a court where ferns and palms were growing, and were ushered into a room containing a number of four-poster beds. We were to obtain our food at a neighboring restaurant, whither we soon set out under guidance. The street was narrow, and all the houses had projecting second floors which overhung the sidewalk. Box-like shops on the ground floor were filled with cheap, unattractive-looking European wares, with here and there a restaurant displaying its viands, and attracting flies. We recognized the bananas and occasionally a pineapple, but the other fruits were new to us—lanzones in white, fuzzy clusters like giant grapes; the chico, a little brown fruit that tastes like baked apple flavored with caramel; and the atis, which most natives prise as a delicacy, but which few Americans ever learn to like.
We had been introduced to the alligator pear, the papaya, and the mango at Honolulu, but we were still expecting strange and wonderful gastronomic treats in our first Philippine meal.
We entered a stone-flagged lower hall where several shrouded carriages would have betrayed the use to which it was put had not a stable odor first betrayed it. Thence we passed up a staircase, broad and shallow, which at the top entered a long, high-ceiled room, evidently a salon in days past. It had fallen to baser uses, however, and now served as dining-room. One side gave on the court, and another on an azotea where were tropical plants and a monkey. It was a bare, cheerless apartment, hot in the unshaded light of a tropical noonday. The tables were not alluring. The waiters were American negroes. A Filipino youth, dressed in a white suit, and wearing his black hair in a pompadour, was beating out “rag time” at a cracked old piano.
“Easy is the descent into Avernus!” But there was consolation in the monkey and the azotea, though we could neither pet the one nor walk on the other. However, we were the sort of people not easily disconcerted by trifles, and we sat down still expectant.
The vegetables were canned, the milk was canned, the butter was canned, and the inference was plain that it had made the trip from Holland in a sailing vessel going around Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope. As for the fruits, there was but one fruit, a little acid banana full of tiny black seeds. With guava jelly it was served for dessert. Our landlord, an enterprising American, had been so far influenced by local custom that he had come to regard these two delicacies as a never inappropriate dessert. So long as we continued to “chow” with him, so long appeared the acid, flavorless banana and the gummy, sticky jelly.
In justice to Manila it must be said, however, that such conditions have long since been outlived. Good food and well-served American tables are plentiful enough in Manila to-day. The cold-storage depots provide meats and butter at prices as good as those of the home land, if not better. Manila is no longer congested with the population, both native and American, which centred there in war times. There is not the variety of fruits to be found in the United States, but there is no lack of wholesome, appetizing food.
We returned to the Escuela Municipal, and, after a nap, dressed and went out for a walk. The narrow streets with overhanging second stories; the open windows with gayly dressed girls leaning out to talk with amorous swains on the pavement below; the swarming vehicles with coachmen shouting “Ta-beh”; and the frailes (friars)—tall, thin, bearded frailes in brown garments and sandals, or rosy, clean-shaven, plump frailes in flapping white robes—all made a novel scene to our untravelled eyes. Mounting a flight of moss-grown steps, we found ourselves on top of the wall, whence we could look across the moat to the beautiful avenue, called, on the maps of Manila, the Paseo de Las Aguadas, but familiarly known as the Bagumbayan. West India rain-trees spread their broad branches over it, and all Manila seemed to be walking, riding, or driving upon it. It was the hour when everybody turns his face Luneta-ward. Seized with the longing, we too sent for a carriage.
Our coachman wore no uniform, but was resplendent in a fresh-laundered white muslin shirt which he wore outside his drill trousers. He carried us through the walled city and out by a masked gate to a drive called the Malecon, a broad, smooth roadway lined with cocoanut palms. On the bay side the waters dashed against the sea wall just as Lake Michigan does on the Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. But the view across the bay at Manila is infinitely more beautiful than that at Chicago. To the left stretches a noble curve of beach, ending with the spires and roofs of Cavite and a purple line of plateau, drawn boldly across the sky. In front there is the wide expanse of water, dotted with every variety of craft, with a lonely mountain, rising apparently straight from the sea, bulking itself in the foreground a little to the left. The mountain is in reality Mt. Marivales, the headland which forms the north entrance to Manila Bay, but it is so much higher than the sierra which runs back from it that it manages to convey a splendid picture of isolation. The sun falls behind Marivales, painting a flaming background for mountains and sea. When that smouldering curtain of night has dropped, and the sea lies glooming, and the ships of all nations swing on their anchor chains, there are few lovelier spots than the Luneta. The wind comes soft as velvet; the surf croons a lullaby, and the little toy horses and toy victorias spin up and down between the palms, settling at last around the turf oval which surrounds the bandstand.
The Luneta, Manila
Here are soldiers in clean khaki on the benches; officers of the army and navy in snow-white uniforms; Chinamen in robes of purple or blue silk, smoking in their victorias; Japanese and Chinese nursemaids in their native costumes watching their charges at play on the grass; bareheaded American women; black-haired Spanish beauties; and native women with their long, graceful necks rising from the stiff folds of azure or rose-colored kerchiefs. American officers tower by on their big horses, or American women in white drill habits. There are droves of American children on native ponies, the girls riding astride, their fat little legs in pink or blue stockings bobbing against the ponies’ sides. There are boys’ schools out for a walk in charge of shovel-hatted priests. There are demure processions of maidens from the colegios, sedately promenading two and two, with black-robed madres vainly endeavoring to intercept surreptitious glances and remarks. There are groups of Hindoos in turbans. There are Englishmen with the inevitable walking-sticks. There are friars apparently of all created orders, and there is the Manila policeman.
As I recall those early impressions, I think the awe and respect for the Manila police was quite the strongest of all. They were the picked men of the army of invasion, non-commissioned officers who could show an honorable discharge. Size must have been taken into consideration in selecting them, for I do not remember seeing one who was of less than admirable proportions. Soldierly training was in every movement.
There was none of the loafing stride characteristic of the professional roundsman. They wore gray-green khaki, tan shoes, tan leather leggings, and the military cap; and a better set up, smarter, abler body of law preservers it would be difficult to find. The “machinery of politics” had not affected them, the instinct of the soldier to do his duty was strong in them, and they would have arrested Governor William H. Taft himself as gleefully as they would have arrested a common Chinaman, had the Governor offered sufficient provocation.
We enjoyed that first night’s entertainment on the Luneta as do all who come to Manila, and I must confess that time has not staled it for me. It is cosmopolitan and yet typically Philippine. Since that day the fine Constabulary Band has come into existence, and the music has grown to be more than a mere feature of the whole scene. The concert would be well worth an admission fee and an hour’s confinement in a stuffy hall. Enjoyed in delightful pure air with a background of wonderful beauty, it is a veritable treat.
On the following day we had our interview with the Superintendent of Public Instruction. He informed us that in the course of a week the transport Thomas would arrive, carrying some five hundred or more pedagogues. He suggested that, as we were then drawing full pay, we might reimburse the Government by making ourselves useful at the Exposition Building, which was being put in order to receive them.
So to the Exposition Building we betook ourselves, and for several days made herculean efforts to induce the native boys and Chinese who were supposed to clean it up to do so properly. We also helped to put up cots and to hang mosquito nettings, and at night we lay and listened to the most vociferous concert of bull frogs, debutante frogs, tree toads, katydids, locusts,