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both morning and evening. The other day I read a book by a very well-known writer, in which a description was given of the dayspring in Egypt coming like “the opening of an oven door,” which I knew to be nonsense as applied to Egypt, and now I find the same sort of hyperbole about the tropics equally false; for I have watched the grey dawn come gradually nearly every morning here, and I sit reading on the balcony in the twilight, in the evening. It is certainly not a long twilight, but all one reads about the sun shooting up from the night into the tropic day, and so forth, must be what they call “word pictures,” because it is certainly not truth, or even decent exaggeration.

      Christmas Day.—I always write my letters to you all at one sitting, but I had to break off yesterday before I considered that I had covered enough paper to satisfy you, and I feel I can’t begin again to-day without this fresh heading; though it is not like Christmas a bit, and I think the bright green palms, blue sea and sky, and scorching sun are a very poor substitute for the lovely brown and purples of the winter landscape at home, the invigorating cold, and the exquisite skeletons of oaks and elms.

      I should not complain, though, for the weather here is really delicious just at present, with frequent heavy showers, which keep the vegetation fresh, and fill the water-tanks. There are lots of wells, in which the water is very hard, and people say it is sea-water filtered through the soil; and it must be so, for at high tide the wells are at their fullest, and quite brackish. So the water-supply one chiefly depends upon is that out of the rain-water tanks, which are fed from the corrugated roofs of the houses. However, it is not safe to drink even that unfiltered, and some people are very fanciful and boil it first, but that is rather absurd if one gets a good filter.

      Out of the filter, Sotero, the head boy, fills up soda-water bottles, which he takes to the English Club, where they are laid on the ice for a charge of 2 cents apiece, and these, after an hour or two on the ice, give us very refreshing drinks. Good and light beer is to be had, brewed in Manila; it works out at about a shilling a bottle, and the Americans drink it, but the English people consider beer an unwholesome beverage in this climate, and stick to whisky and soda very faithfully. Some adopt the Spanish custom of drinking light red wine, vino tinto, which is supposed to be strengthening and blood-making in a country where the prevailing trouble is anæmia. This wine comes from Spain in barrels, and I expect it really is the most wholesome of all. For my part, I keep pretty generally to lime juice and soda, or lemon squash. Lemons, which come from China, are about 2d. apiece. At this season, in the way of fruit, small tangerines are to be had also, hailing from China, and oranges, another luxury, 6d. each. It is rather a bore that such necessary and wholesome fruit should cost such ridiculous prices. Bananas, everlasting bananas, are the chief fruit, and even they are not astonishingly cheap, as they are sold here at exactly the same price as in London. Vegetables there are none, except miserable tomatoes and egg-plants. The lack of fresh fruit and vegetables is very trying, especially the vegetables. Whatever is sold is imported, except the bananas, tomatoes, and egg-plants. Fresh meat, too, would be a boon, and butter, and milk, for all these can only be obtained tinned—“canned” as they call it here. Once a week we get some provisions from the Cold Storage in Manila, Australian meat and butter, and sometimes vegetables, but this is only a private enterprise of a few of the English community, who club together and get down an ice-chest by the Butuan, the weekly Manila mail. It would be unwise to venture to lay in more than one day’s supply, which has to be cooked and eaten at once before it goes bad, even with an ice-chest to stand it in.

      It might be possible to put up with these discomforts with more or less philosophic calm, and not mind the deprivations if they were inevitable, but they are not so by any means, as the soil of the Philippines is one of the richest in the world, volcanic and full of natural chemical manures, the islands having also every sort of advantage and variety of climate from the plains to the mountain-tops, and being plentifully watered. I am for ever being told that anything and everything will grow and flourish here, which is so aggravating when all the fresh food to be procured is miserable poultry, fish, and egg-plants, tomatoes you would not look at in England, and costly bananas. Rice and potatoes from China, live cattle from China, or frozen meat from Australia, and everything else under the sun in tins from London or America! This, after six years of what we are told is the most enlightened system of Colonial or Tropical Government yet invented. It is useless to point out that no roads exist inland, except one in Luzon for the Governor and his family to go to the hills; or to remark that labour is too dear for any enterprise to pay, and that all healthy foreign competition in the way of labour is excluded—the reply is an invitation to contemplate the splendid work that is being done in education. For these schools and swarming schoolmasters this pastoral country is taxed and tariffed to breaking point—schools to which the natives are being taken from the fields, and in which they are taught a crude wash of bad English and mathematics. The chief result is to bring all the “scholars” into the towns to loaf along in clerkships, if they can get them.

      You will laugh at my vehemence! But it does seem such a pity to see a splendid country wasted, as it were, thrown away, for the sake of a windy theory propounded by some well-meaning though ignorant sentimentalists at the other side of the globe.

      

LETTER VII.

       CUSTOMS AND DRESS OF THE NATIVES

       Table of Contents

      Iloilo, December 31, 1904.

      I think you may be amused to hear about a Filipino Fiesta, which took place yesterday, called Rizal Day—the anniversary of the death of the national hero, a Filipino of the name of Doctor Rizal. He was the William Tell of the Philippines, except that his existence was a reality, not a myth, for he died only eight years ago.

      This patriot obtained the degree of Doctor (of Philosophy and Medicine) in Spain, where he went to be educated and enlightened. When he returned from that land, Doctor Rizal set to work, endeavouring to free his countrymen from the frightful Spanish friars, who were the real rulers of the Spanish Philippines, and whose cruelty and wickedness were almost incredible. Any friars who were not good enough for Spain, were sent out to the Philippines, where each man became a little god and tyrant in a tiny pueblo (village or district), in which his authority was unbounded and unquestioned. I suppose some of these friar-priests must have been good men, but no one can tell me they ever heard of such a being, for the enervating climate, lazy life, complete irresponsibility, and the irresistible power of the priest over the superstitious, childish Malays were too much for these men of God; and the stories of their cruelties, rapacities, and immoralities are all terrible and often simply sickening. I have heard them from people who lived in the pueblos, and the things that went on were like the Decameron and the Inquisition rolled into one.

      Well, this Doctor Rizal started a revolt against the power of these dreadful men, if one could call the friars by such a name, about 1872; and from that time the rest of his life was a series of plots, captures, escapes to Europe, imprisonment by the friars, banishment, return, recapture, till at last, by the simple device of the friars having Rizal cabled for to Spain and getting him back to the Philippines, the avenging Church had him executed, by order of the Spaniards, on the Luneta, the Promenade at Manila, on December 30, 1896. I have met people who were present at the execution of Rizal, and they tell me that the crowds were vast, and relate how Rizal faced a line of soldiers bravely and was shot. Rizal had a nice, clever face of a refined Filipino type, if one can trust the portraits on the Conant bank-notes, and the Filipinos simply adore his memory.

      It was in consequence of Rizal’s revolt that Aguinaldo and the Katipunan arose, who lived to revenge their hero’s memory, completing his work by turning the Spaniards and their dreadful priests out of the Islands. To do this, as you know, they had to get America to help them; which the Americans did, and stayed on. The idea is that they are going to teach the Filipinos how to govern themselves, which, it appears, ought only to be done by all peoples and races after the American method. The Filipinos are said to be delighted about this, but the puzzling anomaly is that they fought, and are still fighting the Americans tooth and nail to get their own liberty, their own

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