A Womans Journey through the Philippines | Page 8

interested in our gallant armament of rapid-fire guns, and when the quartermaster, who is a crack shot, hit an improvised target in the water several times in succession with a one-pounder in the stern of the ship, the Filipinos were astounded, and stared at him in even greater admiration than they had shown for the formidable little weapon. Two shotguns of newest design were also brought on deck, and while the native women were frankly bored at this display of ordnance and preferred to talk about the way our gowns were made, the men were delighted, declaring they never imagined a gun could be broken in pieces and put together again so easily.
Before our guests left, lemonade and cake were served on the quarter-deck, and it was really amusing to watch their faces as they discussed the coldness of the drink, while the pieces of ice in their glasses excited as much perturbation as the untutored savages had shown the day before. One travelled lady, however, who had been to Iloilo once and tasted ice there, drank her lemonade with ostentatious indifference to its temperature, as became one versed in the ways of the world, explaining to me with condescension a few moments later that the Iloilo ice had been much colder than ours,--an item of physical research which I accepted politely.
We women were asked innumerable questions as to our respective ages, the extent of our incomes, our religious beliefs, and other inquiries of so personal a character as to be quite embarrassing. They seemed, though, to be very genuine in their admiration of us, and evinced great interest in our clothes, especially those of the quartermaster's wife, who, being a recent arrival in the Philippines, had yet the enviable trail of the Parisian serpent upon her apparel. One heavy cloth walking-skirt of hers, fitting smoothly over the hips and with no visible means by which it could be got into, animated the same inquiry from these people as good King George is said to have made anent the mystery of getting the apple into the dumpling, a problem of no little difficulty, as any one will agree. At more than one stopping-place we were called upon to solve the riddle of that skirt, and I verily believe that, being women, they were even more awed at the thought of a garment fastening invisibly at one side of the front under a very deceptive little pocket than at all the electrical marvels shown them on the ship.
While in Dumaguete we were driven around the town and far out into the country surrounding it, finding everything much more tropical and luxuriant in growth than in Manila or its vicinity. There were giant cocoanut-palms, looking not unlike the royal palm so often spoken of by travellers on the Mediterranean, clusters of bamboo and groups of plantains, flowering shrubs and fields of young rice, green as a well kept lawn at home.
Picturesque natives saluted us from the roadway, or from the windows of their nipa shacks; naked brown children fled at our approach, and wakened their elders from afternoon siestas that they might see two white women and a yellow-haired child drive by; carabao, wallowing in the muddy water of a near-by stream, stared at us stolidly; fighting-cocks crowed lustily as we passed; and hens barely escaped with their cackling lives from under our very wheels.
A native lazily pounding rice in a mortar rested from his appearance of labour and watched the carriage until it became a mere speck in the distance. Two women beating clothes on the rocks of a little stream stopped their gossip to peep at us shyly from under their brown hands. Weavers of abaca left their looms and hung out of the windows to talk with their neighbours about the great event. Heretofore they had thought the Americans were like Chinamen, who came to the country, yes, and made money from it, but never settled down as did the Spaniards, never brought their families with them and made the islands their home. But here were two American women and a little girl--surely evidences of domesticity.
Everyone was friendly and peaceably disposed, everyone seemed glad to see us, if smiles and hearty greetings carry weight, and there was apparently no race prejudice, no half-concealed doubt or mistrust of us. Yet in a few days thereafter that very road became unsafe for an unarmed American, while the people who had greeted us with such childlike confidence and delight were preparing a warmer reception for the Americans under the able leadership of a Cebu villain, who had incited them to insurrection by playing upon their so-called religious belief, this in many instances being merely fetishism of the worst kind.
This instigator of anarchy boasted an anting-anting, a charm against bullets and a guarantee