The general aspect of Philippine scenery to the untutored eye of a stranger resembles the tropical views already described, allowance being made for differing conditions. When the fortunes of war brought the islands within our ken the principal trade was divided between Spain and outside countries. The treaty of 1898 brought the archipelago into closer trade relations, with mutual advantages. When Aguinaldo, the Tagal leader, declared his allegiance to the United States, the fact assured the establishment of a friendly arrangement which in time will bring high prosperity to the islands and civilization to their people. The two hundred thousand who live in and around Manila are mainly Christians.
Generally the natives with whom we are in closest contact are a civil and good-tempered people. Picturesque in costume, or the lack of it, they share with the scenery around the characteristic freedom from commonplace. Prolonged familiarity with modern methods of culture will take much of the charm out of life in the Philippines, replacing it, no doubt, with the practical methods which conduce to progress. A voyage to these distant islands affords a rare opportunity to trace the process of evolution from the simple and natural to the complex machinery which is grinding organized society into drab-tinted duplications of a rather uninteresting original.
WINTER AND SUMMER IN NEW ENGLAND.
HARRIET MARTINEAU.
[The “Society in America” and the “Retrospect of Western Travel,” by Harriet Martineau, contain many interesting pictures of life and scenery in the United States. Of the descriptive passages of the latter work we select that detailing her experience of winter weather in Boston, which she seems to have looked upon with true English eyes, and not with the vision of one “to the manner born.”]
I believe no one attempts to praise the climate of New England. The very low average of health there, the prevalence of consumption and of decay of the teeth, are evidences of an unwholesome climate which I believe are universally received as such. The mortality among children throughout the whole country is a dark feature of life in the United States.... Wherever we went in the North we heard of the “lung fever” as a common complaint, and children seemed to be as liable to it as grown persons.
The climate is doubtless chiefly to blame for all this, and I do not see how any degree of care could obviate much of the evil. The children must be kept warm within-doors; and the only way of affording them the range of the house is by warming the whole, from the cellar to the garret, by means of a furnace in the hall. This makes all comfortable within; but, then, the risk of going out is very great. There is far less fog and damp than in England, and the perfectly calm, sunny days of midwinter are endurable; but the least breath of wind seems to chill one’s very life. I had no idea what the suffering from extreme cold amounted to till one day, in Boston, I walked the length of the city and back again in a wind, with the thermometer seven degrees and a half below zero. I had been warned of the cold, but was anxious to keep an appointment to attend a meeting. We put on all the merinoes and furs we could muster, but we were insensible of them from the moment the wind reached us. My muff seemed to be made of ice; I almost fancied I should have been warmer without it. We managed getting to the meeting pretty well, the stock of warmth we had brought out with us lasting till then. But we set out cold on our return, and by the time I got home I did not very well know where I was and what I was about. The stupefaction from cold is particularly disagreeable, the sense of pain remaining through it, and I determined not to expose myself to it again. All this must be dangerous to children; and if, to avoid it, they are shut up through the winter, there remains the danger of encountering the ungenial spring....
Every season, however, has its peculiar pleasures, and in the retrospect these shine out brightly, while the evils disappear.