The Philippines: Past and Present | Page 2

school and college might
prove useful.
I eventually lost my ambition to be a taxidermist but did not lose my
interest in zoölogy and botany. While a student at the University of
Michigan I specialized in these subjects. I was fortunate in having as
one of my instructors Professor Joseph B. Steere, then at the head of
the Department of Zoölogy. Professor Steere, who had been a great
traveller, at times entertained his classes with wonderfully interesting
tales of adventure on the Amazon and in the Andes, Peru, Formosa, the
Philippines and the Dutch Moluccas. My ambition was fired by his
stories and when in the spring of 1886 he announced his intention of
returning to the Philippines the following year to take up and prosecute
anew zoölogical work which he had begun there in 1874, offering to
take with him a limited number of his students who were to have the
benefit of his knowledge of Spanish and of his wide experience as a
traveller and collector, and were in turn to allow him to work up their
collections after their return to the United States, I made up my mind to
go.
I was then endeavouring to get through the University on an allowance
of $375 per year and was in consequence not overburdened with
surplus funds. I however managed to get my life insured for $1500 and
to borrow $1200 on the policy, and with this rather limited sum upon
which to draw purchased an outfit for a year's collecting and sailed with
Doctor Steere for Manila. Two other young Americans accompanied
him. One of these, Doctor Frank S. Bourns, was like myself afterwards
destined to play a part in Philippine affairs which was not then dreamed

of by either of us.
We spent approximately a year in the islands. Unfortunately we had
neglected to provide ourselves with proper official credentials and as a
result we had some embarrassing experiences. We were arrested by
suspicious Spanish officials shortly after our arrival and were tried on
trumped-up charges. On several subsequent occasions we narrowly
escaped arrest and imprisonment.
The unfriendly attitude of certain of our Spanish acquaintances was
hardly to be wondered at. They could not believe that sensible,
civilized human beings would shoot tiny birds, pay for eggs the size of
the tip of one's little finger more than hens' eggs were worth, undergo
not a few hardships and run many risks while living in the simplest of
native houses on very inadequate food, unless actuated by some hidden
purpose. At different times they suspected us of looking for gold
deposits, of designing to stir up trouble among the natives, or of being
political spies.
When Doctor Bourns came back with the American troops in 1908 and
I returned as a member of the first Philippine Commission in 1909, this
last supposition became a fixed belief with many of our former Spanish
acquaintances who still remained in the islands, and they frankly
expressed their regret that they had not shot us while they had the
chance.
Over against certain unpleasant experiences with those who could not
understand us or our work I must set much kind and invaluable
assistance rendered by others who could, and did.
All in all we spent a most interesting year, visiting eighteen of the more
important islands. [1]
Throughout this trip we lived in very close contact with the Filipinos,
either occupying the tribunales, the municipal buildings of their towns,
where they felt at liberty to call and observe us at all hours of the day
and night, or actually living in their houses, which in some instances
were not vacated by the owners during our occupancy.

Incidentally we saw something of several of the wild tribes, including
the Tagbanuas of Palawan, the Moros of Joló, Basilan and Mindanao,
and the Mangyans of Mindoro.
We experienced many very real hardships, ran not a few serious risks
and ended our sojourn with six weeks of fever and starvation in the
interior of Mindoro. While we would not have cut short our appointed
stay by a day, we were nevertheless delighted when we could turn our
faces homeward, and Doctor Bourns and I agreed that we had had quite
enough of life in the Philippines.
Upon my arrival at my home in Vermont a competent physician told
my family that I might not live a week. I however recuperated so
rapidly that I was able to return to the University of Michigan that fall
and to complete the work of my senior year. I became a member of the
teaching staff of the institution before my graduation.
Little as I suspected it at the time, the tropics had fixed their strangely
firm grip on me during that fateful first trip to the Far East which was