Or otherwise, might not these wanderers, who have their prototypes among the pigmies of dark Africa, or in the dwarfs inhabiting New Guinea—might they not have set sail from Caffraria, New Guinea, or the country of the Papuans, long years before the Christian era, like the "Jumblies," in their frail canoes, perhaps escaping persecution, driven by the winds and currents, to land at last on the unpeopled shores of Filipinia?

In time came the Malayans of low culture, now the pagan tribes of the interior, and a conflict—primitive men fighting with rude weapons, clubs, and stones—ensued for the possession of the coast. In that event the smaller men were driven back into the territory that they occupy to-day. The races intermingled, and a medley of strange, mongrel tribes resulted. They have wandered, scattering themselves abroad about the islands. Influenced by various environment, each tribe adopted different customs and built up from common roots the different dialects. These tribes have always been, and always will be, mere barbarians and savages. In the pure type of Negritos, spindle legs, large turned-in feet, weak bodies, and large heads are noticeable. Shifting eyes, flat noses, kinky hair, and teeth irregularly set,—these are Negrito characteristics, though they frequently occur in the mestizo types. The Igorrotes of Luzon, whose ancestors were possibly the aborigines and the worst element of the invaders, are to-day the cannibals and the head-hunters of the north. In Abra, province of Luzon, the Burics and their neighbors, the Busaos, both of a Negrito-Malay origin, use poisoned darts, tattoo their bodies, and adorn themselves with copper rings and caps of rattan decorated with bright feathers. The Manguianes, of the mountains of Mindoro, dress in rattan coils, supplemented with a scanty apron.

These Malayan races were, in their turn, driven back by later Malays, who became the nucleus of the Tagalog, Bicol, Ilocano, and Visayan races, taking possession of the coast and mouths of rivers, and governing themselves, or being governed by hereditary rajas, just as when, three centuries ago, Magellan and Legaspi found them. The Moros, or Mohammedan invaders, were first heard from when, in 1597, Spain first tried to organize them into a dependent government. These treacherous pirates, the descendants of the fierce Dyacs of Borneo, had begun still earlier to terrorize the southern coasts, raiding the villages and carrying off the children into slavery. In 1599 a Moro fleet descended on the coast of Negros and Panay, and would, no doubt, have occupied this territory permanently had not the arms of Spain been there to interfere. Hereafter Spanish galleons were to oppose the progress of these pirate fleets, while troops of infantry were to defeat the savages on land. The Spaniards early in the seventeenth century succeeded in establishing a foothold on the island of Jolo and at Zamboanga. It was Father Malchior de Vera who designed the fort at Zamboanga, which was destined to become the scene of many an attack by Moro warriors, and to be the base of military operations against the surrounding tribes. A Jesuit mission was established in the sultan's territory after the defeat of the Mohammedans by Corcuera. In the interior, around the shores of Lake Lanao, the fighting padre, Friar Pedro de San Augustin, backing the cross with Spanish infantry, carried the Christian war into the country of the infidels, continuing the conflict that for many years had made a battleground of Spain. It was in memory of their old enemies, the Moors, that when the Spaniards met the infidels in eastern lands, they named them Moros (Moors).

The war between Spain and the Moros was relentless. Time and again the pirates had been punished by the Spanish admirals, until, in 1725, the sultan sent a Chinese envoy to Manila to negotiate a truce. A treaty was ratified, but broken, and again the Sulu Moros learned what Spanish hell was like. In spite of this continual warfare the Mohammedans grew stronger, and in 1754 the ocean was infested with the Moro vintas, till another friar, Father Ducos, in a sea-fight off the coast of Northern Mindanao, sunk one hundred and fifty of their boats and killed three thousand men. Bantilan, the usurper of the Sulu throne, was one of the foremost of the mischief-makers who, in 1767, sent a pirate fleet as far north as Manila Bay. Although the Spaniards had repeatedly won victories in Jolo, Zamboanga, and Davao, and by treaties had made all this country vassal to the crown of Spain, up to the time of the evacuation of the Philippines, when, as a last act, they had sent their own tiny gunboats to the bottom of Lanao, they never had become the undisputed masters of the territory.

One of the pleasantest friends I had while I was in the Islands was Herr Altman, an orchid collector, who had risked his life a hundred times among the savages of the interior in the pursuance of the passion of his life. "One afternoon," he said, "when we were in the forests of Luzon, my native guides approached me with broad grins. I thought, perhaps, they had discovered some new orchid; so I followed them. But I was unprepared for what they were about to show me. Since then I have had much experience among the wild tribes, but at this time everything was new to me. They motioned silence as, with broadening grins, they now approached what seemed to be a clearing in the woods. I could not think why they should be amused; but they are very easily delighted, just like children, and I thought that it would do no harm to humor them. Then I was startled by the howling of a dog and a strange sound coming through the woods.

Still following my guides, I brought up in a growth of underbrush on a small precipice that overlooked an open space among the trees. Looking in the direction in which they pointed, I beheld a group of tiny black men dancing in a circle around what seemed to be a section of a fallen tree. Off to the side, the women, slightly smaller than the men, were cooking a wild hog on a spit, over a smoking fire. Their hair was thick and woolly and uncombed. Their arms and ankles were adorned with copper bracelets. Some of the men wore leather thongs that dangled from their legs. There were a few rude shelters in the clearing, merely improvised affairs of branches. As the men danced they sent up a song in a high, piping voice, and several hungry dogs, who had been watching enviously the roasting meat, howled sympathetically and in unison. It finally occurred to me that we were the spectators of a funeral ceremony; that the section of a tree was nothing less than the rough coffin of the dead Negrito. We continued to watch them for a time, while, having finished dancing, they began their feast. The only dishes that they had were cocoanut-shells, out of which they drank immoderate amounts of tuba. The funeral ceremony, as I understand it, lasts for several days—as long as the supply of meat and tuba lasts. The coffin, which appeared to me a hollowed log, is but a section of a certain bark sealed up at either end with wax. The burial is made under the house in the case of those tribes living near the coast; or in a stockade, which protects the body against desecration from the enemy."

It was with feelings such as one might entertain when looking at a mermaid or an inhabitant of Mars, that I first saw a genuine Negrito in a prison at Manila. The wretched pigmy had been brought in to the city from his inaccessible retreat in the great forest; he was dazed and frightened at the white men and the things they did. He was a miserable little fellow, with distrustful eyes, and twisted legs, and pigeon toes. He died after a few days of captivity, during which time he had not spoken. A dumb obedience marked his relations with the guard. The white man's civilization was as disagreeable and unnatural to him as his nomadic life would be to us. A fish could just as well live out of water as this pigmy in the white man's land.

A few of the Negritos near the coast, however, have been touched by civilizing influences. They inhabit towns of small huts built on poles, which they abandon on the death of any one within. The house wherein a death occurs is generally burned. They plant a little corn and rice, but often move away before the crop is harvested. They are too lazy to raise anything; too weak to capture slaves. During the heavy rains, when the great woods are saturated, they protect themselves against the cold by wrapping blankets around their bodies. At night they often share the tree with birds and monkeys, sheltered from rain and dampness by the canopy of foliage. They have a head man for their villages—sometimes a member of another tribe, who, on account of his superior attainments, holds the respect of all. They hunt with bows and arrows; weapons which, by means of constant use, they handle with dexterity. At night their villages are located through the incessant barking of the hungry dogs, which always follow them around. Sleeping in huts, in order to prevent mosquitoes from annoying them, they often build a fire beneath them, toasting themselves until their flesh becomes a crust of scales.

In the south Camarines, and in Negros, they will often come down to the coast towns, trading the wax and sweet potatoes of the mountains for sufficient rice to last them several days. They sometimes work a day or two in the adjacent hemp or rice fields, receiving for their labor a small measure of the rice. When they have eaten this, they fast until their hunger drives them down to work again. Their marriage relations are peculiar. While the father of the family has but one true wife, a number of women are dependent on him, widows or relatives who have attached themselves to him. The children receive their names from rivers, animals, or trees. If they were taken out of their environment when very young they might be educated, as experiments have shown that the Negrito children have the same impulses of generosity, the same attachment to their friends, the same joys, sorrows, and sensations, that belong to children everywhere. Only their little souls are lost forever in the wilderness.

Neither the pagan tribes nor the Negritos read or write. The Moros, too, are very ignorant, only the priests and students being able to read passages from the Koran and make the Arabic characters. The latest Malay immigrants, who had been influenced by Indian culture, introduced a style of writing that is very queer. Three vowels were used,—a, e, and u. The consonants were represented by as many signs that look a good deal like our shorthand. Although there were three characters to represent the vowels when used alone, whenever a consonant would be pronounced with "a," only the sign of the consonant was used. In order to express a final consonant, or one without the vowel, a tiny cross was made below the character. If "e" was wanted, a dot would be placed over the letter that expressed the consonant, or if the vowel was to be "u," the dot was placed below.

Some rainy day, when you have nothing else to do, you can invent some characters to represent our consonants, and with the aid of dots and crosses, write a letter to yourself, and see how you would get along if you were forced to use that kind of alphabet at school. The natives use the Spanish alphabet to-day, which is much like our own. Their language, being full of particles, sounds very funny when they talk. All you would understand would be perhaps, pag, naga, naca, mag, tag, paga; and all this would probably convey but little meaning to you. It is a curious fact that while the dialects of all the tribes are different, many of the ordinary words are common, being slightly changed in the transition. The language is of a Malayan origin, but has a number of Sanskrit words as well as Arabic. From studying these dialects, comparing the construction of the sentence as expressed by different tribes, and by comparing the inflections of homogeneous verbs and nouns, one might arrive at the conclusion that these tribes and races, differing so strikingly among each other, mutually antagonistic, all belong to one great family and have a common origin. But that is a question for the anthropologists to settle; one that will give even the professors all the trouble that they want, and make them wrinkle up their learned foreheads, while among them they arrive at widely-varying decisions, which will be as mutually exclusive as the tribes themselves.



It was a rainy day in the dense woods along the Iligan-Marahui road. The soft ground oozed beneath the feet, and a continual dripping was kept up from the low-hanging, saturated foliage. The Moro interpreter, in a red-striped suit and prominent gilt buttons, had come into camp with the report that one of the dattos at Malumbung wanted the military doctor to come up and treat his child, who was afflicted with a fever. The datto had offered protection for the "medico," and, as a fee, a bottle of pure gold. The guides and soldiers, who were waiting in the forest, would conduct the doctor to Malumbung if he cared to go.

"This sounds like a pretty good adventure," said the commanding officer to me. "How would you like to go along?" The doctor had accepted the offer of the Moros, and he now reiterated the commanding officer's invitation. "It's going to be a rather long, stiff hike," he said. "We'll have to sleep to-night out in the woods, and there's no telling whether the Moros mean good faith or not. Remember that, in case the child should die while I am there, the Moros will believe that I have killed it, and will probably make matters more or less unpleasant for us both. I operated once upon a fellow over in Tagaloan who died under the knife. As soon as the spectators saw that he was hardly due to come to life again, they crowded around me with their bolos drawn, and if a friend of mine among them had not interfered, I would have followed my subject very speedily."

It was arranged that we take with us a small squad of regulars to carry the provisions and go armed, "in case there should be any game upon the way." As this arrangement seemed to satisfy the Moros, though it did not please them much, we started, covering the first half mile along the clayey road through driving rain, and turning off into the Moro trail around the summit of the hill. The Moros led the way with their peculiar lurching stride that covered a surprising distance in a very short time. Soon we were in the heart of the vast wilderness. We passed by colonies of monkeys, who severely reprimanded us from their secure retreat among the tree-tops. One of the soldiers killed a python with his Krag—a swollen creature, that could hardly be distinguished from the overhanging vines—that measured twenty feet from head to tail. The Moros silently unslipped their knives, and dextrously removed the skin. We camped that night in shelter tents, although the ground was soaked, and a cold breath penetrated the damp woods. All night the jungle-fowl and monkeys kept up an incessant obligato, and the forest seemed to re-echo with mysterious and far-off sounds. At daylight we pushed on, and late in the afternoon arrived at the small Moro settlement. The tiny nipa houses, set up on bamboo poles, were rather a poor substitute for shelter; but on reaching them after our two days in the forest, it was like arriving in a civilized community. The doctor went immediately to the datto's house, a large one with a steep roof, where he dosed the infant with a little quinine.

There were about five hundred Moros in the village under the datto, who ruled absolutely as by hereditary right. While he, of course, was feudal to the nearest sultan, in his own community he was a lord and prince. Most of the people were his slaves and fighting men. His private warriors, or his bodyguard, were armed with krisses, campalans, and spears, with shields of carabao hide, and coats of mail of buffalo-horn, as defensive armor. The favorite weapons of the datto were elaborately inlaid with the ivory cut from the tusks of the wild boar. His dress was also distinctive, and when new must have been very brilliant. It was fastened with pearl buttons, while along the outside seams of his tight pantaloons a row of smaller buttons ran. A dirty silk handkerchief wound around his head, the corner overlapping on the side, made an appropriate and fitting headgear. He had several wives, for whom he had paid in all a sum amounting to a hundred sacks of rice and twenty cattle. He had lost considerably on his speculations, having divorced three wives and being unable to secure a rebate on the price that he had paid for them.

As soon as the doctor had completed his attentions to the patient, the pandita (priest) appeared, and asked him to account for the strange happenings that had occurred in the community. The village was in a state of panic, and unless a stop were put to the proceedings soon, there was no telling what the end might be. It seemed that during the night a number of children had been murdered secretly. Their mutilated bodies had been left at morning at the gates of their respective dwellings. These murders had been going on for several days, and though the houses had been guarded by a man armed with a campilan at night, the children would be mysteriously missing in the morning. It was evidently, said the priest, the work of devils. A big hand had been seen to snatch one of the children from its parent's arms; and under the houses of those afflicted could be seen a weird fire glowing in the dead of night.

The people claimed the murderer was none else than the big man of the woods, whose footprints, like the impressions of a cocoanut-shell, had been discovered in the soft ground near the border of the forest. There was a crazy prophet living in a tree, and he had seen the wife of the big man, half black, half white, wandering near the territory of the lake. The prophet had also seen a star fall from the sky, and he had followed it to see where it had struck the earth. He found there a huge stone, which, as he looked upon it, changed to a wild hog. Then the wild hog had vanished, and a flock of birds had risen from the ground. In place of the rock, a stone hand now appeared, and breaking off a finger of it, the prophet had discovered that, when burnt, its fumes had power to put the whole community to sleep. In this way had the big man of the woods been able to defy the guards and to assassinate the children at his will.

The doctor, thinking that these deeds had been performed by somebody impelled by lust—the lust of seeing blood and quivering flesh—determined to investigate. Suspicion pointed to the crazy prophet, and the guards directed us to his impossible abode. The prophet was accused directly of the crime, and, being convinced that he was found out by the white man's magic, he confessed. The datto sentenced him to be beheaded, and seemed disappointed when we would not stay to see this operation. He even offered to turn the victim loose among the crowd, and let them strike him down with krisses. Had we desired, we could have had the places of honor in the line, and used the datto's finest weapons. The people, he said, were puzzled at our lack of interest, for the occasion would have been a sort of festival for them. But seeing that we were obdurate, the datto served our farewell meal—baked jungle-fowl and rice—and, after offering to purchase our Krag-Jorgesens at an attractive price, he bade us all good-bye.

On the way back, our guides surprised us by their climbing and swimming. There was one place where the Agus River had been spanned by jointed bamboo poles; while we crossed like funambulists, depending for our balance on a slender rail, the Moros leaped into the rushing torrent, near the rapids, swimming like rats against the stream, and reaching the other side ahead of us. One of the guides went up a tall macao-tree, pulling himself up by the long parasitic vines, and bracing himself against the tree-trunk with his feet, to get an orchid that was growing high among the foliage. Though we expressed our admiration at these feats, the guides preserved their customary proud demeanor, and refused to be moved by applause.

Their active life in the vast wilderness has given them athletic, supple bodies, which they handle to a nicety when fighting. Although the Moros build stone forts and mount them with old-fashioned cannon; although their arsenals are fairly well supplied with Remingtons and Mausers, their warriors generally prefer to fight with bolos. These weapons never leave their side. They sleep with them, and they are buried with them. Their heavy campalans are fastened to their hands by thongs, so that, in case the hand should slip, the warrior would not fall without his knife. The Moros in a hand-to-hand fight are extremely agile. Holding the shield on the left arm, they flourish the bolo with their right, dodging, leaping, and jeering at the antagonist in order to disconcert or frighten him.

While their religion and fanaticism render them almost foolhardy in a battle, if a Moro sees that he is beaten and that escape is possible, he will avail himself of opportunities to fight another day. If brought to bay, however, he is desperate, and in his more religious moments he will throw himself on a superior enemy, expecting a sure death, but confident of riding the white horse to paradise if he succeeds in spilling the blood of infidels.

Although distrustful, lazy, and malignant, the Moro is consistent in his hatred for the unbeliever, and untiring on the war-path. Scorning all manner of work, he leads an active forest life, killing the wild pig, which religious scruples prevent his eating, and waging war against the neighboring tribes. He is a born slave-catcher and a pirate. He will drink sea-water when no other is available. He shows a diabolical cunning in the manufacture of his weapons. Nothing can be more terrible than the long, snaky blade of a Malay kriss. The harpoons, with which he spears the hogs, come apart at a slight pull. The point of the spear on catching in the flesh holds fast. The handle, however, becoming detached, though held to the barbed point by a thong, catches and holds the hog fast in the underbrush. The head-ax is a long blade turned at just the proper angle to decapitate the victim scientifically.

Ignorant and perfectly indifferent to the observations that their creed prescribes, the Moros gather at the rude mosque to the beating of a monstrous drum. Seated around upon straw mats, they chatter and chew betel-nut while the pandita reads a passage from a manuscript copy of the Koran. These copies are guarded sacredly, and only the young men who are studying for the priesthood are instructed from them. The priests of the first class are able to read and write, and it is better to have made the pilgrimage to Mecca. The birth of Mohammed is celebrated by a feast at harvest-time. Another occasion for a feast is given by the marriage ceremony. Bridegrooms are encouraged to provide these banquets by the administration of a beating if delinquent, or in case the food provided fails to meet the expectations of the guests. On the completion of this function, the bridegroom bathes his feet; then chewing buya, seated on a mat beside the bride, his hand and hers are covered by a napkin while the priest goes through the proper gestures and recites a verse from the Koran. The wedding celebration then degenerates into a drunken dance.

The bodies of the dead are wrapped in a white shroud, and buried in a crescent trench, together with enough meat, fruit, and water to sustain the spirit on its trip to paradise. The priest, before departing, eats a meal of buffalo-meat or other game above the grave. The grave is then turned over to a guard of soldiers, who remain there for a few days, or as long as they are paid.

Though the Americans have tried to deal in good faith with these fanatics, little has been accomplished either in the way of civilizing them or pacifying them. The Moro schools at Jolo and at Zamboanga have been failures. Teachers of manual training have been introduced to no avail. The Moro could be no more treacherous if his ancestors had sprung from tigers' wombs. A Moro boy, employed for years by one of my American acquaintances at Iligan, rewarded his master recently by cutting his throat at night. As superstitious as he is fanatic and uncivilized, the Moro is a failure as a member of the human race. Even the children are the incarnation of the fiend. There was that boy at Iligan who worked at the officer's club, and who hung over the roulette-wheel like a perfect devil, crowing with demoniac glee when he was lucky. These are our latest citizens—this batch of serpents' eggs hatched out in human form; and those who have seen the Moro in his native home will tell you that, whatever his latent possibilities may be, he can not yet be dealt with as a man.



Chapter VIII.

In a Visayan Village.

The fountain on the corner, where the brown, barefooted girls with bamboo water-tubes would gather at the noon hour and at supper-time, was shaded in the heat of the day by a mimosa-tree. The Calle de la Paz y Buen Viaje (Street of Peace and a Good Journey), flanked by sentinel-like bonga-trees and hedged in by a bamboo fence, stretches away through the banana-groves toward the fantastic mountains. A puffing carabao comes down the long street, dragging the heavy stalks of newly-cut bamboo. The pig that has been rooting in the grass, looks up, and, seeing what is coming, bolts with staccato grunts unceremoniously through the bamboo fence.

In the little drygoods-store across the street, Felicidad, the dusky-eyed proprietress, has gone to sleep while waiting for a customer. She has discarded her chinelas and her pina yoke. Her brown arms resting on the table pillow her unconscious head. Her listless fingers clasp a half-smoked cigarette.

The stock of La Aurora is a comprehensive one, including printed cotton goods from China, red and green belts with nickel fastenings, uncomfortable-looking Spanish shoes, a bottle of quinine sulphate tablets, an assortment of perfumery and jewelry, rosaries and crucifixes, towels and handkerchiefs, and dainty pina fabrics. The arrival of the Americano is the signal for the neighbors and the neighbors' children, having nothing in particular to do, to flock around. The Filipino curiosity again!

On the next corner, where the wooden Atlas braces up the balcony, the Chino store is sheltered from the sun by curtains of alternate blue and white. Here Chino Santiago, in his cool pajamas, audits the accounts with the assistance of the wooden counting frame, while Chino Jose, his partner, with his paintbrush stuck behind his ear, is following the ledger with his long, curved finger-nail. Both Chinos, being Catholics, have taken native wives, material considerations having influenced the choice; but Maestro Pepin says that, nevertheless, they are unpopular because they work too hard and cause the fluctuations in the prices. By pursuing a consistent system of abstractions from the rice-bags, by an innocent adulteration of the tinto wine, these two comerciantes have acquired considerable wealth.

The bland proprietor will greet you with a smile, and offer you the customary cigarette. And if the prices quoted are unsatisfactory, they are at least elastic and are easily adjusted for a personal friend. Along the shelf the opium-scented line of drygoods is available, while portraits of the saints and Neustra Senorita del Rosario, whose conical skirt conceals the little children of the Church, hang from the wall. Suspended from the ceiling are innumerable hanging lamps with green tin shades. A line of fancy handkerchiefs, with Dewey's portrait and the Stars and Stripes embroidered in the corners, is displayed on wires stretched overhead across the store. Bolo blades, chocolate-boilers, rice-pots, water-jars, and crazy looking-glasses are disposed around, while in the glass case almost anything from a bone collar-button to a musical clock is likely to be found. Santiago would be glad to have you open an account here and, unlike the Filipino, he will never trouble you about your bill.

The market street is lined with nipa booths, where senoritas play at keeping shop, presiding over the army of unattractive articles exposed for sale. Upon a rack the cans of salmon are drawn up in a battalion, a detachment of ex-whisky bottles filled with kerosene or tanduay, bringing up the rear. Certain stock articles may be invariably found at these tiendas,—boxes of matches, balls of cotton thread, bananas, buya, eggs and cigarettes, and the inevitable brimming glass of tuba, stained a dark-red color from the frequent applications of the betel-chewing mouth.

Although the stream of commerce flows in a small way where the almighty 'suca duco is the medium of exchange, gossip is circulated freely; for without the telegraph or telephone, news travels fast in Filipinia. The withered hag, her scanty raiment scarcely covering her bony limbs, squatting upon the counter in the midst of guinimos, bananas, and dried fish, and spitting a red pool of betel-juice, will chatter the day long with the senora in the booth across the street. The purchaser should not feel delicate at seeing her bare feet in contact with the spiced bread that he means to buy, nor at the swarms of flies around the reeking mound of guinimos scraped up in dirty wooden bowls, and left in the direct rays of the sun.

Dogs, pigs, chickens, and children tumble in the dust. Dejected Filipino ponies, tethered to the shacks, are waiting for their masters to exhaust the tuba market. Down the lane a panting carabao, with a whole family clinging to its back, is slowly coming into town. Another, covered with the dust of travel, laden with bananas, hemp, and copra from a distant barrio, is being driven by a fellow in a nipa hat, straddling the heavy load. A mountain girl, bareheaded, carrying a parasol, comes loping in to the mercado on a skinny pony saddled with a red, upholstered silla, with a rattan back and foot-rest, cinched with twisted hemp.

At night the market-place is lighted up by tiny rush lights, burning cocoanut-oil or petrolia. Here, on a pleasant evening, to the lazy strumming of guitars, the village population promenades, young men in white holding each other's hands, and blowing out a cloud of cigarette smoke; senoritas, in their cheap red dresses, shuffling hopelessly along the road. One of the local characters is entertaining a street-corner audience with a droll song, while the town-crier, with his escort of municipal police, announces by the beating of a drum that a bandilla from the presidente is about to be pronounced.

Here you will find the Filipino in his natural and most playful mood, as easily delighted as a child. A crowd was always gathered round the tuba depot at the head of the mercado, where the agile climbers brought the beverage in wooden buckets from the tops of copra-trees. A comical old fellow, Pedro Pocpotoc (a name derived from chicken language), used to live here, and on moonlight nights, planting his fat feet on the window-sill, like a droll caricature of Nero, he would sing Visayan songs to the accompaniment of a cheap violin. A talkative old baker lived a short way down the street with his three daughters. They were always busy pounding rice in wooden mortars with long poles, thus making rice-flour, which they baked in clean banana-leaves and sweetened with brown sugar molded in the shells of cocoanuts.

Sometimes a Moro boat would drop into the bay, and the strange-looking savages in their tight-fitting, gaudy clothes would file through town with spices, bark, and cloth for sale. From Bohol came the curious thatched bancas, with their grass sails and bamboo outriggers, with cargoes of pottery, woven hats, bohoka, and rattan. On the fiesta days, Subanos from the mountains brought in strips of dried tobacco, ready to be rolled up into long cigars, camotes, coffee-berries, chocolate, and eggs, and squatted at the entrance to the cockpit in an improvised mercado with the people from the shore, who offered clams and guinimos for sale.

And once a month the town would be awakened by the siren whistle of the little hemp-boat from Cebu. This whistle was the signal for the small boys to extract the reluctant carabao from the cool, sticky wallow, and yoke him to the creaking bamboo cart. Then from the storehouses the fragrant picos of hemp would be piled on, and the longsuffering beast of burden, aided and abetted by a rope run through his nose, would haul the load down to the beach. While naked laborers were toiling with the cargo, carrying it upon their shoulders through the surf, the Spanish captain and the mate, with rakishly-tilted Tam o'Shanter caps, would light their cigarettes, stroll over to Ramon's warehouse where the hemp was being weighed, and, seated on sour-smelling sacks of copra, chat with old Ramon, partaking later of a dinner of balenciona, chicken and red-peppers, cheese and guava.

Much of the village life centers around the river. Here in the early morning come the girls and women wrapped in robes of red and yellow stripes, and with their hair unbound. In family parties the whole village takes a morning bath, the young men poising their athletic bodies on an overhanging bank and plunging down into the cool depths below, the children splashing in the shallow water, and the women breast-deep in the stream, washing their long hair.

Here also, during the morning hours, the women take their washing. Tying the chemise below the arms, they squat down near the shore and beat the wet mass with a wooden paddle on a rock. Meanwhile the children build extensive palaces of pebbles on the bank; the carabaos, up to their noses in the river, dream in the refreshing shade of overhanging trees. The air is vocal with the liquid notes of birds, and fragrant with the heavy scent of flowers. A leaf-green lizard creeps down on a horizontal trunk. The broad leaves of abaca rustle in the breeze; the graceful stalks of bamboo crackle like tin tubes. Around the bend the water ripples at the ford. At evening you will see the tired men from the mountains, bending under heavy loads of hemp, wade through the shallows to the cavern shelter of the banyan-tree. Through the dense mango-grove comes the faint sound of bells. The puk-puk bird hoots from the jungle, and the black crows settle in the lofty trees.

The covered bridge that spans the river near the mouth is a great thoroughfare. Neither the arch nor pier is used in its construction; it is anchored to the shore by cables. It is not a very rigid bridge, and sways considerably when one is crossing it. Even the surefooted ponies step a little gingerly over the loose beams that form the floor. A curious procession is continually passing,—families moving their worldly goods on carabaos, the dogs and children following; hombres on ponies, grasping the stirrups with their toes; a padre with his gown caught up above his knees, riding away to some confession; mountain people traveling in single file, and girls with trays of merchandise upon their heads.

Down where the nipa jungle thickens, fishing bancas are drawn up on the shore; and near by in a cocoanut-grove the old boatmaker lives. The hull of the outlandish boat that he is carving is a solid log. When finished, with its black paint, nipa gunwale, bamboo outriggers, and rat-lines made of parasitic vines, it will put out from port with a big gamecock as a mascot, rowed with clumsy paddles to the rhythm of a drum, its helpless grass sails flopping while the sailors whistle for the wind. These boats, although they can not tack, have one advantage—they can never sink. They carry bamboo poles for poling over coral bottoms. In a fair breeze they attain considerable speed; but there is danger in a heavy sea of swamping. When drawn up on shore they look like big mosquitoes, as the body in proportion to the rigging seems quite insignificant.

The little fishing village is composed of leaning shacks blown out of plumb by heavy winds. Along the beach on bamboo racks the nets are hanging out to dry. At night the little fleet puts out for Punta Gorda, where a ruined watch-tower—a protection against Moro pirates—stands half hidden among creeping vines. The nets are floated upon husks of cocoanut, and set in the wild light of burning rushes. While the men are working in the tossing sea, or venturing almost beyond sight of land, the women, lighting torches, wade out to the coral reef and seine for smaller fish among the rocks. Early the following morning, while the sea is gray, the fishermen will toss their catch upon the sand. The devil-fish are the most popular at the impromptu market, where the prices vary according to the run of luck.

The town was laid out by the Spaniards in the days when Padre Pedro was the autocrat and representative of Spanish law. The ruins of the former mission and the public gardens are now overgrown with grass. Sea-breezes sweep the rambling convent with its double walls, tiled courtyard, and its Spanish well. The new church, never to be finished, but with pompous front, illustrates the relaxing power of Rome. Goats, carabaos, and ponies graze on the neglected plaza shaded with widespreading camphor-trees. The two school buildings bearing the forgotten Spanish arms are on the road to ruin and decay; no signs of life in the disreputable municipio; the presidente probably is deep in his siesta, and the solitary guard of the carcel is busily engaged in conversation with the single prisoner.

The only remains of Spanish grandeur in the village are the two ramshackle coaches that are used for hearses at state funerals. Most of the larger houses are, however, in repair, although the canvas ceilings and the board partitions seem to be in need of paint. These houses occupy the center of the town. They are of frame construction, painted blue and white. The floors are made of rosewood and mahogany; the windows fitted with translucent shell. Storehouses occupy the first floor, while the living rooms are reached by a broad flight of stairs. A bridge connects the dining-room with the kitchen, where the greasy cook, often a Moro slave, works at a smoky fire of cocoanut-husks on an earth bottom, situated in an annex to the rear.

A walk through the main street leads past a row of native houses, built on poles and shaded by banana-trees. You are continually stepping over mats spread out and covered with pounded corn, while pigs and chickens are shooed off by the excitation of a piece of nipa, fastened to a string and operated from an upper window of the house. A small tienda opens from each house, with frequently no more than a few betel-nuts on sale. The front is decorated with the faded strips of cloth or paper lamps left over from the last fiesta, while the skeleton of a lamented monkey fixed above the door acts as a charm to keep away bad luck. A parrakeet swings in the window on a bamboo perch, and in another window hangs an orchid growing from the dried husk of a cocoanut. Under the house the loom is situated, where the women weave fine cloth from pina and banana fibers—and the wooden mortar used for pounding rice. After the harvest season it is one of the Visayan customs to inaugurate rice-pounding bees. Relays of young men, stripped for work, surround the mortar, and, to the accompaniment of guitars, deliver blows in quick succession and with gradually increasing speed, according to the measure of the music.

In the cool shade of the ylang-ylang tree a native barber is intent upon his customer. The customer sits on his haunches while the operation is performed. When it is finished, all the hair above the ears and neck will be shaved close, while that in front will be as long as ever. The beard will not need shaving, as the Filipino chin at best is hardly more aculeated than a strawberry. The hair, however, even of the smallest boys grows for some distance down the cheeks. The Filipino, when he does shave, takes it very seriously, and attacks the bristles individually rather than collectively.

You will not remain long in a Filipino town without the chance of witnessing a native funeral. A service of the first class costs about three hundred pesos; but for twenty pesos Padre Pedro will conduct a funeral of less magnificence. The padre, going to the house of mourning where the band, the singers, and the candle-bearers are assembled, engineers the pageant to the church. The dim interior will be illuminated by flickering candles burned in memory of the departed soul. Before the altar solemn mass is held, intensified by the deep tolling of a bell. Led by three acolytes in red and white, with silver crosses, the procession moves on to the cemetery on the outskirts of the town. The padre sheltered by a white umbrella, reads the Latin prayers aloud. A small boy swings the smoking censer, and the singers undertake a melancholy dirge. The withered body, with the hands crossed on the breast, clothed all in black, is borne aloft upon a bamboo litter, mounted with a black box painted with the skull and bones, and decked with candles. Women in black veils with candles follow, mumbling prayers, the words of which they do not understand.

The cemetery is surrounded by a coral wall, commanded by a gate that bears a Latin epigram. The graves, as indicated by the mounds of dirt, are never very deep, and while a few are guarded by a wooden cross, forlornly decorated by a withered bunch of flowers, most of the graves receive no care at all. There may be one or two vaults overgrown with grass and in a bad state of repair. Around the big cross in the center is a ghastly heap of human bones and grinning skulls—grinning because somebody else now occupies their former grisly beds, the rent on which has long ago expired.

To the Visayan mind, death is a matter of bad luck. It is advisable to hinder it with anting-antings and medallions; but when it comes, the Filipino fatalist will take it philosophically. To the boys and girls a family death is the sensation of the year. It means to them nine days of celebration, when old women gather at the house, and, beating on the floor with hands and feet, put up a hopeless wail, while dogs without howl dismally and sympathetically. And at the end of the nine days, the soul then being out of purgatory, they will have a feast. A pig and a goat will be killed, not to speak of chickens—and the meat will be served up with calabash and rice; and visitors will come and look on while the people eat at the first table; and the second table and the third are finished, and the viands still hold out. But these are placed upon the table down below, where hoi polloi and the lame, blind, and halt sit down and eat. And back of all this superficiality lies the great superstitious dread by means of which the Church of Rome holds such authority.

I got to know the little village very well—to join the people in their foolish celebrations and their wedding feasts. I was among them when the town was swept by cholera; when, in their ignorance, they built a dozen little shrines—just nipa shelters for the Holy Virgin, decorated with red cloth and colored grass—and held processions carrying the wooden saints and burning candles.

Then the locusts came, and settled on the rice-fields—a great cloud of them, with whirring wings. They rattled on the nipa roofs like rain. The children took tin pans and drums and gave the enemy a noisy welcome. But the rains fell in the night, and the next morning all the ground was strewn with locusts trying heavily to fly. The ancient drum of the town-crier ushered in the day of work, and those who took this opportunity to pay their taxes gathered at the municipio—about a hundred ugly-looking men. They were equipped with working bolos, with their blades as sharp as scythes for cutting grass, and, looking at them, you were forcibly reminded of another day, another army with a similar accouterment. Even the presidente went barefooted as he gave directions for the work. Some were dispatched for nipa and bamboo, while others mowed the grass around the church. Another squad hauled heavy timbers, singing as they pulled in unison.

On Sunday mornings a young carabao was killed. The meat hacked off with little reference to anatomy was hung up in the public stall among the swarms of flies. Old women came and handled every piece, and haggled a good deal about the price. Each finally selected one, and swinging it from a short piece of cane, carried it home in triumph. Morning mass was held at the big simbahan, where the doleful music of the band suggested lost souls wailing on the borders of Cocytus or the Stygian creek. Young caballeros dressed in white, the concijales with their silver-headed canes and baggy trousers, and the "taos" in diaphanous and flimsy shirts that they had not yet learned to tuck inside, stood by to watch the senoritas on their way to church. The girls walked rather stiffly in their tight shoes; but as soon as mass was over, shoes and stockings came off, and the villagers relaxed into the bliss of informality.

I learned, when I last went to La Aurora, that Felicidad was going to be married; that the banns had been announced last Sunday in the church. The groom to be, Benito,—or Bonito as we called him on account of his good looks,—had recently returned from college in Cebu, bringing a string of fighting cocks, a fonografo, and a piebald racing pony. "When he sent me the white ribbon," said Felicidad, "I was surprised, but mamma said that I was old enough to marry him—I was fourteen—and that the matter had been all arranged. And so I wore the ribbon in my hair, and also wrote my name Felicidad beneath his on the card that he had sent. And after that, when we went walking, the duena was unnecessary."

She confessed naively to a serenade under her balcony, of which I seem to have retained a hazy memory. And so the usual pig and goat were roasted, and the neighbors' boys came in to help. The bride, with orange-blossoms in her hair, the daintiest kid slippers on her feet, and dressed in a white mist of pina, rode away in the new pony cart, the only one in town. The groom was dressed in baggy trousers, with a pink shirt and an azure tie. Most of the presents came from Chino Santiago's store; but the best one was a beautiful piano from Cebu.

After the service in the church, a feast was held upstairs in the bride's house. Ramon, the justice of the peace, the padre, Maestro Pepin, all the concijales, and the presidente were invited, and the groom owned up that he had spent his last cent on the refreshments that were passed around. It is the custom in the poorer families for the prospective groom to bond himself out for a certain length of time to the bride's father, or even to purchase her with articles of merchandise. A combination of commercial interests was the result, however, of the marriage of Bonito and Felicidad.



Chapter IX.

The "Brownies" of the Philippines.

How would you like it, not to have a Fourth of July celebration, or a Christmas stocking, or a turkey on Thanksgiving-day? The little children of the Philippines would be afraid of one of our firecrackers—they would think it was another kind of "boom-boom" that killed men. A life-sized turkey in the Philippines would be a curiosity, the chickens and the horses and the people are so small. The little boys and girls do not wear stockings, even around Christmas-time, and Santa Claus would look in vain for any chimneys over there. The candy, if the ants did not get at it first, would melt and run down to the toes and heels of Christmas stockings long before the little claimants were awake. Of course, they do not have plum-puddings, pumpkin-pies, and apples. All the season round, bananas take the place of apples, cherries, strawberries, and peaches; and boiled rice is the only kind of pumpkin-pie they have.

The fathers and mothers of the little Brownie boys and girls are very ignorant. Most of them can not even write their names, and if you asked them when the family birthdays came they would have to go and ask the padre. Once, when I was living at the convent, a girl-mother, who had walked in from a town ten miles away, came up to register the birth of a new baby in the padre's book. She stood before the priest embarrassed, digging her brown toes into a big crack in the floor. "At what time was the baby born?" was asked. "I do not know," she answered, "but it was about the time the chickens were awake."

It is a lucky baby that can get goat's milk to drink. Their mothers, living for the most part on dried fish and rice, are never strong enough to give them a good start in life. It is a common sight to see the tiny litter decorated with bright bits of paper and a half-dozen lighted candles, with its little, waxen image of a child, waiting without the church door till the padre comes to say the funeral services.

In that far-distant country but a small number of children ever have worn pretty clothes—only a tiny shirt; and they are perfectly contented, as the weather never gets uncomfortably cold. Their mothers or their older sisters carry them by placing them astride the hip, where they must cling tight with their little, fat, bare legs. They are soon old enough to run around and play; not on the grass among the trees, but in the dust out in the street. Their houses, built of nipa and bamboo, do not set back on a green lawn, but stand as near to the hot, dusty street as possible. To get inside the houses, which are built on posts, the babies have to scramble up a bamboo ladder, where they might fall off and break their necks. At this age they have learned to stuff themselves with rice until their little bodies look as though they were about to burst. A stick of sugar-cane will taste as good to them as our best peppermint or lemon candy. All the boys learn to ride as soon as they learn how to walk. Saddles and bridles are unnecessary, as they ride bareback, and guide the wiry Filipino ponies with a halter made of rope. The carabao is a great friend of Filipino boys and girls. He lets them pull themselves up by his tail, and ride him into town—as many as can make room on his back, allowing them to guide him by a rope run through his nose.

I do not think that many of the children can remember ever having learned to swim. The mothers, when they take their washing to the river, do not leave the little ones behind; and you can see their glistening brown bodies almost any morning at the riverside among the nipa, the young mothers beating clothes upon a rock, the carabaos up to their noses in the water, chewing their cuds and dreaming happy dreams. The boys can swim and dive like water-rats, and often remain in the river all day long.

The girls, when about five years old look very bright. Their hair is trimmed only in front (a good deal like a pony's), and their laughing eyes are very brown and mischievous. Most of them only wear a single ornament for a dress—a "Mother Hubbard" of cheap cotton print which they can buy for two pesetas at the Chino store. The boys all wear long trousers, and, at church or school, white linen coats, with military collars, which they call "Americanas," The girls do not wear hats. They save their "Dutchy" little bonnets, with the red and yellow paper flowers, for the fiesta days. They wear white veils on Sundays when they go to mass. The boys' hats often have long brims like those that we wear on the farm. They also have felt Tam o'Shanter caps, which they affect with quite a rakish tilt.

Playthings are scarce in Filipinia. The boys and girls would be delighted with a cheap toy cart or drum. The dolls are made of cotton cloth, with painted cheeks, and beads for eyes, dressed up in scraps of colored pina cloth in imitation of fine senoritas. Kite-time and the peg-top season come as in America. The Filipino kites are built like butterflies or birds, and sometimes carry a long beak which is of use in case of war. Kite-fighting is a favorite amusement in the islands, where the native boys are expert in the art of making and manipulating kites. Among the other games they play is one that an American would recognize as "tip-cat," and another which would be more difficult to recognize as football. This is played with a light ball or woven framework of rattan. The ball is batted from one player to another by the heel. The national pet is neither dog nor cat; it is a chicken and the grown-up people think almost as much of this unique pet as the children do.

Music comes natural to the Filipinos. Their instruments are violins, guitars, and flutes. The boys make flutes of young bamboo-stalks which are very accurate, and give out a peculiar mellow tone.

Fiesta-days and Sundays are the great events in Filipinia. On Sunday morning the young girls, in their white veils and clean dresses, go to mass, and, making the sign of the cross before the church, kneel down upon the bare tiles while the service is performed. The church to them is the magnificent abode of saints and angels. The wax images and altar paintings are the only things they have in art except the cheap prints of the saints and Virgin, which they hang conspicuously in their homes. Pascua, or Christmas week, is a great holiday, but it is very different from the Christmas that we know. The children going to the convent school are taught to sing the Spanish Christmas carols, and on Christmas eve they go outdoors and sing them on the streets in the bright starlight. Their voices, although untrained, are very delicate and sweet. The native music, which they often sing, like all the music of the southern isles, is very melancholy, often rising to a hopeless wail. On the last day of school the padre will distribute raisins, nuts, and figs, which are the only Christmas presents that the boys and girls receive. At the parochial schools they are taught to do their studying aloud, and always to commit the text to memory. If memory should fail them in a crisis, they would be extremely liable to have their ears pulled by the priest, or to be made to kneel upon the floor with outstretched arms, thus making the recitation somewhat of a tragedy; but there are also prizes for the meritorious. One book includes the whole curriculum—religion, table manners, grammar, "numbers," and geography—arranged in catechisms of convenient length. The boys are separated from the girls in school and church, and I have very seldom seen them play together in their homes. During the long vacation they must spend most of their time at work out in the rice-fields under the hot sun. So they would rather go to school than have vacation.

With the new schools and the American schoolteachers a great opportunity has come to the young people of the Philippines. New books with beautiful illustrations have been introduced, new songs, and a new way of studying. It would amuse you if you were to hear them read. "I do not see the pretty bird" they would pronounce, "Ee doa noat say day freety brud." The roll-call also sounds a good deal different from that in our own schools, where we have our Williams, Johns, and Henrys; but the Filipino names are very pretty (mostly names of Spanish saints), Juan, Mariano, Maximo, Benito, and Torribio for boys; Carnation, Bernarda, and Adela for the girls. The boys especially are very bright, and they are learning rapidly, not only grammar and arithmetic, but how to play baseball and tag and other games that make the child-life of America so pleasant.



Chapter X.

Christmas in Filipinia.

While you are in a land of starlight, frost, and sleighbells, here the cool wind brushes through the palms and the blue sea sparkles in the sun. "In every Christian kind of place" it is the time of Christmas bells and Christmas masses. Even at the Aloran convent—about the last outpost of civilization (only a little way beyond live the wild mountain folk—sun-worshipers and the Mohammedans) the padre has prepared a treat of nuts and raisins for the boys and girls—somewhat of a Christmas cheer even so far across the sea. They have been practicing their Christmas songs, Ave Maria and the "Oratorio," which they will sing around the streets on Christmas eve. The schoolboys have received their presents—dictionaries, sugared crackers, and perfumed soap—and now that their vacation has begun, their little brown heads can be seen bobbing up and down in the blue sea. Their Christmas-tree will be the royal palm; and nipa boughs their mistletoe.

Last Christmas in the provinces I spent in Iloilo at a hostel kept by a barefooted Spanish landlady, slovenly in a loose morning-gown and with disheveled hair, who stored the eggs in her own bedroom and presided over the untidy staff of house-boys. As she usually slept late, we breakfasted without eggs, being limited to chocolate and cakes. The only option was a glass of lukewarm coffee thinned to rather sickening proportions with condensed milk. Dinner, however, was a more elaborate affair, consisting of a dozen courses, which began with soup and ended with bananas or the customary cheese and guava. The several meat and chicken courses, the "balenciona"—boiled rice mixed with chicken giblets and red peppers—and the bread, baked hard and eaten without butter, was washed down with a generous glass of tinto wine. A pile of rather moist plates stood in front of you, and as you finished one course an untidy thumb removed the topmost plate, thus gradually diminishing the pile.

The dining-room was very interesting. A pretentious mirror in a tarnished gilt frame was the piece de resistance. The faded chromos of the royal family, the Saints, and the Enfanta were relieved by the brilliant lithographs presenting brewers' advertisements. A majestic chandelier, considerably fly-specked, but elaborately ornamented with glass prisms, dropped from the frescoed ceiling, and a cabinet containing miscellaneous seashells, family photographs, and starfish occupied one corner of the room.

There was a Christmas eve reception at the home of the "Dramatic Club," where the refreshments of cigars and anisette and bock beer were distributed with liberal hand. The Filipino always does things lavishly. The evening was devoted to band concerts—the municipal band in the pavilion rendering the Mexican waltzes, "Over the Waves," "The Dove," and other favorites, while the "upper ten" paraded in the moonlight under the mimosa-trees—serenades under the Spanish balconies, and carol-singing to the strumming of guitars. The houses were illumined with square tissue paper lanterns of soft colors. The public market was a fairyland of light. The girls at the tobacco booths offered a special cigarette tied with blue ribbon as a souvenir of the December holidays. A mass at midnight was conducted in the venerable church. As the big bronze bells up in the belfry tolled the hour the auditorium was filled with worshipers—women in flapping slippers and black veils; girls smelling of cheap perfumery and cocoanut-oil, in their stiff gauze dresses with the butterfly sleeves; barefooted boys and young men redolent of cigarettes and musk. A burst of music from the organ in the loft commenced the services, which were concluded with the passing of the Host and a selection by the band. The priest on this occasion wore his gold-embroidered chasuble; the acolytes, red surplices and lace.

The streets next morning—Christmas-day—were thronged with merry-makers. Strangers from the mountain tribes, wild, hungry-looking creatures, had strayed into town, not only for the excitement of the cockpit, but to do their trading and receive their share of alms, which are distributed by all good Catholics at this season of the year.

Here on the corner was a great wag in an ass's head, accomplishing a clumsy dance for the amusement of the crowd. Around the cockpit chaos was the order of the day. The eager fighting-cocks, in expectation of the combat, straining at their tethers, published to the world their lusty challenges. The "talent," with delicious thrills, were hefting favorite champions, and hastening' to register their wagers with the bank.

The cock-fights lasted the entire week; at the end of that time the erratic "wheel of fortune" had involved in ruin many an enthusiast who had unfortunately played too heavily the losing bird.

A strolling troop of actors came to visit us that night. They carried their own scenery and wardrobe with them, and the children who were to present the comedy were dressed already for the first act. As they filed in, followed by a mob of ragamuffins who had seen the show a dozen times or more without apparent diminution of enjoyment, the stage manager arranged the scenery and green-room, which consisted of a folding screen. The orchestra, with bamboo flutes, guitars, and mandolins, took places on a bench, where they began the overture, beating the measure with bare feet and with as much delight as though they were about to witness the performance for the first time. The proprietor informed us that the entertainment was to be a comedy of old Toledo. It was somewhat of a Cyrano de Bergerac affair; one of the principals, concealed behind the "leading man," using his own arms for gestures, sang his representative love for the senorita in the Spanish dancer's costume. The castanet dance was repeatedly encored, especially by those familiar with the program, who desired that we appreciate it to its full extent. The actors in this dance were dressed as Spanish buccaneers are popularly supposed to dress, in purple breeches buttoned at the knee, red sashes, and gold lace....

Last night at our own church three paper lanterns, shaped like stars and representing the "three wise men," at the climax of the mass were worked on wires so that they floated overhead along the auditorium, and finally came to rest above the altar, which had been transformed into a manger, the more realistic on account of the pigs, ducks, and chickens manufactured out of paper that had been disposed around.

To-day three men in red are traveling from house to house with candles followed by an attendant with a bell, ringing away the evil spirits for a year. The councilmen in snowy blouses and blue pantaloons, with their official canes, are making their official calls, and Padre Pedro in his pony cart has been around to visit his parishioners. The band, equipped with brand new uniforms and instruments, is playing underneath the convent balcony. Their duties during the festivities are strenuous; for they must serenade the residence of every magnate in the town, receiving contributions of pesetas, cigarettes, and gin.

This afternoon we made our round of calls, for every family keeps open house. A number of matinee balls were in session, where the natives danced "clack-clack" around the floor to the monotonous drone of home-made instruments. Our friends all wished us a "Ma-ayon Pascua" or "Feliz Pascua," for which "Merry Christmas" they expected some remembrance of the day. Our efforts were rewarded by innumerable gifts of cigarettes and many offers of tanduay and gin. At one place we experimented with a piece of "bud-bud," which is (as its name implies) a sweet-meat made of rice paste mixed with sugar. The hams with sugar frosting, and the cakes flavored with native limes, and cut in the shape of the "Ensanguined Heart," were more acceptable. At one house we received a cake made in the image of a lamb, with sugar ringlets representing fleece. At our departure, "many thanks, sir, for the visit," and a final attempt to get rid of another cigarette. It is in bad taste to refuse. A Filipino host would feel offended at your not accepting what he offered. He would feel as though discrimination were implied.

At night after the cock-fight one droll fellow brought around a miniature marionette theater, of which he was the proud proprietor. While his assistant blew a bamboo flute behind the scenes, the puppets danced fandangoes and played football in a very lifelike manner. Seated on an empty cracker-box in front, surrounded by the ragged picaninnies, sat Dolores, with her sparkling eyes, lips parted, and her black hair hanging loose,—oblivious to everything except the marionettes.

The star attraction was preceded by applause. The number was announced by those familiar with the exhibition as a "Moro combat," and as the assistant struck a harrowing obligato on an old oil-can, the Moros appeared with fighting campalons and barbarous-looking shields. The crowd expressed its approbation in wild howls. The first two rounds were rather tame. "Afraid! Afraid!" exclaimed the crowd, but presently the combatants began to warm up to their work and to make frantic lunges at each other at the vital spot. This was the time of breathless and instinctive pressing forward from the back rows. Somebody cried out, "Cebu!" or "Down in front!" and then again, "Patai!" which means "dead." One of the warriors at this cue flopped supine on the stage, and the suppressed excitement broke. The victor, not content with mere manslaughter, plied his sword so energetically as quickly to reduce his victim to a state of hash. At this point his Satanic majesty, the curtain manager, saw fit to intervene, and with a long spear he successfully probed the limp remains, completing the assassination. I had not known until then what a young barbarian Dolores was.

The last attraction of our Christmas week was a genuine Mystery play, the Virgin Mary being represented by a girl in soiled white stockings and a confirmation dress. The Christ Child was a Spanish doll in a glass case. There were the three wise men—one in a long beard and a pink mask, and the others in gold braid and knickerbockers—more like dandies than philosophers. "Joseph" was splendid, with a shepherd's crook and a sombrero. Adoration before the manger was the theme that was developed in a series of ballets danced by the children to a tambourine and castanet accompaniment. At the conclusion of the play, the little actors in their starry costumes, Joseph and the Virgin (carrying the Babe), the three philosophers, and the musicians and the army of admiring followers, filed out into the moonlight, and as the sweet music of the "Shepherds' Song" diminished gradually, they disappeared within a shadowy grove of palms.



A Christmas Feast.

When Senor Pedro gave his Christmas feast, he went about it in the orthodox way. That is, he began at midnight Christmas eve. The Christmas pig we were to have had, however, disappointed us—and thereby hangs a tale.

Came Senor Pedro early in the morning of the twenty-fourth, and "In the mountains," Senor Pedro said, "runs a fat pig." Usa ca babui uga dacu! A regular feast of a pig running at large near the macao woods on the slope beyond Mercario's hemp-fields!

Nothing would do but that I buckle on my Colt's—a weapon that I had done much destruction with among the lesser anthropoids in the vicinity. Then we set out radiantly for the hills, with Senor Pedro leading and a municipal policeman with us to take home the pig. We soon arrived at the pig's stamping grounds. We had not long to wait. There was a snapping of the underbrush, and "Mr. Babui" appeared upon the scene. His great plank side and sagging belly was as fair a mark as any sportsman could have wished. His greedy little eyes were fixed upon the ground where he was rooting for his Christmas dinner.

Bang! The bullet from the army Colt's sped true. Our pig, flat on his back, was squealing desperately, and his feet were pawing the air as last as though he had been run by clockwork and had been suddenly released from contact with the ground. Then the municipal policeman went to pick him up. But lo, a miracle! Our Christmas pig, inspired by supersusine terror on the approach of the dire representative of law, regained his legs, and before we could recover from our astonishment, had scudded away with an expiring squeak like that emitted from a musical balloon on its collapse. We never found the pig. He was just mean enough to die in privacy.

But there was to be some compensation. What, though our Christmas dinner had escaped? I managed to bring down a monkey that for some time had been chattering and scolding at us from a tree, and with this substitute—a delicacy rare to native palates—marched triumphantly back to the town.

Exactly at midnight the senores took their seats around the board. The orchestra was stationed in an elevated alcove in the next room. On the benches sat the women, from the dainty Juliana in her pink cotton hosiery and white kid slippers to the old witch Paola, the town scold. We knives or forks. Heaping platefuls of rice were served with the stewed meat—cut in small pieces that "just fit the hand," and cooked with vegetables. At my request the monkey had been roasted whole. "All la same bata" (baby) cried my host, and sure, I never felt more like a cannibal in all my life. I shuddered later when, the ladies at the table, Juliana gnawed the thigh-bone of the little beast with relish.

Senor Pedro kept the orchestra supplied with gin, with the result that what they lacked in accuracy they made up for in enthusiasm. In the dim room, lighted only by the smoky "kinkes," we could see the hungry eyes of those awaiting the third table—the retainers and the poor relations. On the boards below was spread a banquet of rice and tuba for the multitude.

The party broke up with a dance, and as the pointers of the Southern Cross faded from the pale sky, the happy merrymakers filed off to their beds. They had so little in this far-off corner of the world, and yet they were content. Had not the stars looked down upon them through the tropic night? Had not the blue sea broken in phosphorescent ridges at their feet? And didn't they have the Holy Virgin on the walls to smile a blessing on their little scene of revelry? O, it was Christmas over all the world! And on this day at least the white man and the "little brown brother" could shake hands over mutual interests.



Chapter XI.

In a Visayan Home.

The shutters of the house across the street were closed. Under the balcony, near where the road was strewn with scarlet blossoms from the fire-tree, carpenters were hammering and sawing busily. Shaped by the antiquated bandsaw and the bolos, a rude coffin gradually assumed its grim proportions. A group of schoolboys, drawn by curiosity, looked on indifferently while keeping up a desultory game of tag. Upstairs, the women, dressed in the black veils of mourning, shuffling noiselessly around, were burning candles at the "Queen of Heaven's" shrine. They murmured prayers mechanically—not without a certain reverence and awe—to usher the departing soul into the land beyond. A smoky wall-lamp, glimmering near the door, illuminated the black crucifix above the bed. In the dim candle-light vague shadows danced on the white walls.

The priest had heard the last confession of Jose Pilar. Not that Jose had been one of the padre's friends. In fact, he was suspected during the past year of having been a secret agent of Aglipay, the self-consecrated Bishop of Manila, and the target of the accusation and invective that the Church of Rome is so proficient in. The recent rulings of the order had abolished the confession fee; but the long road was uncertain and the dangers great. The padre rubbed his hands as he went out. He had received a "voluntary" contribution for his services, with the assurance that a series of masses would be ordered by the widow of Jose Pilar. Through the stiff palms, the cold sea, gray as steel, washed the far-distant shores of lonely islands, and the red glow of the setting sun had died away.

The padre thought about the plump goats and the chickens in the new stockade. The simple people brought their chickens to the convent, denying themselves all but the fish and rice. The mothers weaned their puny brats on rice; they stuffed them with it till their swollen paunches made a grotesque contrast with their skinny legs. Childbirth is one of the minor incidents of Filipinia. Where is the house that doesn't swarm with babies, like the celebrated residence of the old woman in the shoe? When one of these sparrows falls, the little song that dies is never missed.

How many times had Father Cipriano climbed the rickety ladder to the nipa dwellings, entering the closed room where the patient lay upon the floor! A gaping crowd of yokels stood around, while the old woman faithfully kneaded the abdomen. The native medicaster, having placed the green leaves on the patient's temples, would be brewing a concoction of emollient simples. The open shirt disclosed upon the patient's breast the amulet which had been blessed by Padre Cipriano, and was stamped with a small figure of a saint. The holy father smiled as he reflected how they spent their last cent for the funeral ceremonies, while the doctor's fee would be about a dozen eggs. And even now that death had come to one not quite so ignorant and simple as the rest, the funeral celebrations would be but the more elaborate. Not every one who could afford a coffin in Malingasag! And as the padre crossed the plaza he lighted a cigarette.

It was with feelings of annoyance that he saw before the side door of the church a tiny litter cheaply decorated with bright paper and red cloth. The yellow candles threw a fitful light over the little image on the bier. It was the image of a child, a thing of wax, clothed in a white dress, with a tinsel crown upon its head. One of the sacristans was drumming a tattoo upon the bells. The padre motioned him to discontinue. He would have his gin-and-water first, and then devotions, lasting twenty minutes. After devotions he could easily dispose of the small child. So the two humble women waited in patience at the door, and the cheap candles sputtered and went out before the good priest could find time to hurry through the unimportant funeral services that meant to him only a dollar or two at best in the depreciated silver currency. Already night was overshadowing the palm-groves as the pathetic little group filed out and trudged across the rice-pads toward the cemetery.

The Filipinos regard the American doctors with suspicion. When a snakebite can be cured by a burnt piece of carabao horn, or when the leaves or bits of paper stuck upon the temple will relieve the fever or the dysentery, what is the use of drugs and medicines and things that people do not understand? Once, out of the kindness of his heart, an army doctor that I knew, prescribed a valuable ointment for a child afflicted by a running sore. The child was in a terrible condition, as the sore had eaten away the flesh and bone, leaving a large hole under the lower lip through which the roots of the teeth were all exposed. The parents had not washed the child for weeks. They actually believed that bathing was injurious when one was sick. The doctor, giving them directions how to use the medicine, asked them, as an experiment, what fee he might expect. He knew well that if the priest had asked this question, they would eagerly have offered everything they had. So he was not surprised when they replied that they were very poor, and that they did not think the service was worth anything. The doctor turned them away good naturedly, but they returned the next day with the medicine, reporting that undoubtedly it was no good, because, forsooth, the child had cried when they applied it! As a peace-offering they brought a dozen miserable bananas.

Slinging a tablet around his neck, a "valuable remedy against the pest," the Filipino thinks that he is reasonably secure against disease, and that if he becomes afflicted, it is the result of some transgression against heaven. I happened to receive a startling proof, however, of its efficacy when the padre's house-boy, rather a bright young fellow, made me a present of his "remedy" and died the next day of cholera. Still I have seen the "anting-anting," which is supposed to render the wearer bullet-proof, pierced with the balls of the Krag-Jorgensen and stained with blood. Although the Visayans show considerable sympathy toward one when he is sick, the native dentist cutting out the tooth with a dull knife, we would consider almost too barbarous to practice in America. The Igorrotes have a way of driving out the fever with a slow fire; but between this Spartan method and Visayan ignorance the choice is difficult. No wonder that the people drop off with surprising suddenness. Your laundryman or baker fails to come around some morning, and you ask one of your neighbors where he is. The neighbor, shifting his wad of buya to the other cheek, will gradually wake up and answer something ending in "ambut." "Ambut" is a convenient word for the Visayan, as it means "don't know," and even if he is informed, the Filipino often is too lazy or indifferent to explain. You finally discover some one more accommodating who replies: "Why, haven't you heard? He died the other day."

Sulkiness, one of the characteristics of the girls and boys, develops into surliness in men and billingsgate in women. And I have no doubt that little Diega, the sulkiest and prettiest of the Visayan beauties, in a few years will be gambling at the cock-fights, smoking cigars, and losing her money every Sunday afternoon at Mariana's monte game. Vulgarity with them goes down as wit, and the Visayan women make a fine art of profanity. It is always the woman in a family quarrel who is most in evidence. And even the delicate Adela when the infant Richard fell downstairs the other day, cried, "Mother of God!" which she considered to be more appropriate than "Jesus, Marie, Josep!"

On entering one of the common houses, you would be astonished at the pitiable lack of furnishings. The floor is made of slats of split bamboo, tied down with strips of cane. The walls are simply the dried nipa branches, fastened down with bamboo laths. The only pictures on the walls are the cheap prints of saints, the "Lady of the Rosary," or illustrations clipped together with the reading matter from some stray American magazine. The picture of a certain popular shoe manufacturer is sometimes given the place of honor near the crucifix. If any attempt at decoration has been made, the lack of taste of the Visayans is at once apparent. For the ancient fly-specked chromo of the "Prospect of Madrid" is as artistic in their eyes as though the advertisement of a certain cracker factory did not adorn the margin. The undressed pillars that support the house, run through the floor. The nipa shutters that protect the windows are propped open, making heavy awnings, and permitting a free circulation of the breeze. There are no ceilings in these houses, and the entire framework of the roof is visible. A cheap red curtain, trimmed with lace, is draped before the entrance to the sleeping-room. While in the better frame-constructed residences an old Spanish tester bed with a cane bottom may be seen in this apartment, here only the straw mats and the cotton bolsters are to be found. A basket hanging from a bamboo spring serves as a cradle for the baby, but it is a pretty lucky baby that indulges in this luxury, as most of the children, spreading the mats upon the floor at night, pillow their heads upon the bolsters, ten in a row, and go to sleep. A marble-topped table and a few chairs, formally arranged as though in preparation for a conclave, are the features of the larger homes; but generally the furniture consists of a long bench, a wooden table, and a camphorwood box, which contains the family treasures, and the key to which the woman of the house wears in her belt—a symbol of authority.

On climbing the outside stairway to the living-rooms you find your passage blocked by a small fence. In trying to step over this you nearly crush a naked baby, and a yellow dog snaps venomously at your heels. You enter the main room, where the pony-saddle and the hemp-scales may be stored. The Filipinos are great visitors, and you will find a ring of old men squatting upon the benches like so many hens, chewing the betel-nut and nursing their enormous feet. Some fellow in the corner, with a chin like a sea-urchin, strums a tune monotonously on an old guitar. Your host arises, offers you a glass of gin and a cigar or cigarette, and asks you to "lincoot dinhi." So, at his invitation, you sit down, and are expected to begin the conversation. Such conversation is enlightening and runs somewhat like this:

"Yes, thank you, I am very well; Yes, we are all well. Everything is well.... The beer of the Americans is very good.... Whisky is very strong.... The Filipino whisky is not good for anything.... It is very dull here. It is not our custom to have pretty girls.... What is your salary? All the Americans are very rich. We are all very poor.... The horses in America are very large. Why?... If the people want me, I will be elected mayor. But let them decide.... After a while will you not let me have some medicine? The wife has beri-beri very bad."

The family arises with the chickens. For the Filipino boy no chores are waiting to be done. The ponies and the dogs are never fed. Nobody seems to care much for the animals. With the exception of the fighting-cock, chickens, dogs, pigs, and carabaos are left to forage for themselves. The pigs and dogs are public scavengers, and the poor curs that howl the night long, till you wish that they were only allowed to bay the moon in daytime, stalk the barren shores or rice-pads in the hope of preying upon carrion. A Filipino dog, though pinched and starved, has not the courage even to catch a young kid by the ear, and much less to say "boo" to a goose. It is surprising how the ponies, feeding upon the coarse grass, ever become as wiry as they do. Evidently, to the Filipino, animals do not have feelings; for they often ride their ponies furiously, though the creature's back may be a running sore. In using wooden saddles they forget to place a pad beneath them, and the saddle thus becomes an instrument of torture.

After the morning bath in the cool river, a cup of chocolate or a little bowl of rice will serve for breakfast. Then the women attend morning mass and kneel for half an hour on the hard tiles. It is still early in the day, and the fantastic mountains, with their wonderful lights and shadows, are just throwing off the veil of mist. Now, in the clear light, the huge, swelling bosom of the hills, the densely-timbered slopes beyond, stand out distinctly, like a picture in a stereoscope. The heavy forests, crowded with gigantic trees, seem like a mound of bushes thickly bunched. Off to the left rises a barren ridge, that might have been the spine of some old reptile of the mezozoic age; and in the center a Plutonic ampitheater—the council-chamber of the gods—is swept by shadows from the passing clouds, or glorified for a brief moment by a flood of light.

The boys are then sent out to catch one of the ponies for their father, who is going to inspect his hemp plantation on the foot-hills. His progress will at first be rather slow; for he is a great chatterbox, and if he finds some crony along the road, he will dismount and drink a glass of tuba with him, or dicker with him over an exchange of fighting cocks. The birds are then brought out, and the two men squat down, with the birds in hand, and set them pecking at each other to display their fine points. But the string of hombres, with their bolos slung about their waists, making for the mountains, reminds the planter that he must be getting on. His fields are let out to these fellows, who will pay him a proportion of the hemp which they can strip. Although the process of preparing hemp is primitive and slow, the green stalk being stripped by an iron comb, the laboring man can prepare enough in one day to supply his family with "sow sow" for an entire week. If he would work with any regularity, especially in the wild hemp-fields, he would soon be "independent," and could buy the hemp from others, which could be sold at a profit to the occasional hemp-boats that come into port. The only capital required is one or two bull-carts and carabaos, a storehouse, and sufficient rice or money to secure his first invoice of hemp. The men who carry it in from the mountains, either on their own backs or on carabaos, sell it for cash or its equivalent in rice at the first store.

On Saturdays, the boys go to the mountains to buy eggs. Their first stop is the hacienda on the outskirts of the town—a large, cool nipa house, with broad verandas, situated in a grove of palms. Around the veranda are the nests of woven baskets where the chickens are encouraged to lay eggs. Sucking a juicy mango, they proceed upon their journey through a field of sugar-cane. They stop perhaps at the rude mill where the brown sugar is prepared and molded in the shells of cocoanuts. They quench their thirst here with a stick of sugar-cane, and, peeling the sweet stalk with their teeth, they disappear beyond the hill. Now they have reached a wonderful country, where the monkeys and the parrots chatter in the trees. They can set traps for little parrots with a net of fine thread fastened to the branches. Only a little further on is a small mountain barrio, where naked, lazy men lie in the sun all day, and the women weave bright-colored blankets on their looms. Returning with their handkerchiefs tied full of eggs, the boys reach home about sundown. The thought of being late to supper never worries them; the Filipino is notoriously unpunctual at meals. The boys will cook their own rice, and spread out the sleeping-mat wherever the sunset finds them. One shelter is as good as another, and they just as often sleep away from home as in their own beds. Their parents never worry about the children, for they know that, like Bo-peep's sheep, they will come back some time, and it doesn't make much difference when.

Early in April the rice-fields are flooded by the irrigation ditches that the river or the mountain streams have filled with water. A plow made of the notch of a tree is used to break the soil. A carabao is used for this work, as it is impossible to mire him even in the deepest mud. The boys and girls, together with the men and women, wearing enormous sun-hats—in the crown of which there is a place for cigarettes and matches—and with bared legs, work in the steaming fields throughout the planting season. As the rice grows taller, the crows are frightened away by strings of flags manipulated from a station in the center of the paddy. Scarecrows are built whenever there are any clothes to spare; but as the Filipino even utilizes rags, the scarecrow often has to go in shocking negligee. After the harvest season, when the entire village reaps the rice with bolos, the dry field is given over to the ponies, and the carabaos, and the white storks, who never desert their burly friend, the carabao, but often are seen perching on his back. The work of husking and pounding the crop then occupies the village.

If you should be invited in to dinner by a Filipino family, you would expect to eat boiled rice and chicken. They would place a cuspidor on one side of your chair to catch the chicken bones, which you would spit out from your mouth. The food would be cooked in dishes placed on stones over an open fire. The cook and the muchachos never wash their hands. They wash the dishes only by pouring some cold water on them and letting them dry gradually. The cook will rinse the glasses with his hand. How would you like to eat a chicken boiled with its pin-feathers on, or find a colony of red ants in your soup? The poorer families seldom go through the formality of serving meals. As soon as the rice and guinimos are cooked, the children and their parents squat around the bowl and help themselves, holding a lump of salt in one hand, and using the other for a fork or spoon. The women do what little marketing needs to be done, and though the Filipino acts in most things lavishly, the women can drive close bargains, and will scold like ale-wives if they find the measure short even by so much as a single guinimo.