A negrito family.I met a negrito family here who had friendly relations with the people in the iron-works, and were in the habit of exchanging the produce of the forest with them for provisions. The father of this family accompanied me on a hunting expedition. He was armed with a bow and a couple of arrows. The arrows had spear-shaped iron points a couple of inches long; one of them had been dipped into arrow-poison, a mixture that looked like black tar. The women had guitars (tabaua) similar to those used by the Mintras in the Malay peninsula. They were made of pieces of bamboo a foot long, to which strings of split chair-cane were fastened.[2]
Unwelcome hospitality.Upon my return, to avoid spending the night at the wretched convento where I had left my servant with my luggage, I took the advice of my friends at the iron-works and started late, in order to arrive at the priest’s after ten o’clock at night; for I knew that the padre shut up his house at ten, and that I could therefore sleep, without offending him, beneath the roof of a wealthy mestizo, an acquaintance of theirs. About half-past ten I reached the latter’s house, and sat down to table with the merry women of the family, who were just having their supper. Suddenly my friend the parson made his appearance from an inner room, where with a couple of Augustinian friars, he had been playing cards with the master of the house. He immediately began to compliment me upon my good fortune, “for had you been but one minute later,” said he, “you certainly wouldn’t have got into the convento.”
[1] Tylor (Anahuac 227) says that this word is derived from the Mexican petlatl, a mat. The inhabitants of the Philippines call this petate, and from the Mexican petla-calli, a mat “house,” derive petaca, a cigar case.
[2] Four lines, re an omitted sketch, left out.—C.
VII
The Lagoon of Bay.My second trip took me up the Pasig to the great Lagoon of Bay. I left Manila at night in a banca, a boat hollowed out of a tree-trunk, with a vaulted roof made of bamboo and so low that it was almost impossible to sit upright under it, which posture, indeed, the banca-builder appeared to have neglected to consider. A bamboo hurdle placed at the bottom of the boat protects the traveller from the water and serves him as a couch. Jurien de la Gravière[1] compares the banca to a cigar-box, in which the traveller is so tightly packed that he would have little chance of saving his life if it happened to upset. The crew was composed of four rowers and a helmsman; their daily pay was five reals apiece, in all nearly seven pesos, high wages for such lazy fellows in comparison with the price of provisions, for the rice that a hard-working man ate in a day seldom cost more than seven centavos (in the provinces often scarcely six), and the rest of his food (fish and vegetables), only one centavo. We passed several villages and tiendas on the banks in which food was exposed for sale. My crew, after trying to interrupt the journey under all sorts of pretences, left the boat as we came to a village, saying that they were going to fetch some sails; but they forgot to return. At last, with the assistance of the night watchman I succeeded in hauling them out of some of their friends’ houses, where they had concealed themselves. After running aground several times upon the sandbanks, we entered the land and hill-locked Lagoon of Bay, and reached Jalajala early in the morning.
The Pasig.The Pasig forms a natural canal, about six leagues long, between the Bay of Manila and the Lagoon of Bay, a fresh water lake, thirty-five leagues in circumference, that washes the shores of three fertile provinces, Manila, Laguna and Cavite. Formerly large vessels full of cargo used to be able to sail right up to the borders of the lake; now they are prevented by sandbanks. Even flat-bottomed boats frequently run aground on the Napindan and Taguig banks.[2] Were the banks removed, and the stone bridge joining Manila to Binondo replaced by a swing bridge, or a canal made round it, the coasting vessels would be able to ship the produce of the lagoon provinces at the very foot of the fields in which they grow. The traffic would be very profitable, the waters would shrink, and the shallows along the shore might be turned into rice and sugar fields. A scheme of this kind was approved more than thirty years ago in Madrid, but it was never carried into execution. The sanding up of the river has, on the contrary, been increased by a quantity of fish reels, the erection of which has been favored by the Colonial Waterways Board because it reaped a small tax from them.
A famous plantation.Jalajala, an estate which occupies the eastern of the two peninsulas which run southward into the lake, is one of the first places visited by strangers. It owes this preference to its beautiful position and nearness to Manila, and to the fantastic description of it by a former owner, De la Gironnière. The soil of the peninsula is volcanic; its range of hills is very rugged, and the watercourses bring down annually a quantity of soil from the mountains, which increases the deposits at their base. The shore-line, overgrown with grass and prickly sensitive-plants quite eight feet high, makes capital pasture for carabaos. Behind it broad fields of rice and sugar extend themselves up to the base of the hills. Towards the north the estate is bounded by the thickly-wooded Sembrano, the highest mountain in the peninsula; on the remaining sides it is surrounded with water. With the exception of the flat shore, the whole place is hilly and overgrown with grass and clumps of trees, capital pasture for its numerous herds—a thousand carabaos, one thousand five hundred to two thousand bullocks, and from six to seven hundred nearly wild horses. As we were descending one of the hills, we were suddenly surrounded by half-a-dozen armed men, who took us for cattle-thieves, but who, to their disappointment, were obliged to forego their expected chance of a reward.