We went out on the river one evening last week at the invitation of two members of the boating club, which has its being in a nipa hut on the bank above the town, off the Molo road. It was a regular little native hut, with a rickety ladder up to the door, and boats slung underneath—a delightfully primitive place.
We went out in a boat and a canoe, making our way up-stream in the light of an exquisite sunset, all bright-red gold behind the mountains, and the river between its banks of low bushes like a path of pink crystal. The air was deliciously cool, or seemed so to us, and we rowed up a mile or more before landing at the bank on the farther shore from the town, where there were some fishing huts in a grove of palms.
We beached the boats on the mudbank, and then walked about through the trees till we came to some huts, looking wonderfully picturesque in the long stripes of pink light and mauve shadows amongst the tall trees. Here a number of half-naked Filipinos were loafing about, very civil, kindly people, and one was a very skinny old woman, who took a deep and unbounded interest in me, and asked all sorts of extraordinary questions about me.
The cocoanut trees in the grove bore many large green nuts in clusters at the top, like big green footballs, and as we were all rather thirsty, we asked if the hut folk would get one down for us to drink from.
With much politeness and amazing alacrity, one of the younger men ran up a tree, putting his toes in the notches in the bark, and not falling and breaking his neck by yet another Philippine miracle. He came down with a big green nut, such an enormous thing—the same in proportion to a cocoanut as we see them at home, as a green almond or walnut is to the nut in a shop. We asked him to open it for us, so he squatted down and chopped very deftly with a sort of sword which they call a bolo, and I fancy I may have mentioned it to you before. These bolos are a variety of the Malay kris, and are made in all sorts of cruel shapes, often inlaid very beautifully, but I believe the most frequent form is simply that of a short, thick, curved sword, which they use with deadly effect in fighting, and with great skill in almost every other event in life.[8]
The little brown people stood round and looked at us while we watched the man with the bolo. He chopped with marvellous dexterity, slicing off the outer covering of soft green flesh, and then making a hole in the top of the tender unripe nut inside. The nut had a thin lining of transparent meat, and was full of pale green liquid, like slightly soapy water in appearance. This “milk” we drank out of a small wooden bowl produced by the old woman, a neat little vessel made out of half a cocoanut, all in the most approved style of the story books! The drink was refreshing enough, but sweet and sickly. Then the man split the nut open and made a clever little scoop with his bolo out of a slice of bamboo which he picked up from the ground, and with this he shaved off some long strips of the white meat, of which we ate a good deal, but it was tough and tasteless.
A Palm Grove.
So the opening of a green cocoanut was the means of dispelling almost the last of my illusions about a Tropic Island! I have so often read about the nectar and ambrosia of the green nut, and the wonderful yarns of travellers who say there is no drink on earth like the green milk—one book I remember went so far as to compare the stuff favourably with lemonade! Perhaps it is all right if you have been shipwrecked and your mouth is full of sea water, but then I imagine so few people who write the descriptions can ever have had that advantage.