Chapter XXXI: Letter XXIX: An Evening on the River—rival Bishops

ILOILO, _May 17, 1905_.

We went out on the river one evening last week at the invitation of two members of the boating club, which has its being in a _nipa_ hut on the bank above the town, off the Molo road. It was a regular little native hut, with a rickety ladder up to the door, and boats slung underneath—a delightfully primitive place.

We went out in a boat and a canoe, making our way up-stream in the light of an exquisite sunset, all bright-red gold behind the mountains, and the river between its banks of low bushes like a path of pink crystal. The air was deliciously cool, or seemed so to us, and we rowed up a mile or more before landing at the bank on the farther shore from the town, where there were some fishing huts in a grove of palms.

We beached the boats on the mudbank, and then walked about through the trees till we came to some huts, looking wonderfully picturesque in the long stripes of pink light and mauve shadows amongst the tall trees. Here a number of half-naked Filipinos were loafing about, very civil, kindly people, and one was a very skinny old woman, who took a deep and unbounded interest in me, and asked all sorts of extraordinary questions about me.

The cocoanut trees in the grove bore many large green nuts in clusters at the top, like big green footballs, and as we were all rather thirsty, we asked if the hut folk would get one down for us to drink from.

With much politeness and amazing alacrity, one of the younger men ran up a tree, putting his toes in the notches in the bark, and not falling and breaking his neck by yet another Philippine miracle. He came down with a big green nut, such an enormous thing—the same in proportion to a cocoanut as we see them at home, as a green almond or walnut is to the nut in a shop. We asked him to open it for us, so he squatted down and chopped very deftly with a sort of sword which they call a _bolo_, and I fancy I may have mentioned it to you before. These _bolos_ are a variety of the Malay _kris_, and are made in all sorts of cruel shapes, often inlaid very beautifully, but I believe the most frequent form is simply that of a short, thick, curved sword, which they use with deadly effect in fighting, and with great skill in almost every other event in life.[8]

The little brown people stood round and looked at us while we watched the man with the _bolo_. He chopped with marvellous dexterity, slicing off the outer covering of soft green flesh, and then making a hole in the top of the tender unripe nut inside. The nut had a thin lining of transparent meat, and was full of pale green liquid, like slightly soapy water in appearance. This “milk” we drank out of a small wooden bowl produced by the old woman, a neat little vessel made out of half a cocoanut, all in the most approved style of the story books! The drink was refreshing enough, but sweet and sickly. Then the man split the nut open and made a clever little scoop with his _bolo_ out of a slice of bamboo which he picked up from the ground, and with this he shaved off some long strips of the white meat, of which we ate a good deal, but it was tough and tasteless.

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So the opening of a green cocoanut was the means of dispelling almost the last of my illusions about a Tropic Island! I have so often read about the nectar and ambrosia of the green nut, and the wonderful yarns of travellers who say there is no drink on earth like the green milk—one book I remember went so far as to compare the stuff favourably with lemonade! Perhaps it is all right if you have been shipwrecked and your mouth is full of sea water, but then I imagine so few people who write the descriptions can ever have had that advantage.

From the huts we went on till we came out upon wide, open mud-flats, where there were a great many salt pits, which fill with water when the tide rises, for the sea water stretches right up to this place and farther. The pits were surrounded by pumps, after the fashion of the _shadoofs_ on the Nile, and wells and all sorts of curious contrivances of bamboo, with long rows of pipes for drying the salt—it is marvellous what these people will do with bamboo. It was nearly dark by this time, and the mud-flats looked very weird and melancholy, the strange frames and poles appearing ghostly in the dusk.

We came out upon the river bank again and walked to the place where we had left the boats. On the way I picked some sprays of small pink blossoms which grow on big ragged bushes with thorns, and look like May, and smell like sweet currant. They look very pretty in a vase in the _sala_, and are the only flower I have yet brought home or had given to me, that has lasted for so long as twenty-four hours.

C—— has been having more trouble with the Customs, and this time over a boat he had to get from Hong Kong, as such a thing is not made and not to be had here. It is an ordinary boat for going out to the ships, and cost 40 _pesos_, but when C——, on being asked to value it, mentioned this sum to the Customs authorities, they exclaimed “Impossible!”

Unfortunately it happened that he could not produce a bill for the boat, as he had got it through an agent in Hong Kong, who charges it to his account with the Firm in Manila, and he had not even a bill of lading, as a friend had brought it from Hong Kong for him. The Customs flatly refused to take his word about the price, and sent for some local sages to value the boat. One of these worthies gave it as his opinion, off-hand, that it was absurd to say you could buy a boat like that for less than 60 _pesos_. Another said, “Probably ninety.” A third, “Sixty at the lowest.”

So the authorities, like Solomon, struck the happy medium, and charged C—— the duty (30 per cent.) on 80 _pesos_!!

And there is no redress, for the Firm’s accounts will not be settled till the end of the month, or even later, by which time the dues on the boat will have been paid long ago, and when once a receipt is given by the Government, no power but a special Act of Congress can get one cent of it refunded. Oh, and we know this to our cost! For, during all these months, we have not ceased from appealing, reappealing, and worrying tooth and nail about the extra £40 we had to pay for our wedding presents. I wish to goodness we had a “pull.” We should get it back in a week.

The tariffs here seem to be put on in an incomprehensible way. In a civilised old country it might help trade if there were an import tax against things the people could produce themselves, but the system here works out quite differently, for while a desire is being inculcated for things which the natives cannot and never will be able to produce, those articles are taxed at the same rate as they are in the most highly developed country full of manufactories. You will think I have become a regular blue-stocking when you read these long discourses! But you need not have any fears on that score, for I am only trying to describe to you the conditions under which we struggle for existence in one of the most fertile countries in the world, and these questions are of such vital and burning interest that I hear them discussed by the most unlikely and domesticated ladies!

What the newspapers call “Religious Circles” have been in a great state of excitement lately, as the Pope has sent a Cardinal Delegate to the Philippines to rouse the Orthodox to a sense of their peril from the _Iglesia Independiente_, the Aglipayanos. When I was in Manila, this prelate was there, an Irishman of the name of Agius. I saw him and his suite at the Governor’s reception, and people told me he was a very charming person. Now he is touring about the Philippines, and this week arrived here on a visit to the Bishop of Panay—an American, whose name I forget.

There were great ceremonies and processions, arches and welcomes on the arrival of the Cardinal. But the Aglipayanos did not let the occasion pass without comment, for they turned out in full force with counter-processions and, it must be confessed, with far larger crowds of followers.

The day before yesterday the Cardinal arrived in great state. He drove off to Jaro, and the road out to that town swarmed with priests, and little carriages dashing about full of mysterious, greasy-looking hangers-on in black coats and bowlers, the like of which no human eye has ever before seen this side of Suez.

The next day, yesterday, there was frantic excitement! The Filipino Archbishop arrived! With no official state, but greeted by an immense demonstration of crowds of _Independientes_, who went out to meet their pastor in decorated boats and launches, with bands playing, Chinese crackers popping about, and revolutionary marches with songs. He, also, went to Jaro, under more triumphal arches, with Welcomes, and one with his name, Monsignore Hijaldo, in huge red letters all across it.

We drove out to Jaro in the evening to see the fun, and were well rewarded, for the whole Plaza was as good as a play—far better than anything the Iloilo theatre could produce intentionally.

Jaro is a collection of rather fine old houses, of the prevailing two-storied pattern, but large and handsome, some of them with carved wooden ornamentations and balconies with pretty pillars. They stand round a very large green space, with a bandstand in the middle, which is the Plaza. At one side of the Plaza is the cathedral, a long, ugly building, like a stone tunnel, and alongside it is a smaller church, on much the same lines, which is the Aglipayano place of worship. Opposite the two, on the green Plaza, stands a handsome old grey stone belfry, thrown out of the perpendicular by earthquakes, and crumbling with decay. At each corner of the upper story is a huge white stone statue of a saint leaning forward with some giant emblem clasped in his or her arms—such a cumbersome, melancholy old edifice! We always stop by the belfry, when we drive into Jaro, to let the pony rest and crop the grass, which overflows liberally into the road, and five times out of six it happens that we are there when a small lamp is swung up over the cathedral door, and a couple of Filipino boys come across and go into the belfry to ring the Angelus, which they do by swinging themselves fearlessly about on the beams of the big bells.

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When we drove out yesterday evening, we first met landaus containing the Delegate and the Bishop of Panay bowing and smiling to right and left, and lifting up hands of benediction; with many priests, secretaries, and retainers, most of them very fat men with very white faces.

Then, on the other side of the water, in the suburb of La Paz, which is a big town in itself, we met the Aglipayanos—Aglipay himself and his followers—all brown, flat-faced Filipinos, dressed something like the R.C. priests, only with fantastically bent up hats, and driving in the native _quilezes_ or _calesas_.

In Jaro itself the fun was fast and furious, for both the churches had a great display of decorations outside—the _Independiente_ considerably embellished by a long covered way built out, of latticed bamboo with palm-branches lashed to it, and paper lanterns, and quantities of little flags.

Across the Plaza were the two houses, both blazing with lights and flowers, the balconies full of men in white suits and women in their smartest dresses. In front of each house a band was playing, as if no other music were within a hundred miles, and the din was awful—the constabulary brass band, which was serenading the Papal Delegate, or his house, smashing and braying Sousa Marches; while the Aglipayano mandolines, guitars, and violins twiddled and thumped steadily at “Hiawatha” and other Filipino airs.

To anyone blessed with a glimmering of humour you may imagine that the whole show was a source of pure delight, and we lingered quite late, driving up and down in the hope that there might be a speech or a row or something. But apparently peace, if not goodwill, was the motto, as, when we at last had to return home, we left all hands as contented and jolly as if the other fellows did not exist at all, or lived in another continent.

You must imagine all this in heat such as you have never felt, all the priests, devotees, and bandsmen limp and dripping, and the faces of the Filipinos like wet mahogany. We are in a chronic state of discomfort, too, ourselves, which makes the sight of the black and purple robes, the berettas, and the outfit of the secretaries and hangers-on a very tangible addition to our own discomfort. I “guess” the “Dallergit” wishes the “call” had “come right along” in the cool season!

I told you about the little love-birds which had been presented to me, I think? “I had a dove, and the sweet dove died” ... but my first lovebird did not die of grieving, for I found him one morning with a gash in his throat which looked very like the work of a bad cat. When the wee bird was dead and buried, the other little scrap did not seem to mind much at first, but presently took to having fits, and soon expired too.

I miss them very much, for they were dear little creatures, and such companions to me, with their sweet little chirping noises. People tell me it is very difficult to keep birds at all out here, as the little ants that swarm everywhere get under their feathers and worry them to death in a few hours.