The army officers and their families still form the aristocracy of the Philippines. While army life is not all like Camp Wallace and the gay Luneta, in the larger posts throughout the provinces, both the officers and soldiers are housed very comfortably. The clubhouse down at Zamboanga has a pavilion running out over the water, where the ladies sit at night, or where refreshments are served after the concert by the band. Although their ways are not the ways of the civilian; although to them the possibilities of Jones’s promotion from the bottom of the list seems of a paramount importance, you will not find anywhere so loyal and hospitable a class of people as the army officers. Whatever little jealousies they entertain among themselves are overshadowed by the fact that “he” or “she” is of the “service.” And the soldiers, rough as they are, and slovenly compared to the red-coated soldiers of Great Britain, or the gray-coated troopers of the German army, are beyond doubt the finest fighting men in all the world.
Chapter XIV.
Padre Pedro, Recoleto Priest.—The Routine of a Friar in the Philippines.
It might have been the dawn of the first day in Eden. I was awakened by the music of the birds and sunlight streaming through the convent window. Heavily the broad leaves of abacá drooped with the morning dew. Only the roofs of a few nipa houses could be seen. The tolo-trees, like Japanese pagodas, stretched their horizontal arms against the sky. The mountains were as fresh and green as though a storm had swept them and cleared off again. They now seemed magnified in the transparent air.
All in the silence of the morning I went down to where the tropical river glided between primeval banks and under the thick-plated overhanging foliage. The water was as placid as a sheet of glass. A spirit of mystery seemed brooding near. As yet the sun’s rays had not penetrated through the canopy of leaves. A lonely fisherman sat on the bank above, lost in his dreams. Down by the ford a native woman came to draw water in a bamboo tube. I half expected her to place a lighted taper on a tiny float, and send it spinning down the stream, as is the custom of the maidens on the sacred river Ganges. In the silence of the morning, in the heart of nature, thousands of miles away from telegraphs and railroads, where the brilliant-feathered birds dipped lightly into the unruffled stream, the place seemed like a sanctuary, a holy of holies, pure, immaculate, and undefiled.
The padre had arisen at six. At his command the sacristans ascended the bell-tower and proceeded to arouse the town. The padre moved about his dark, bare room. Rare Latin books were scattered around the floor. His richly embroidered vestments hung on a long line. The room was cluttered with the lumber of old crucifixes, broken images of saints, and gilded floats, considerably battered, with the candlesticks awry. The floor and the walls were bare. There was a large box of provisions in the corner, filled with imported sausages done up in tinfoil, bottles of sugar, tightly sealed to keep the ants from getting in, small cakes of Spanish chocolate, bottles of of olives and of rich communion wine. Donning his white robe, he went out to the ante-room, where, on the table spread with a white napkin, stood a cup of chocolate and a package of La Hebra cigarettes.
There was a scamper of bare feet as the whole force of dirty house-boys, sacristans, and cooks rushed in to kneel and kiss the padre’s hand and to receive his blessing. When he had finished the thick chocolate, one of the boys brought in a glass of water, fresh and sparkling from a near-by mountain stream. Then Padre Pedro lighted his cigarette, and read in private for a little while before the morning mass began. Along the narrow pathway (for there were no streets) a string of women in black veils was slowly coming to the church. Stopping before the door, they bowed and made the sign of the cross. Then they went in and knelt down on the hard tiles. The padre’s full voice, rising and falling with the chant, flooded the gloomy interior, where pencils of sunlight slanted through the apertures of the unfinished wall, and fell upon the drowsy wilderness outside.
The Oldest Cathedral of Manila