The next day, yesterday, there was frantic excitement! The Filipino Archbishop arrived! With no official state, but greeted by an immense demonstration of crowds of Independientes, who went out to meet their pastor in decorated boats and launches, with bands playing, Chinese crackers popping about, and revolutionary marches with songs. He, also, went to Jaro, under more triumphal arches, with Welcomes, and one with his name, Monsignore Hijaldo, in huge red letters all across it.
We drove out to Jaro in the evening to see the fun, and were well rewarded, for the whole Plaza was as good as a play—far better than anything the Iloilo theatre could produce intentionally.
Jaro is a collection of rather fine old houses, of the prevailing two-storied pattern, but large and handsome, some of them with carved wooden ornamentations and balconies with pretty pillars. They stand round a very large green space, with a bandstand in the middle, which is the Plaza. At one side of the Plaza is the cathedral, a long, ugly building, like a stone tunnel, and alongside it is a smaller church, on much the same lines, which is the Aglipayano place of worship. Opposite the two, on the green Plaza, stands a handsome old grey stone belfry, thrown out of the perpendicular by earthquakes, and crumbling with decay. At each corner of the upper story is a huge white stone statue of a saint leaning forward with some giant emblem clasped in his or her arms—such a cumbersome, melancholy old edifice! We always stop by the belfry, when we drive into Jaro, to let the pony rest and crop the grass, which overflows liberally into the road, and five times out of six it happens that we are there when a small lamp is swung up over the cathedral door, and a couple of Filipino boys come across and go into the belfry to ring the Angelus, which they do by swinging themselves fearlessly about on the beams of the big bells.
Cathedral and Belfry at Jaro.
When we drove out yesterday evening, we first met landaus containing the Delegate and the Bishop of Panay bowing and smiling to right and left, and lifting up hands of benediction; with many priests, secretaries, and retainers, most of them very fat men with very white faces.
Then, on the other side of the water, in the suburb of La Paz, which is a big town in itself, we met the Aglipayanos—Aglipay himself and his followers—all brown, flat-faced Filipinos, dressed something like the R.C. priests, only with fantastically bent up hats, and driving in the native quilezes or calesas.
In Jaro itself the fun was fast and furious, for both the churches had a great display of decorations outside—the Independiente considerably embellished by a long covered way built out, of latticed bamboo with palm-branches lashed to it, and paper lanterns, and quantities of little flags.