Читать книгу An Englishwoman in the Philippines - Mrs. Campbell Dauncey - Страница 5

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Manila, 27th November 1904.

We arrived here early yesterday morning from Hong Kong, after three days of rather a horrible sea voyage, as the steamer was more than crowded, the weather rough, and we carried a deck cargo of cattle. These conditions are not unusual, however, in fact I believe they are unvarying, as the 362 miles of sea between here and Hong Kong are always choppy, and the two mail steamers that ply to and fro, the Rubi and the Zafiro, are always crammed full, and invariably carry cattle.

The poor beasts stood in rows of pens on the main deck, each fitting tightly into his pen like a bean in a pod; many of them were ill, and one died. We watched the simple funeral with great interest, for the crew hoisted the dead animal by means of a crane, with a rope lashed round its horns, standing on the living beasts on each side to do it; but they had a good deal of difficulty in extracting the body from its pen, in which it was wedged sideways by two live neighbours, who stubbornly resented the whole affair. Finally, with a great deal of advice and swearing, the carcase was slung over the side, and it looked very weird sailing down the ship’s wake in the sunset.

That was the only event of the voyage, till we sighted Luzon, the biggest and most northern of the Philippines, some time on Saturday afternoon—this is Monday, by-the-bye.

The Zafiro kept all along the coast, which loomed up dim and mountainous, but we could not see anything very clearly, for the atmosphere was thick and hazy. Here and there on the darkening mountain sides a column of smoke rose up very straight into the evening air, and I was told they came from forest clearings, but we saw no signs of human habitation. A man who had been many years in the Philippines, and was returning to what had become his home, told me that such fires on the mountain sides had been used a great deal as signals between the insurgents during the Spanish and the American wars, and had been made to indicate all manner of gruesome messages.

About two in the morning, the Zafiro arrived at Manila and anchored in the bay, and when it was light, about five o’clock, we came up on deck and looked round, but the land lies in a section of so vast a circle that one does not realise it is a bay at all. The morning was very dull and grey; hot, of course, but overcast, and the sea calm and grey like the sky. The city of Manila lay so nearly level with the water that it was almost out of sight, just a long low mass, rather darker than the sea. Far, far away inland a faint outline of mountains was perceptible, but Manila is built, for the most part, on a mud-flat at the mouth of a broad river called the Pasig. This is a curious river, only 14 miles long, coming from a big lake called the Laguna de Bayo, but yet it is wide and deep enough at the mouth for 5000-ton steamers to anchor at the wharves and turn in the stream.

About seven o’clock, or earlier, our friends’ launch came out for us, and in this little craft we steamed up the mouth of the Pasig, past rows and rows of steamers anchored at the quays, and hundreds of huge native barges covered over with round roofs of brown matting. I noticed numbers of brilliantly green cabbages floating down the stream, sitting on the water like lilies, with long brown roots trailing behind, and thought a cargo of vegetables had been wrecked, but was told these are water plants drifting down from inland bays up the river. They are the most extraordinary plants, of intensely crude and violent emerald, and make a marvellous dash of colour amongst the grey and brown shipping on the yellow, muddy water.

We landed at a big wharf, right in the town, and close to streets with shops, all looking strangely European after China and the Straits, the whole place reminding me more of the suburbs of Malaga or the port of Las Palmas than any other places I can think of. Here a carriage was waiting for us, and we drove all through the outskirts of the town, till we came out upon the bay again, and saw the open sea, where our friends’ house is situated in a quarter called Ermita. All Manila is divided into quarters, or wards, with curious Spanish or Filipino names—Malate, Pasay, Intramuros, Binondo, etc., and many names of Saints.

The days get very hot here after eight o’clock, whether the sun happens to be shining or not, so I did not go out until the cool of the evening, and spent the day in the house, unpacking and resting, and trying to forget the smell of those cattle. Never again, I am sure, shall I linger with pleasure near the door of a byre!

Everyone here goes about in diminutive victorias, very like the Italian carrozza, and all the horses are tiny ponies, the result of a cross between the little Chinese horse and a small Spanish breed. They are sturdy little beasts, and remarkably quick trotters, with thick necks, and look pretty if they are well kept; but some of those in the hired carriages are very poor little creatures, though they tear about with incredible loads of brown-faced natives.

We drove about the town, which all looks as if it had been put up in a hurry. There are no indications of antiquity outside Intramuros, the old Spanish Manila, founded in 1571, which stands, as its name signifies, within walls—crumbling grass-grown old walls, very high, and with a deep moat.

This Walled City, as the Americans called it, is the town the British took under General Draper in 1762, and these are the walls our ships bombarded at the same time, under Admiral Cornish, papa’s great-uncle. When we were at home, it seemed strange that just before I came to the Philippines, I should inherit the lovely old emerald ring which the priestly Governor of Manila gave to the Admiral, when the former was a prisoner of war in the British Fleet, during the few days we held the Philippines, before we gave them back to Spain. But when I was actually under the walls they fought for, I looked at the old ring, and the coincidence seemed stranger still. I wished it were a magic emerald that I could rub it lightly, and summon some mysterious spirit which would tell me all the old ring had seen and heard. But now, Old Manila is only a backwash leading to nowhere, for the modern town has spread itself all up the banks of the Pasig River.

Our way did not lie through the Walled City, but along outside it, down a broad avenue, bordered by handsome trees, over a bridge across the Pasig, and into the town of shops and streets. The whole place looked dull, grey, ugly, and depressing, and after Hong Kong it seemed positively squalid. Big houses like the magnificent stone palaces of Hong Kong, would be impossible here on account of the frequent earthquakes, but such buildings as there are look mean and dilapidated, and the streets are badly paved or not at all, weeds grow everywhere; in fact, there is a sort of hopeless untidiness about the place that is positively disheartening, like going into a dirty and untidy house. I think a great deal of the hopelessness, too, consists in the air of the natives, who appear small and indolent after one’s eye has become accustomed to the tall, fine figures of the busy Chinamen.

I was particularly struck with the fact that I saw no traces of anything one is accustomed to think of as Spanish—no bright mule-trappings, or women with mantillas, or anything gay and coloured, and the houses are not built round patios. I was told that the reason of this is that the Spaniards who settled in the Philippines all came from the north of Spain, from Biscaya, and of course the Spain one knows and thinks of as Spanish is Andalusia and the South, with the wonderful glamour and poetry of the Moorish influence.

In the course of our drive we went to a certain bridge to see a religious procession, and as we got near the place where it was to pass, the streets were crowded with people, and there were triumphal arches scattered about, all looking quite pretty in the rosy-pink glow of the sun, which was just beginning to set. We pulled up in a mass of carriages and traps on one side of the bridge, and waited an hour or more for the procession, which was then about three hours overdue.

While we waited there, we met and talked with a Mr—— whom I mentioned to you before as having come out from England in the same series of steamers as ourselves. He told us that he was putting up at the best hotel in Manila, which, he said, was haphazard and dirty beyond belief. We said we had had the same account from other people, and considered ourselves more than lucky to be staying with friends.

“Yes,” he said, “you are in luck, for you can’t imagine what a Manila hotel is like. And yet it is full of decent people. I wonder why they can’t run a better one.”

It does seem odd when one comes to think of it, because, though Manila is off the tourist track of the world, and there is no reason for any mere traveller to come here, still, people do come sometimes, and anyhow there are the Americans themselves, who want a shelter of some sort, and that nation has the reputation of being accomplished connoisseurs in the matter of hotels. One would imagine that a good hotel would be the first thing they would demand or establish, but they have been here six years now, and the Manila hotels are still a byword for unutterable filth and discomfort.

Well, about this procession, the occasion of which was the bringing down to Manila of a very sacred image, called the Virgin of Antipolo, from the town of Antipolo, which is inland, to deposit her in some church in Manila. She had been four hundred years in Antipolo, and was a very precious and much-battered relic, so her journey was a great event, and the procession had been travelling, by road and river, ever since before the dawn.

At last the long lines of people began to appear, crawling over the bridge in the last grey shadows. It proved to be a very dull affair, simply consisting of endless files of the faithful, carrying unlighted candles, with every now and then a band of music, and every now and then a group of paper lanterns carried on poles, or some gaudy banner, and all moving along to the accompaniment of a weird, unearthly chant. This kind of thing went on and on, and after an hour we got tired of it, and drove away without having seen the actual image, which was, we were told, a little, armless, wooden figure, dressed in a stiff tinsel robe, perched up on an immense high platform, decorated with lamps and flowers, and surrounded by priests chanting, and acolytes swinging censers.

We are to sail for Iloilo to-day, after lunch, having got a permit to go in the Kai-Fong, of the China Steam Navigation Company. We were to have come in this same steamer from Hong Kong, as I told you at the time, in which case we should have gone in her right through to Iloilo, touching here and at Cebú, but we received the telegram too late, an hour or so after she had left, and as we were told to start at once, we followed by that pleasing craft the Zafiro.

By this manœuvre we have clashed with a vexatious local law that forbids foreign (i.e., not American or Filipino) steamers to convey passengers from Island to Island of the Philippines, so we had to apply for this special permit, as they say the regular mail steamers, which ply between Manila and Iloilo, are exceedingly dirty and uncomfortable. They are owned by a Spanish Company, trading under the American flag. However, it is all settled now, in favour of the English boat, and we sail this afternoon.

I have only caught a passing glimpse of Manila, but I hope to be able to tell you more about it later on, as I have been invited to come back and pay a visit to our friends here in a month or two’s time.