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href="#ulink_ba5d9500-5011-5cfe-8157-a2d65a010395">14 North American Review, January 18, 1907, p. 140.

      Chapter VI

       Table of Contents

The Wilcox-Sargent Trip

       Table of Contents

      A smiling, peaceful, and plenteous land

      As yet unblighted by the scourge of war;

      Where happiness and hospitality walk hand in hand

      And new-born Freedom bows to Law.

      Anonymous.

      In the last chapter, we saw Aguinaldo’s republic formally established at Malolos, September 15th, claiming jurisdiction over all Luzon. In Chapter IV., entitled “Merritt and Aguinaldo,” we saw the political condition of southern Luzon in August, 1898, and the following months, and verified the correctness of Aguinaldo’s claims as to complete mastery there then. Let us now examine the state of affairs in northern Luzon in the fall of 1898.

      In Senate Document 196, 56th Congress, 1st Session, dated February 26, 1900, transmitted by Secretary of the Navy Long, in response to a Senate resolution, may be found a report of a tour of observation through the half of Luzon Island which lies north of Manila and the Pasig River, made between October 8 and November 20, 1898—note the dates, for the Paris Peace Conference began October 1st and ended December 10th—by Paymaster W. B. Wilcox and Naval Cadet L. R. Sargent. This report was submitted by them to Admiral Dewey under date of November 23, 1898, and by him forwarded to the Navy Department for its information, with the comment that it “in my opinion contains the most complete and reliable information obtainable in regard to the present state of the northern part of Luzon Island.” The Admiral’s endorsement was not sent to the Senate along with the report. It appears in a book afterwards published by Paymaster Wilcox in 1901, entitled Through Luzon on Highways and Byways. The book is merely an elaboration of the report, and reproduces most of the report, if not all of it, verbatim. The book of Paymaster Wilcox may be treated as, practically, official, for historical purposes. The preface recites that in October, 1898, American control was effective only in Manila and Cavite, that the insurgents, under Aguinaldo, who had proclaimed himself President of the whole Archipelago, immediately after Dewey’s victory, were in supposedly complete possession of every part of the Island outside of these two cities, that their lines were so close to the outposts of our army that their people could at times converse with our soldiers, and that General Otis’s authority did not extend much beyond a three-mile radius from the centre of Manila, while Admiral Dewey held and operated the navy-yard at Cavite. “Even the country between Manila and Cavite was in the hands of Aguinaldo, so much so that our officers had been refused permission to land at any intermediate point by water, and were prohibited from traversing the distance by road.” Wilcox and Sargent procured leave of absence from Admiral Dewey to make their trip. They went first to Malolos, but failed to get anything in the way of safe-conduct from Aguinaldo. He is described, however, as of “great force of character * * * and he dominates all around him with a power that seems peculiar to himself.” Wilcox had seen him before at Cavite. “He adroitly read between the lines that the Government of the United States did not then, nor would it at any future time, recognize his authority,” says the writer.

      Our travellers left Manila, October 8, 1898, on the Manila-Dagupan Railway, for a place called Bayambang, which is the capital of Pangasinan province, about one hundred miles north of Manila. In Pangasinan “the people were all very respectful and polite and offered the hospitality of their homes.” From Bayambang they struck off from the railroad and proceeded eastward comfortably and unmolested a day’s journey, to a town in the adjoining province of Nueva Ecija (Rosales) where they received a cordial reception at the hands of the Presidente (Mayor)—Aguinaldo’s Presidente of course, not the Presidente left over from the Spanish régime. “At this time all the local government of the different towns was in the hands of Aguinaldo’s adherents,” says the descriptive itinerary we are following. The tourists were provided at Rosales by order of Aguinaldo with a military escort, “which was continued by relays all the way to Aparri” (the northernmost town of Luzon, at the mouth of the Cagayan River). Paymaster Wilcox says he carried five hundred Mexican dollars in his saddle-bags, but used only a trifling portion of this amount, “for in every town my entertainment was given without pay.” They went from Rosales to Humingan, in Nueva Ecija. At Humingan they were again entertained by the Presidente at dinner, with music following, and comfortably housed. The Presidente made many inquiries about “the War with Spain and their own future.” Their future, as revealed by the raised curtain of a year later, was that their country was being overrun by Lawton’s Division of the Eighth Army Corps, the author of this volume having passed through this same town of Humingan in November, 1899, as an officer of the scouts used to develop fire for General Lawton’s column. They journeyed eastward through the province of Nueva Ecija from Humingan to a little village (Puncan) in the foothills of the mountains they planned to cross. Of this place and the hospitality there, our traveller remarks: “I shall never forget the welcome of the local official” the Presidente. Thence they proceeded a few more stages and parasangs, northward over the Caranglan pass, into Nueva Vizcaya province, the watershed of north central Luzon, and thence down the valley of the Cagayan River via Iligan and Tuguegarao to Aparri, being always hospitably entertained in every town through which they passed by the Presidente or Mayor of the town, the local representative of the Philippine republic. In the New York Independent of September 14, 1899, Cadet Sargent, in an article about this trip, gives the words of the new Filipino national Hymn, which he describes as sung with great enthusiasm everywhere he and Wilcox were entertained in the various towns. I desire to preserve a sample verse of it here. The music it is set to is much like the Marseillaise—quite as stirring:

      Del sueño de tres siglos

      Hermanos Despertad!

      Gritando “Fuera España!

      Viva La Libertad!”

      which, being interpreted, means:

      From the sleep of three centuries

      Brothers, awake!

      Crying “Out with Spain!

      Live Liberty!”

      Had another Sargent and another Wilcox made a similar trip through the provinces of southern Luzon about this same time, under similar friendly auspices, before we turned friendship to hate and fear and misery, in the name of Benevolent Assimilation, they would, we now know, have found similar conditions.

      Some suspicions were aroused on one or two occasions, but once the local authorities became convinced that the trip was being made by consent of “The Illustrious Presidente” (Aguinaldo—“El Egregio Presidente” is the Spanish of it) all was sunshine again. The Mayor of each town—the Presidente—would receive from the escort coming with them from the last town they had stopped at, a letter from the Mayor, or Presidente, of said last town; the old escort would return to their town, and a new one would be provided to give them safe-conduct to the next town. This was no new-fangled scheme of Aguinaldo’s. It was an ancient custom of the Spanish Government, and was an ideal nucleus of administration for the new government. Curiously enough, the army knew practically nothing of this trip in the days of the early fighting. All that country was to us a terra incognita, until overrun by Captain Bacthelor, with a part of the 25th Infantry in the fall of 1899, the following year. So was the rest of the archipelago a like terra incognita, until likewise slowly conquered by hard fighting. That is why we so utterly failed to understand what a wonderfully complete “going concern” Aguinaldo’s government had become throughout the Philippine archipelago before the Treaty of Paris was signed. Descending from the watershed of north central Luzon in the province of Nueva Viscaya already mentioned, our travellers reached the town of Carig, in the foothills which fringe that side of

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