ceremonial the ship’s officers invited us to partake of sandwiches and lemonade in the dining-room. The refreshments were considerably better than the paper, which was neither wise nor witty, but abounded in those commonplace personalities to which the imagination of amateur editors usually soars.
About 2 A.m., when yawns were growing harder and harder to conceal, the light made its appearance. I counted three flashes and went below.
Next morning, we were hugging the coast of Albay abreast the volcano of Mayon, said to be the most perfect volcanic cone in the world. It seems to rise straight from the sea; with its perfectly sloping sides and a summit wreathed in delicate vapors, it is worthy of the pride with which it is regarded by the Filipinos.
Then we entered the Strait of San Bernardino, between Luzon and Samar, and passed for a day through a region of isles. The sea was glassy save when a school of porpoises tore it apart in their pursuit of the flying fish. On its deep sapphire the islands seemed to float, sometimes a mere pinnacle of rock, sometimes a cone-shaped peak timbered down to the beach where the surf fell over. Toward evening, when the breeze freshened slightly, we seemed almost to brush the sides of some of these islets, and they invited us with sparkling pools and coves, with beaches over which the sea wimpled, and with grassy hillsides running out into promontories above cliffs of volcanic rock. Thatched villages nestled in the clefts of the larger islands, or a fleet of paraos might be drawn up in a curving bay. And, yonder in the golden west, shimmering, dancing, in rosy-tinted splendor, more islands beckoned us to the final glory of a matchless day—clouds heaped on clouds, outlined in thin threads of gold, and drawing, in broad shafts of smoky flame, the vapors of an opal sea. At that time I had not seen the famous Inland Sea of Japan, but I have since passed through it twice, and feel that in beauty the Strait of San Bernardino has little to yield to her far-famed neighbor.
Next day we crept up the coast of Batangas, and when I came on deck the second morning they told me that the island on our left was Corregidor, and that Manila was three hours’ sail ahead. It was of no use going into a trance and coming up in imagination with Dewey, because he did not come our way. The entrance to Manila Bay is rather narrow, and Corregidor lies a little to one side in it like a stone blocking a doorway. The passage on the left entering the bay is called Boca Chica, or Little Mouth; that to the right is called Boca Grande, or Big Mouth. Dewey entered by the Boca Chica, and we were in Boca Grande.
View of Corregidor
By and by a cluster of roofs, church towers, docks, and arsenals took form against the sea. A little later we could discern the hulks of the Spanish fleet scattered in the water, and several of our own fighting craft at anchor. This was Cavite. There, too, around a great curve of eight or nine miles, lay Manila, a mass of towers, domes, and white-painted iron roofs peeping out of green. Behind loomed the background of mountains, without which no Filipino landscape is ever complete.
By eleven o’clock we had dropped anchor and the long voyage was over. Counting our ten days in Honolulu, we lacked but three of the forty days and forty nights in which the Lord fasted in the wilds. It would be injustice to the Buford’s well-filled larder, however, to intimate that we fasted. Our food was good, barring the ice cream, which the chef had a weakness for flavoring with rose water.
The first launch that came out after the doctor’s brought a messenger from the Educational Department with orders to us teachers to remain aboard till next day, when a special launch would be sent for us. So all day we watched our friends go down over the side, and waved farewells to them, and made engagements to meet on the Luneta. The launches and lighters and cascos swarmed round us, the cargo derricks groaned and screeched, the soldiers gathered up knapsack and canteen and marched solemnly down the ladder. Vessels steamed past us or anchored near us, while we hung over the rail, gazing at Manila, so near and yet so far. After dinner we betook ourselves to the empty afterdeck and stared down the long promenade—alas! resembling the piazza of a very empty hotel!—and peopled it with the ghosts of those who late had sat there. They had gone out of our lives after a few brief days of idleness, but they would take up, as we should, the work of building a nation in a strange land and out of a reluctant people. Some were fated to die of wounds, and some were stricken with the pestilence. Most of them are still living, moving from army post to army post. Some are still toiling in the remotenesses of mountain villages; others are dashing about Manila in the midst of its feverish society. Some have gone to swell the American colonies in Asiatic coast towns. A few have shaken the dust of the Philippines forever from their feet, and are seeking fame in the home land and wooing fortune in the traffic of great cities or in peaceful rural life. Some, perhaps, may read these lines, and, reading, pause to give a tender thought to the land which most Americans revile while they are in it, but which they sentimentally regret when they have left it.
Eight long years have slipped by since that night, and in that time a passing-bell has tolled for the Philippines which we found then. Who shall say for many a year whether the change be for better or for worse? But the change has come, and for the sake of a glamour which overlay the quaint and moribund civilization of the Philippines of that day I have chronicled in this volume my singularly unadventurous experiences.
The afterdeck was empty, and the promenade was the haunt of ghosts, but across the circle of gloom we could see a long oval of arc lights with thousands of little glow-worms beneath, which we knew were not glow-worms at all, but carriage lamps dashing round the band stand; and as if he divined our sentimental musings, the second steward took heart and not only played but sang his favorite air from “Cavalleria.”
Our First Few Days in the City
The Pasig River, With Its Swarm of House-boats—Through Manila into the Walled City—Our First Meal—A Walk and a Drive in Manila—The Admirable Policemen—We Superintend the Preparation of Quarters for Additional Teachers—That Artful Radcliffe Girl.
Our guide from the Educational Department appeared about eleven o’clock the next day, which happened to be Sunday. We and our trunks were bundled into a launch, and we left the Buford forever.
We were familiar with the magazine illustrations of the Pasig long before our pedagogic invasion of Manila, but we were unprepared for the additional charm lent to these familiar views by the play of color. The shipping was as we had imagined it—large black and gray coasters in the Hong-Kong and inter-island trade, a host of dirty little vapors (steamers) of light tonnage, and the innumerable cascos and bancas. The bancas are dug-out canoes, each paddled by a single oarsman. The casco is a lumbering hull covered over in the centre with a mat of plaited bamboo, which makes a cave-like cabin and a living room for the owner’s family. Children are born, grow up, become engaged, marry, give birth to more children—in short, spend their lives on these boats with a dog, a goat, and ten or twelve lusty game-cocks for society.
Swarming Craft on the Pasig River, Manila
The cascos lie along the bank of the river ten deep; every time a coasting steamer wants to get out, she runs afoul of them in some way, and there is a pretty mess. It always seems to turn out happily, but the excitement is great while it lasts, and it is apparently never dulled by repetition.
We swept up the Pasig with Fort Santiago and the ancient city wall on the right; and, on the left, warehouses, or bodegas, a customhouse with a gilded dome, and everywhere the faded creams and pinks of painted wooden buildings. Some of the roofs
