for that. The media-peseta was hers—given in the presence of witnesses—and she somewhat ostentatiously blew smoke rings when she found the reformer’s eye fixed upon her.
At Iloilo we picked up the word tao, which means “man,” especially “laboring man,” for the Filipinos usually fall back upon the Spanish words caballero and señor to designate the fortunate individuals whose hands are unstained with toil. We had picked up the vernacular of the street carromata in Manila. This is very simple. It consists of sigue, para, derecho, mano, and silla. For the benefit of such readers as do not understand pidgin Spanish, it may be explained that these words signify, respectively, “go on,” “stop,” “straight ahead,” “to the right,” and “to the left.” The words mano and silla mean really “hand” and “saddle”; I have been told that they are linguistic survivals of the days when women, rode on pillions and the fair incubus indicated that she wished to turn either to the side of her right hand or to the skirt side.
By this time we had begun to understand—just to understand in infinitely small proportion—what the old resident Americans meant when they joked about the Philippines as a mañana country. When we inquired when a boat would be in, the reply was “Seguro mañana”—“To-morrow for sure.” When would it leave? “Seguro mañana.” Nothing annoys or embarrasses a Filipino more than the American habit of railing at luck or of berating the unfortunate purveyor of disappointing news, or, in fact, of insisting on accurate information if it can be obtained. They are ready to say anything at a minute’s notice. A friend of mine in Ilocos Norte once lost a ring, and asked her servant if he knew anything about it. The boy replied instantly, “Seguro raton,” which is an elliptical form of “Surely a rat ate it.” The boy had not stolen the ring, but he jumped at anything to head off complaint or investigation.
Time is apparently of no value in the Philippines. On the second day of our stay in Iloilo the Treasurer sent up two pieces of furniture for our use, a wardrobe and a table. They were delivered just before lunch, about ten o’clock, and the Treasurer would not be at home to sign for them till nearly one. When I came in from a shopping expedition, I found eight or ten taos sitting placidly on their heels in the front yard, while the two pieces of new furniture were lying in the mud just as they had been dumped when the bearers eased their shoulders from the poles. The noonday heat waxed fiercer, and the Treasurer was delayed, but nobody displayed any impatience. The men continued to sit on their heels, to chew their betel nut, and to smoke their cigars, and, I verily believe, would have watched the sun set before they would have left. In an hour or so the Treasurer appeared, and settled the account, the taos picked up the furniture and deposited it in the house, and the object lesson was over.
In spite of shopping, time hung somewhat heavy on our hands at Iloilo. We made few acquaintances, for there were few civilian women, and the army ladies, so we were informed, looked askance at schoolteachers, and had determined that we were not to be admitted into “society.” The army nurses asked us to five o’clock tea, and we went and enjoyed it. They were, for the most part, gentlewomen born, and the self-sacrifice of their daily lives had accentuated their native refinement. I have few remembrances more pleasant than those of the half-hour we spent in their cool sala. As for the tea they gave us and the delicious toast, mere words are inadequate to describe them. We became sensible that the art of cooking had not vanished from the earth. After the garbanzos and the bescochos and the guava jelly, how good they tasted!
In the course of two or three days we were notified that the vapor General Blanco would leave for Capiz on Saturday at five P.M., and some ten or twelve of us, destined for the province of that name, made ready to depart. I was the only woman in the party, but our Division Superintendent, who was personally conducting us and who was having some little difficulty with his charges, assured me that I was a deal less worry to him than some of the men were. I told him that I was quite equal to getting myself and my luggage aboard the Blanco. I had employed a native servant who said he knew how to cook, and I was taking him up to Capiz with an eye to future comfort. Romoldo went out and got a carabao cart, heaping it with my trunks, deck chair, and boxes. I followed in a quilez, and we rattled down to the wharf in good time.
The General Blanco was not of a size to make her conspicuous, and I reflected that, if there had been another stage to the journey and a proportional shrinkage in the vessel, it surely would have had to be accomplished in a scow. Although by no means palatial, the Buford was a fair-sized, ocean-going steamer. The Francisco Reyes was a dirty old tub with pretensions to the contrary; and the General Blanco—well, metaphorically speaking, the General Blanco was a coal scuttle. She was a supercilious-looking craft, sitting at a rakish angle, her engines being aft. She had a freeboard of six or seven feet, and possessed neither cabin nor staterooms, the space between the superstructure and the rail being about three feet wide. You could stay there, or, if you did not incommode the engineer, you could go inside and sit on a coal pile. There was a bridge approached by a rickety stair, and I judged that my deck chair would fill it completely, leaving about six inches for the captain’s promenade. Behind the superstructure there was a sort of after-deck, nearly four feet of it. When my trunks and boxes had been piled up there, with the deck chair balancing precariously atop, and with Romoldo reclining luxuriously in it, his distraught pompadour was about on a level with the top of the smokestack.
I really didn’t see any room aboard for me, and sat down on a hemp bale to consider. Shortly after, the Division Superintendent arrived, accompanied by several young men. He looked blank, and they whistled. Then he went on board to talk with the captain, while his assembled charges continued to ornament the hemp bales. Filipinos of all ages and sizes gathered round to stare and to comment.
At last the Division Superintendent came back with the information that the Blanco would tow up a lorcha which was lying a little distance down the river, and that we should find her a roomier and cooler means of transportation than the steamer. “Lorcha” is the name given to the local sailing vessels. Our lorcha was about sixty feet long, and, according to one of the teachers who had once seen Lake Michigan, was “schooner rigged.” There was a deck house aft, which was converted into a stateroom for me. There were two bunks in it, each of which I declined to patronize. Instead I had my steamer chair brought over, and found there was plenty of room for it. There were little sliding windows, which with the open door afforded fairly decent ventilation. But the helm was just behind the deck house, and the helmsman either sat or stood on the roof, so that all night his responses to the steersman on the Blanco interfered with my sleep. Then, too, they kept their spare lanterns and their cocoanut oil and some coils of rope in there. At intervals soft-footed natives came in, and I was never certain whether it was to slay me or to get some of their stores. Once a figure blocked out the starlight at one of the windows, and I heard a rustling and shuffling on the shelf where my food tins were piled. So I said, “Sigue! Vamos!” and the figure disappeared.
The men opened their army cots on the forward deck, where the big sail cut them off from the rest of the ship. The next morning they reported a fine night’s rest. I could not make so felicitous a report, for my stateroom was considerably warmer than the open air, and a steamer chair, though comfortable by day, does not make an acceptable bed.
We breakfasted from our private stores, and I found myself longing for hot coffee, instead of which I had to drink evaporated milk diluted with mineral water. The day was sunny, the heat beat fiercely off the water, and I burned abominably. Near noon we sighted a town close to the coast, and knew that we were nearing our journey’s end.
We skirted the horn of a crescent-shaped bay, found a river’s mouth, and entered. Here at least was the tropical scene of my imagination—a tide-swollen current, its marshy banks covered with strange foliage, and innumerable water lanes leading out of it into palmy depths. Down these lanes came bancas, sometimes with a single occupant paddling at the stern, sometimes with a whole family sitting motionless on their heels. Once we passed the ruins of what had been a sugar mill or a bino factory—probably the latter. Then the Blanco, puffing ahead, whistled twice, we rounded a curve and came full upon the town.
Though subsequent familiarity has brought to my notice many details that I then overlooked, that first impression