planter does not make the mistake, which I, myself, have often noticed, of placing his trees too close to one another, so that they do not get enough room to spread out at the top and find light and air.

We turned back from the cocoanut grove by a different path, and went back to the house along the beach. As the tide was far out, we walked across the firm, damp sand, where there were myriads of tiny crabs of bright metallic blues and reds and greens, which all darted sideways into holes as soon as one got within a yard of them.

After tea we loafed on the balcony, watching a lovely gold and rose sunset, while sailors and others took boxes and things down to the boat; and the man carrying our gear slipped on the rocks, and our plates and tumblers fell out and smashed to a thousand pieces. When it was almost dark, we returned in the launch to Iloilo, quite enchanted with our day at Nagaba and with the house on the rocks. We are determined to go over there one Saturday to Monday by ourselves, for it is a delightful change.