A Soldier in the Philippines

by Needom N. Freeman

This seemed to be the common experience of all. The town is beautifully laid out with broad streets, which are set with beautiful shade trees that are green winter and summer. A person can walk all over town the hottest days and be in the shade all the time.

Three small, but very nice parks with beautiful and delightfully fragrant flowers and shrubbery lend a charm to the town.

I have been walking out in the town at night, and would smell the sweet odors from the parks for two or three blocks away. This was not occasionally so, but all the time. The soldiers enjoyed sitting in the parks and on the piers at night, taking in the cool sea breeze after a hot day. I have seen as many as three and four hundred soldiers sitting out on the piers before going into quarters.

As in all other parts of the Philippines, chicken fighting is a favorite sport in Jolo. Outside of the city wall is built a grand stand and pit for chicken fighting. It is all enclosed, and ten cents (Mexican) admission is charged unless you have a chicken to enter. Some fine chickens are entered in these fights, and a great deal of money is put up on them. Gambling is not prohibited, and chicken fighting is engaged in every Saturday all day long. The natives will gamble away the last cent they possess before they will stop. A suburban town of Jolo is Buss Buss, nearly half as large as Jolo, and built out over the water on bamboo poles driven into the mud, and left projecting above the water. The houses are then built on these poles.

Buss Buss is built over shallow water, running out over the water for one hundred and fifty yards. The houses are all built of bamboo. This seems to be a Chinese town. Many Chinese live there and engage in business in Jolo. Chinese are engaged in various kinds of business in Jolo, but all live in Buss Buss. The Chinese and Morros are not friendly, and it is probably due to this fact alone that caused Buss Buss to be built.

Major Sweet was in command of the post at Jolo for some time. He would not allow more than one hundred Morros inside the city walls at one time for fear of trouble with them. The Morros supplied our forces with vegetables, fish and fruit, which they brought in and sold to us. To prevent the town from filling up with Morros a strong guard was stationed at the gate, which was closed at six in the evening and opened at six o'clock in the morning. The Morros would be crowded around the outside of the gate every morning waiting for it to be opened to go in and dispose of their produce. Frequently there would be twice as many as were allowed inside at one time. When the gate was opened they would rush for it, but not more than one hundred were allowed to pass inside. When one disposed of his produce, etc., and returned to the gate he was allowed to pass out, and another from the outside could pass in, and so on until all had been in and passed back.

Not far from Jolo, out towards the foot of the mountains, is a coffee field. There are several others on the island besides that one. In these coffee fields a great many Morros work all the time gathering and cleaning coffee, etc. The method is like all others of theirs, very rude and poor. They dig out long troughs of wood and place them in running streams in such a way that the water will run in at one end and out at the other. Into these troughs the unhusked coffee is poured, and then it is tramped under the feet of the cleaners until the husks are all broken off and float away with the water. The coffee is then taken out and sacked and dried out for shipping. This is the only method I ever saw in use for coffee cleaning.

Tropical fruit is everywhere abundant. The bread fruit tree grows in Jolo to a great size. The fruit is about the size of a cocoanut, except it is of a flattened shape. It is covered by a thin soft hull easily cut open with an ordinary pocket knife. The first time that I ever saw the fruit I ate half of one. I thought it as good as anything I ever ate. I believe it will alone sustain life. Cocoanuts and bananas grow in profusion. Cocoanuts are cut and dried, then exported. Oil is manufactured of the dried cocoanuts, which is of excellent quality. We used it to oil our rifles all the time we were stationed in the Philippines. Chinese and natives caught quantities of fish, which were cut up and exposed to the sun several days to dry. The fish get almost black in this process of drying and smell badly before they are dry enough to be sacked and shipped. I saw a great deal of this business, but never learned where it was shipped to or what use was made of it.

Hemp is produced from a native plant growing wild in the forests, and looks something like the banana plant. It is baled and exported in great quantities. Natives bring in small bundles of it from the mountains. Red pepper grows abundantly in the woods on the high and dry lands. It grows on a small bush, which is loaded with the pods, which are very strong.