Читать книгу A Woman's Impression of the Philippines - Mary H. Fee - Страница 7

Table of Contents

The Fish Market—We Are Treated to Poi—We Visit the Stores—Hawaiian Curiosities—The Southern Cross—Our Trip to the Dreadful Pali—The Rescue—The Flowers and Trees of Honolulu—The Mango Tree and Its Fruit.

My first impressions of Honolulu were disappointing. I had been, in my childhood, a fascinated peruser of Mark Twain’s “Roughing It,” and his picture of Honolulu—or rather my picture formed from his description of it—demanded something novel in foliage and architecture, and a great acreage of tropical vegetation. What we really found was a modern American city with straight streets, close-clipped lawns, and frame houses of various styles of architecture leaning chiefly to the gingerbread, and with a business centre very much like that of a Western town. Only after three or four days did the charm and individuality of Honolulu make themselves felt.

To leave the dock, we had to pass through the fish market, which looked like any other fish market, but seemed to smell worse. When we looked at the fish, however, we almost forgot the odors, for they were as many tinted as a rainbow. Coral red, silver, blue, blue shot with purple, they seemed to tell of sun-kissed haunts under wind-ruffled surfaces or of dusky caves within the underworld of branching coral. It is hard to be sentimental about fish, but for the space of two minutes and a half we quite mooned over the beauty fish of Honolulu.

Leaving the market, we came upon a ley woman who wanted to throw a heavy wreath of scented flowers about the neck of each of us at a consideration of twenty cents per capita. She was a fat old woman who used many alluring gestures and grinned coquettishly; but we were adamant to her pleadings, and seeing a street car jingling toward us—one of the bobtailed mule variety—we left her to try her wiles on a fresh group from our boat, and hailed the street car. As we entered, one passenger remarked audibly to another, “I see another transport is in,” which speech lowered my spirits fifty degrees. I hate to be so obvious.

Under that nightmare of threatened departure we went flying from place to place. In the first store which we entered we were treated to poi—a dish always offered to the stranger as a mark of hospitality—and partook of it in the national manner; that is, we stuck our forefingers in the poi, and each then sucked her own digit. Poi is made from taro root, and tastes mouldy. It is exceedingly nasty—nobody would want two dips.

The stores were just like those of the United States, and the only commercial novelties which we discovered were chains made of exquisitely tinted shells, which came from somewhere down in the South Seas, and other chains made of coral and of a berry which is hard and red and looks like coral. At the Bishop Museum, however, we found an interesting collection of Malaysian curios and products—birds, beasts, fishes, weapons, dress, and domestic utensils. Among the dress exhibits were cloaks made of yellow feathers, quite priceless (I forget how many thousand birds were killed to make each cloak); and among the household utensils were wooden bowls inlaid with human teeth. It was a humorous conceit on the part of former Hawaiian kings thus to compliment a defunct enemy.

The Pali, near Honolulu

There was a dance that night at the Hawaiian Hotel in honor of our passengers, most of whom attended, leaving me almost a solitary passenger aboard. Those happy sinners from Radcliffe went off in their best frocks. I lay in a steamer chair on the afterdeck, scanning the heavens for the Southern Cross. I counted, as nearly as I can remember, about eight arrangements of stars that might have been said to resemble crosses. Not one of them was it, however. Later, I made acquaintance with the Cross, and I must say it has been much overrated by adjective-burdened literature. It does not blaze, and it is lop-sided, and it is not magnificent in the least. It consists of five stars in the form of an irregular diamond, and it is not half so cross-like as the so-called False Cross.

Next morning the military band came down and gave us an hour’s concert on the promenade deck. We sat about under the awnings with our novels or our sewing or our attention. At the end they played the “Star Spangled Banner,” and we all stood up, the soldiers at attention, hat on breast. One of the passengers refused to take off his hat, so that we had something to gossip about for another hour.

In the afternoon we took a ride up Pacific Heights on the trolley car. Pacific Heights is a residence suburb where the houses are like those on the Peak at Hong Kong, clinging wherever they can get room on the steep sides of the mountain. The view of the city and of the blue harbor dotted with ships was beautiful. In the evening we went to a band concert in Emma Square, and on the third day made our memorable trip to the Pali.

We had been hearing of the Pali ever since we landed. It is a cliff approached by a gorge, whence one of those unpronounceable and unspellable kings once drove his enemies headlong into the sea. We could not miss a scene so provocative of sensations as this, so several of us teachers and an army nurse or two packed ourselves into a wagonette for the journey. We started bright and early, or as near bright and early as is possible when one eats in the second section and the first section sits down to breakfast at eight o’clock.

Our driver was a shrewd, kindly, gray-haired old Yankee, cherishing a true American contempt for all peoples from Asia or the south of Europe. He was conversational when we first started, but his evident desire to do the honors of Honolulu handsomely was chilled by a suggestion from one of the saints that, when we should arrive in the suburbs, he would let down the check-reins. The horses were sturdy brutes, not at all cruelly checked; but the saint could not rise superior to habit. Unfortunately she made the request with that blandly patronizing tone which in time becomes second nature to kindergartners. Its insinuating blandness ruffled our Jehu, who opined that his horses were all right, and that he could look after their comfort without any assistance. He did not say anything about old maids, but the air was surcharged with his unexpressed convictions, so that all of our cohort who were over thirty-five were reduced to a kind of abject contrition for having been born, and for having continued to live after it was assured that we were destined to remain incomplete.

We drove through the beautiful Nuuana Avenue with its velvet lawns, and magnificent trees, and then wound up the steep valley between the terraced gardens of the mountain-sides. Not a hundred yards away a shower drove by and hung a silver curtain like the gauze one which is used to help out scenic effects in a theatre; and presently another swept over us and drenched us to the skin. Half a dozen times in the upward journey we were well soaked, but we dried out again as soon as the hot sun peeped forth. We did not mind, but tucked our hats under the seats and took our drenchings in good part.

At last we arrived at a point where the road turned abruptly around a sharp peak, the approach to which led through a gorge formed by a second mountain on the left. We could tell that there was a precipice beyond, because we could see the remains of a fence which had been recently broken on the left, or outside, part of the road. The driver stopped some twenty-five or thirty yards outside the gorge, saying that he could approach no nearer, as the velocity of the wind in the cleft made it dangerous. Our subsequent experiences led me to doubt his motive in not drawing nearer, and to accredit to him a hateful spirit of revenge.

We alighted in another of those operatic showers, and made our way to the gorge, laughing and dashing the rain drops from our faces. We were not conscious of any particular force of wind, but no sooner were we within those towering walls of rock than a demon power began to tear us into pieces and to urge us in the direction of the broken fence. The first gust terrified us, and with universal feminine assent we clutched at our skirts and screamed.

The next blast sent combs and hairpins flying, drove our wet hair about our faces, and forced us to release our garments, which behaved most shockingly. I saw a kind of recess in the cliffs to the right under an overhanging shelf of rock, and, though it was approached by a mud puddle, made straight for it and in temporary quiet let go my threshing skirts and braided my hair. I could see our driver in the distance, pretending to look after his harness, and indulging in hyæna mirth at the figures we cut. Then, to make matters worse, there came a shout from the hidden road to the right, and, three abreast, a party of young civil engineers from our ship charged round the corner.

Most of our party sat down in their tracks, and a stifled but heartfelt moan escaped from more than one. I waded three inches deeper into the mud puddle and flattened myself against a wall of oozy rock with an utterly unfeminine disregard of consequences.

The men were of a thoroughly good sort, however, and, ignoring our plight, insisted on helping us round the corner. They said that, once we were out of the gorge and on the other face of the mountain, the strong draught ceased. So each woman took a frenzied grasp of her skirts, and, with an able-bodied man steadying her on each side, made the run and brought up safe on the other side. There did not seem to be much to see—nothing but the precipitous face of the cliff towering above us, the road cut out of it, winding steeply down to the right, and the shoulder of the left-hand peak running up into a cloud-swept sky. Below us was a floor of mist, swaying to unfelt airs, heaving, gray, and sad.

Just about this time a Chinaman arrived—one of the beast-of-burden sort—with two immense baskets swung across his shoulders on a bamboo pole. He made three ineffectual efforts to get round the point, but had to fall on his knees each time, as the wind threatened to sweep him too near the cliff. So the philanthropic youths went to his assistance as they had come to ours, and piloted him safely round the bend. We became so much interested in this operation and in the Chinaman’s efforts to express his thanks that we quite forgot our disappointment at the Pali’s unkind behavior. A sudden gleam of sunshine recalled us. The clouds which had been dripping down upon us were rent apart to reveal a long streamer of blue, and to give passage to a shaft of sunlight which drove resistlessly through the mist floor. The fog parted shudderingly, silently, and for a moment we looked down into a beautiful valley, green and with a thousand other tints and shades, and set in a great inward curve, beyond which the sea raced up in frothy billows to the clean white sands. Far beneath us as it was, we could detect the flashes on wet foliage; indeed, I could think of nothing but a cup of emerald rimmed with sapphire and studded with brilliants. For an all too brief space it quivered and shimmered under the sunburst, and then the mist floor closed relentlessly, the heavens grayed again, and another downpour set in.

We waited long, but the Pali declined to be wooed into sight again, nor am I certain that we were the losers thereby. The whole effect was so brief and vivid that our pleasure in it was greatly intensified. Longer vision might have brought out details which we missed, but it would have converted into the memory of a beautiful scene that which has remained a peep into fairyland.

Our return through the gorge was accompanied by all the original drawbacks. Our driver had released the check-reins of the horses, but he ostentatiously checked them up again as we appeared. He had entirely recovered his good humor, and contemplated our dishevelled appearance with secret glee.

The Pali has its good features, but it must be admitted there are drawbacks. Among the military people aboard there was a lady of uncertain age, and of a mistaken conception of what was becoming to her fading charms. She was gaunt, and leathery of skin, and she wore “baby necks” and elbow sleeves, and affected childish simplicity and perennial youth. On our first night out of Honolulu I happened to come around the corner of the promenade deck in time to observe one of the men passengers contemplating this lady, who stood at some distance from him, attired in a rather décolleté frock. The man’s attitude was a modified edition of that of the Colossus of Rhodes: He steadied a cigarette between his lips with the third and fourth fingers of his left hand, while his right hand was thrust into his trousers pocket. A peculiar expression lingered on his countenance—kind of struggle between a painful memory and a judicial estimate. He was so absorbed in his musings that he did not notice me, and he spoke aloud.

West Indian Rain-tree, or Monkey-pod Tree

“I knew she was thin,” he said, “but even with her low-necked dresses, I did not think that it was as bad as it is.”

I beat a retreat without attracting his attention, but I understood him, for I had seen him on the back seat of an army ambulance in the clutches of the perennially youthful lady, starting for the Pali.

We left Honolulu with the modified regret which always must be entertained when other lands are beckoning. The native custom of adorning departing friends with wreaths of flowers was followed, and some of our army belles were almost weighed down with circlets of blossoms cast over their heads by admiring officers of Honolulu. Once clear of the dock and out of eye range, they shamelessly cast these tokens away, and the deck stewards gathered up the perfumed heaps and threw them overboard. The favorite flowers used in these ley, or wreaths, were the creamy white blossoms with the golden centre from which the perfume frangipani is extracted. This flower is known in the Philippines as calachuchi. There were also some of the yellow, bell-shaped flowers called “campanilo,” and a variety of the hibiscus which we learned to call “coral hibiscus,” but which in the Philippines is known as arana, or spider.

The flowers of Honolulu and Manila seem very much alike. In neither place is there a wide variety of garden flowers, but there is an abundance of flowering shrubs and trees.

One quite common plant is the bougainvillaea, which climbs over trellises or trees, and covers them with its mass of magenta blossoms. The scarlet hibiscus, either single or double, and the so-called coral hibiscus grow profusely and attain the size of a large lilac bush. There is another bush which produces clusters of tiny, star-like flowers in either white or pink. It is called in the Philippines “santan,” but I do not know its name in Honolulu.

Catholic missionaries were instrumental in introducing into the Hawaiian Islands a tree of hardy and beautiful foliage which has thrived and now covers a great part of the mountain slopes. This is the algoroda tree, the drooping foliage of which is suggestive of a weeping willow. Then there is the beautiful West Indian rain-tree, which the Honolulu people call the monkey-pod tree, and which in the Philippines is miscalled acacia. Its broad branches extend outward in graceful curves, the foliage is thick but not crowded, and it is an ideal shade tree, apart from the charm of its blossoms of purplish pink.

The fire-tree and the mango are two others which are a joy to all true lovers of trees. The fire-tree is deciduous, and loses its leaves in December, In April or May, before the leaves come back, it bursts into bloom in great bunches of scarlet about the size of the flower mass of the catalpa tree. The bark is white, and as the tree attains the size of a large maple, the sight of this enormous bouquet is something to be remembered. When the leaves come back, the foliage is thick, and the general appearance of the tree is like that of a locust.

Among tropical trees, however, the most beautiful is the mango. Its shape is that of a sharply domed bowl. The leaves are glossy and thickly clustered. It is distinguishable at a long distance by its dignity and grace. But the mass of its foliage is a drawback, inasmuch as few trunks can sustain the weight; and one sees everywhere the great trunk prostrate, the roots clinging to the soil, and the upper branches doing their best to overcome the disadvantages of a recumbent position.

We ate our first mangoes in Honolulu, and were highly disgusted with them, assenting without murmur to the statement that the liking of mangoes is an acquired taste. I had a doubt, to which I did not give utterance, of ever acquiring the taste, but may as well admit that I did acquire it in time. The only American fruit resembling a mango in appearance is the western pawpaw. The mango is considerably larger than the pawpaw, and not identical in shape, though very like it in smooth, golden outer covering. When the mango is ripe, its meat is yellow and pulpy and quite fibrous near the stone, to which it adheres as does a clingstone peach. It tastes like a combination of apple, peach, pear, and apricot with a final merger of turpentine. At first the turpentine flavor so far dominates all others that the consumer is moved to throw his fruit into the nearest ditch; but in time it diminishes, and one comes to agree with the tropical races in the opinion that the mango is the king of all fruits.