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Title: The Philippine Islands
Author: Foreman, John
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Philippine Islands" ***
The Philippine Islands
A Political, Geographical, Ethnographical, Social and
Commercial History of the Philippine Archipelago
Embracing the Whole Period of Spanish Rule
With an Account of the Succeeding American Insular Government
By John Foreman, F.R.G.S.
Third Edition, Revised and Enlarged with Maps and Illustrations
London: T. Fisher Unwin
1, Adelphi Terrace.
MCMVI
Printed and bound by Hazell, Watson and Viney, LD., London and
Aylesbury.
Preface to the First Edition
It would be surprising if the concerns of an interesting Colony
like the _Philippine Islands_ had not commanded the attention of
literary genius.
I do not pretend, therefore, to improve upon the able productions of
such eminent writers as Juan de le Concepcion, Martinez Zúñiga, Tomás
de Comyn and others, nor do I aspire, through this brief composition,
to detract from the merit of Jagor's work, which, in its day, commended
itself as a valuable book of reference. But since then, and within
the last twenty years, this Colony has made great strides on the
path of social and material progress; its political and commercial
importance is rapidly increasing, and many who know the Philippines
have persuaded me to believe that my notes would be an appreciated
addition to what was published years ago on this subject.
The critical opinions herein expressed are based upon personal
observations made during the several years I have travelled in and
about all the principal islands of the Archipelago, and are upheld
by reference to the most reliable historical records.
An author should be benevolent in his judgement of men and manners
and guarded against mistaking isolated cases for rules. In matters
of history he should neither hide the truth nor twist it to support
a private view, remembering how easy it is to criticize an act when
its sequel is developed: such will be my aim in the fullest measure
consistent.
By certain classes I may be thought to have taken a hypercritical view
of things; I may even offend their susceptibilities--if I adulated
them I should fail to chronicle the truth, and my work would be a
deliberate imposture.
I would desire it to be understood, with regard to the classes and
races in their collectedness, that my remarks apply only to the large
majority; exceptions undoubtedly there are--these form the small
minority. Moreover, I need hardly point out that the native population
of the capital of the Philippines by no means represents the true
native character, to comprehend which, so far as its complicacy can
be fathomed, one must penetrate into and reside for years in the
interior of the Colony, as I have done, in places where extraneous
influences have, as yet, produced no effect.
There may appear to be some incongruity in the plan of a work which
combines objects so dissimilar as those enumerated in the Contents
pages, but this is not exclusively a History, or a Geography, or an
Account of Travels--it is a concise review of all that may interest
the reader who seeks for a general idea of the condition of affairs
in this Colony in the past and in the present.
J. F.
Preface to the Third Edition
The success which has attended the publication of the Second Edition
of this work has induced me to revise it carefully throughout, adding
the latest facts of public interest up to the present period.
Long years of personal acquaintance with many of the prime movers in
the Revolutionary Party enabled me to estimate their aspirations. My
associations with Spain and Spaniards since my boyhood helped me,
as an eye-witness of the outbreak of the Rebellion, to judge of the
opponents of that movement. My connection with the American Peace
Commission in Paris afforded me an opportunity of appreciating the
noble desire of a free people to aid the lawful aspirations of millions
of their fellow-creatures.
My criticism of the regular clergy applies only to the four religious
confraternities in their lay capacity of government agents in these
Islands and not to the Jesuit or the Paul fathers, who have justly
gained the respect of both Europeans and natives: neither is it
intended, in any degree, as a reflection on the sacred institution
of the Church.
I take this opportunity of acknowledging, with gratitude, my
indebtedness to Governor-General Luke E. Wright, Major-General Leonard
Wood, Colonel Philip Reade, Major Hugh L. Scott, Captain E. N. Jones,
Captain C. H. Martin, Captain Henry C. Cabell, Captain George Bennett,
Captain John P. Finley, Dr. David P. Barrows, Mr. Tobias Eppstein,
and many others too numerous to mention, who gave me such valuable
and cordial assistance in my recent investigations throughout the
Archipelago.
This book is not written to promote the interests of any person or
party, and so far as is consistent with guiding the reader to a fair
appreciation of the facts recorded, controversial comment has been
avoided, for to pronounce a just dictum on the multifarious questions
involved would demand a catholicity of judgement never concentrated
in the brain of a single human being.
I am persuaded to believe that the bare truth, unvarnished by flattery,
will be acceptable to the majority, amongst whom may be counted all
those educated Americans whose impartiality is superior to their
personal interest in the subject at issue.
It is therefore confidently hoped that the present Edition may merit
that approval from readers of English which has been so graciously
accorded to the previous ones.
J. F. _September_, 1905.
Table of Contents
_Introduction_
_Chapter_ I
_General Description of the Archipelago_
Geographical features of the Islands. Limits. Mountains. 13
Rivers. Lakes. Volcanoes. Eruptions of the Mayon and Taal
Volcanoes. 14
Monsoons. Seasons. Temperature. Rains. Climate. Earthquakes. 22
_Chapter_ II
_Discovery of the Archipelago_
Hernando de Maghallanes. Treaty of Tordesillas. 24
Discovery of Magellan Straits and the Ladrone Islands. 27
Death of Maghallanes. Elcano's voyage round the world. 28
The Loaisa expedition. The Villalobos expedition. Andrés de
Urdaneta. 31
Miguel de Legaspi; his expedition; he reaches Cebú; dethrones
King Tupas. 33
Manila is proclaimed the capital of the Archipelago. 36
Martin de Goiti. Juan Salcedo. Native Local Government
initiated. 37
_Chapter_ III
_Philippine Dependencies, Up To 1898_
The Ladrone, Caroline, and Pelew Islands. 39
First mission to the Ladrone Islands. Pelew Islanders. Caroline
Islanders. 40
Spain's possession of the Caroline Islands disputed by
Germany. 44
Posadillo, Governor of the Caroline Islands, is murdered. 45
The Ladrone, Caroline, and Pelew Islands (except Guam) sold
to Germany. 46
_Chapter_ IV
_Attempted Conquest by Chinese_
Li-ma-hong, a Chinese corsair, attacks Manila. 47
He settles in Pangasinán; evacuates the Islands. 49
Rivalry of lay and Monastic authorities. Philip II.'s decree
of Reforms. 51
Manila Cathedral founded. Mendicant friars. Archbishopric
created. 55
Supreme Court suppressed and re-established. Church and State
contentions. 57
Murder of Gov.-General Bustamente Bustillo. The monks in open
riot. 60
_Chapter_ V
_Early Relations with Japan_
_The Catholic Missions_
The Emperor of Japan demands the surrender of the Islands. 63
Fray Pedro Bautista's mission; he and 25 others are
crucified. 65
Jesuit and Franciscan jealousy. The martyrs' mortal remains
lost at sea. 67
Emperor Taycosama explains his policy. Further missions and
executions. 68
Missionary martyrs declared saints. Emperor of Japan sends
a shipment of lepers. 70
Spaniards expelled from Formosa by the Dutch. Missions to
Japan abandoned. 71
_Chapter_ VI
_Conflicts with the Dutch_
The Spanish expedition to the Moluccas fails. 72
Chinese mutiny, murder the Spanish leader, and take the ship
to Cochin China. 73
Expeditions of Bravo de Acuna and Pedro de Heredia. Battle
of Playa Honda. 74
Koxinga, a Chinese adventurer, threatens to attack the
Colony. 76
Vittorio Riccio, an Italian monk, visits Manila as Koxinga's
ambassador. 77
Chinese goaded to rebellion; great massacre. 77
Vicissitudes of Govs.-General. Defalcations. Impeachments. 78
Gov.-General Fajardo de Tua kills his wife and her paramour. 80
Separation of Portugal and Spain (1640). Spanish failure to
capture Macao. 81
Nunneries. Mother Cecilia's love adventures. Santa Clara
Convent. 81
The High Host is stolen. Inquisition. Letter of Anathema. 82
The Spanish Prime Minister Valenzuela is banished to Cavite. 83
Monseigneur Maillard de Tournon, the Papal Legate. 84
His arrogance and eccentricities; he dies in prison at
Macao. 85
Question of the _Regium exequatur_. Philip V.'s edict of
punishments. 86
_Chapter_ VII
_British Occupation of Manila_
Coalition of France and Spain against England by the "Family
Compact." 87
Simon de Anda y Salazár usurps the Archbishop-Governor's
authority. 88
British bombard Manila. Archbishop-Governor Rojo
capitulates. 89
British in possession of the City. Sack and pillage. Agreed
Indemnity. 90
Simon de Anda y Salazár defies Governor Rojo and declares
war. 91
British carry war into the provinces. Bustos opposes them. 92
Bustos completely routed. Chinese take the British side. 93
Massacre of Chinese. Villa Corta's fate. The _Philipino_
treasure. 94
Simon de Anda y Salazár offers rewards for British heads. 95
Austin friars on battle-fields. Peace of Paris (Feb. 10,
1763). 96
Archbishop-Governor Rojo dies. La Torre appointed
Gov.-General. 97
British evacuate Manila. La Torre allows Anda to receive back
the City. 98
Anda goes to Spain; is rewarded by the King; returns as
Gov.-General. 99
Anda is in conflict with the out-going Governor, the Jesuits,
and the friars. 99
Anda dies in hospital (1776). His burial-place and
monument. 100
Rebellion succeeds the war. Ilocos Rebellion led by Diego de
Silan. 100
Revolt in Bojol Island led by Dagóhoy. 101
Revolts in Leyte Island, Surigao (Mindanao Is.), and Sámar
Island. 102
Rebellion of "King" Málong and "Count" Gumapos. 103
Rebellion of Andrés Novales. Execution of A. Novales and
Ruiz. 104
Apolinario de la Cruz declares himself "King of the
Tagálogs." 105
General Marcelo Azcárraga, Spanish War Minister, Philippine
born. 105
The Cavite Conspiracy of 1872. The Secret Society of
Reformers. 106
The Philippine Martyrs, Dr. Búrgos and Fathers Zamora and
Gomez. 107
Illustrious exiles--Dr. Antonio M. Regidor and José
M. Basa. 108
_Chapter_ VIII
_The Chinese_
The China-Manila trade in the days of Legaspi. 109
The _Alcayceria_. The _Parian_. Chinese
banished. Restrictions. 110
The Chinese as immigrants; their comparative activity. 112
Chinese mandarins come to seek the "Mount of Gold" in
Cavite. 114
The Chinese are goaded to revolt. Saint Francis' victory over
them. 115
Massacre of Foreigners. The Chinese Traders; their Guilds. 116
Chinese patron saint; population. The _Sangley_. The
_Macao_. 118
Restrictions on Chinese immigration. Their gradual
exclusion. 119
_Chapter_ IX
_Wild Tribes and Pagans_
The _Aetas_ or _Negritos_ or _Balugas_. 120
The _Gaddanes_. The _Itavis_. The _Igorrotes_. The
_Ibanacs_. 122
Attempt to subdue the _Igorrotes_. Its failure. 124
The _Calingas_. The _Igorrote-Chinese._ The _Tinguianes_. 125
The _Basanes_. The _Manguianes_. The _Hindoos_. _Albinos_. 128
_Chapter_ X
_Mahometans and Southern Tribes_
Early history of the Mahometans, called Moros. 129
The First Expedition against the Mindanao Moros. 130
Gov.-General Corcuera effects a landing in Sulu Island. 131
The scourge of Moro Piracy. Devastation of the
coasts. Captives. 132
Zamboanga Fort; cost of its maintenance. Fighting Friars. 133
Vicissitudes of Sultan Mahamad Alimudin. 134
The Sultan appeals to his suzerain's delegate and is made
prisoner. 134
His letter to Sultan Muhamad Amirubdin. 135
The charges against the Sultan. Extermination of Meros
decreed. 136
Mindanao and Sulu Moros join forces. Extermination
impossible. 137
The Treaty with Sultan Mahamad Alimudin. 138
The Claveria and Urbiztondo expeditions against Moros. 139
Gov.-General Malcampo finally annexes Joló (1876). 140
Spain appoints Harun Narrasid Sultan of Sulu (1885). 141
The ceremony of investiture. Opposition to the nominee. 142
Datto Utto defies the Spaniards. Terrero's expedition (Jan.,
1887). 143
Colonel Arolas' victory at Maybun (Sulu Is.) (April, 1887). 144
The Marahui Campaign (1895). The Moro tribes. 145
The _Juramentado_. Moro dress; character; arts; weapons. 146
Moro customs. The _Pandita_. The _Datto_. 148
Joló (Sulu) town. H.H. the Sultan of Sulu. 149
A _juramentado_ runs _amok_. Across Sulu Island to Maybun. 152
The Sultan's official reception. Subuános of Zamboanga. 154
Climate in the South. Palaúan Island. Spanish settlers. 157
Across Palaúan Island. The _Tugbanúas_ tribe. 158
Their dress, customs, and country. 159
Efforts to colonize Paláuan Island. The Moro problem. 160
_Chapter_ XI
_Domesticated Natives--Origin--Character_
Theory concerning the first inhabitants of these Islands. 163
Their advent before the Spanish Conquest. 165
Japanese and Chinese early immigrants. 166
Native character; idiosyncracies and characteristics. 167
Notion of sleep. "Castila!". 169
Tagálog and Visayo hospitality. The native's good
qualities. 172
Native aversion to discipline; bravery; resignation;
geniality. 175
Mixed races. Native physiognomy; marriages; minors' rights. 176
Family names. The _Catapúsan_. 179
Dancing; the _Balitao_; the _Comitan_. The _Asuan_. 180
Mixed marriages. The Half-caste (_Mestizo_). 181
The Shrines and Saints. The Holy Child of Cebú. St. Francis
of Tears. 183
Our Lady of Cagsaysay. The Virgin of Antipolo. 184
Miraculous Saints. _Santones_. Native Conception of
Religion. 187
Musical talent. Slavery. Education in Spanish times. 190
The Intellectuals. The Illiterates. State aid for Schools. 192
The Athenæum. Girls' Colleges. St. Thomas' University. 194
The Nautical School. The provincial student. Talented
natives. 195
Diseases. Leprosy. Insanity. Death-rate. Sanitation. 197
_Chapter_ XII
_The Religious Orders_
Their early co-operation a necessity. 199
Their power and influence. 200
Opinions for and against that power. 201
The Spanish parish priest. Father Piernavieja. 202
Virtueless friars. Monastic persecution. 204
The Hierarchy. The Orders. Church revenues and State aid. 206
Rivalry of Religious Orders. Papal intervention to ensure
peace. 209
_Chapter_ XIII
_Spanish Insular Government_
The _Encomiendas_. The Trading-Governors. 211
The Judge-Governors (_Alcálde Máyor_). The Reforms of 1886. 213
Cost of Spanish Insular Government. The Provincial Civil
Governor's duties. 214
The position of Provincial Civil Governor. Local
Funds. Provincial poverty. 216
Highways and Public Works. Cause of national decay. 218
Fortunes made easily. Peculations. Town Local Government. 220
The _Gobernadorcillo_ (petty-governor). The _Cabeza de
Barangay_ (Tax-collector). 222
The _Cuadrillero_ (guard). The _Fallas_ (tax). The _Cédula
personal_. 224
The _Tribunal_ (town hall). Reforms affecting travellers. 225
_Chapter_ XIV
_Spanish-Philippine Finances_
Philippine budgets. Curious items of revenue and
expenditure. 227
Spanish-Philippine army, police, and constabulary
statistics. 230
The armed forces in the olden times. 232
Spanish-Philippine navy and judicial statistics. 233
Prison statistics. Brigandage. The brigands' superstition. 235
A chase for brigands. The _anting-anting_. Pirates. 237
The notorious Tancad. Dilatory justice. A _cause célèbre_. 239
Spanish-Philippine Criminal Law procedure. 241
_Chapter_ XV
_Trade of the Islands from Early Times_
Its early history. Its State galleons. 243
The _Consulado_ merchants. The Mexican subsidy. 244
In the days of the Mexican galleons. The _Obras Pias_. 245
Losses of the treasure-laden galleons. Trade difficulties. 246
The period of restrictions on trade. Prohibitory decrees. 248
The Manila merchants alarmed; appeal to the King. 249
Penalties on free-traders. Trading friars. The budget for
1757. 250
Decline of trade. Spanish trading-company failures. 252
The _Real Compañia de Filipinas_; its privileges and
failure. 253
The dawn of free trade. Foreign traders admitted. 254
Manila port, unrestrictedly open to foreigners (1834),
becomes known to the world. 256
Pioneers of foreign trade. Foreign and Philippine banks. 257
The Spanish-Philippine currency. Mexican-dollar smuggling. 259
Ports of Zamboanga, Yloilo, Cebú, and Sual opened to foreign
trade. 261
Mail service. Carrying-trade. Middlemen. Native industries. 263
The first Philippine Railway. Telegraph service. Seclusion
of the Colony. 265
_Chapter_ XVI
_Agriculture_
Interest on loans to farmers. Land values and tenure in Luzon
Island. 269
Sugar-cane lands and cultivation. Land-measures. 271
Process of sugar-extraction. Labour conditions on
sugar-estates. 273
Sugar statistics. World's production of cane and beet
sugar. 275
Rice. Rice-measure. Rice machinery; husking; pearling;
statistics. 276
Macan and Paga rice. Rice planting and trading. 278
_Chapter_ XVII
_Manila Hemp--Coffee--Tobacco_
_Musa textilis_. Extraction and uses of the
fibre. Machinery. 281
Hemp experiments in British India. Cultivation. Qualities. 283
Labour difficulties. Statistics. Albay province (local)
land-measure. 286
Coffee. Coffee dealing and cultivation. 289
Tobacco. The Government Tobacco Monopoly. 292
Tobacco-growing by compulsory labour. Condition of the
growers. 294
Tobacco Monopoly abolished. Free trade in tobacco. 296
Tobacco-trading risks; qualities; districts. Cigar values. 299
_Chapter_ XVIII
_Sundry Forest and Farm Produce_
Maize. Cacao-beans. Chocolate. 300
Cacao cultivation. Castor oil. Gogo. 302
Camote. Gabi. Potatoes. Mani (pea-nut). Areca-nut. Buyo. 303
Cocoanuts. Extraction of Tuba (beverage). 304
Cocoanut-oil extraction. Coprah. Coir. 305
Nipa palm. Cogon-grass. Cotton-tree. 307
Buri palm. Ditá. Palma brava. Bamboo. 308
Bojo. Bejuco (Rattan-cane). Palásan (Bush-rope). 310
Gum mastic. Gutta-percha. Wax. Cinnamon. Edible
Bird's-nest. 311
Balate (Trepang). Sapan-wood. Tree-saps. 312
Hardwoods; varieties and qualities. 313
Molave wood tensile and transverse experiments. 315
Relative strengths of hardwoods. Timber trade. 317
Fruits; the Mango; the Banana; the Papaw, etc. 318
Guavas; Pineapples; Tamarinds; the Mabolo. 320
Sundry vegetable produce. Flowers. 321
Botanical specimens--curious and beautiful. Orchids. 322
Firewoods; Locust beans; _Amor seco_. 324
Botanical names given to islands, towns etc. 324
Medicinal herbs, roots, leaves and barks. Perfumes. 325
_Chapter_ XIX
_Mineral Products_
Coal import. Coal-mining ventures. 326
Comparative analyses of coal. 328
Gold-mining ventures. The Paracale and Mambulao mines. 329
Iron-mining ventures. Failures, poverty and suicide. 332
Copper. Marble. Stone. Gypsum. Sulphur. Mineral oil. 334
_Chapter_ XX
_Domestic Live-stock--Ponies, Buffaloes, Etc_.
Ponies. Horses. Buffaloes (_carabaos_). 336
Donkeys. Mules. Sheep. Fish. Insects. Reptiles. Snakes. 338
Butterflies. White ants. Bats. Deer. Wild boars. 340
Fowls. Birds. The Locust plague. Edible insects. 341
_Chapter_ XXI
_Manila Under Spanish Rule_
The fortified city. The moats. The drawbridges. 343
Public buildings in the city. The port in construction. 344
Manila Bay. Corregidor Island and Marivéles. 345
The Pasig River. Public lighting. Tondo suburb. 346
Binondo suburb. Chinese and native artificers. 347
Easter week. The vehicle traffic. 348
The Theatres. The _Carrillo_. The "_Moro Moro_"
performance. 349
The bull-ring. Annual feasts. Cock-fighting. 350
European club. Hotels. The Press. Spanish journalism. 351
Botanical gardens. Dwelling-houses. 353
Manila society. Water-supply. Climate. 354
Population of the Islands in 1845; of Manila in 1896. 355
Typhoons and earthquakes affecting Manila. 356
Dress of both sexes. A "first-class" funeral. 357
Excursions from Manila. Los Baños. 359
The story of Los Baños and Jalajala. The legend of Guadalupe
Church. 360
_Chapter_ XXII
_The Tagálog Rebellion of 1896-98_
_First Period_
The _Córtes de Cadiz_. Philippine deputies in the
Peninsula. 362
The Assembly of Reformists. Effect of the Cavite Rising of
1872. 363
Official acts conducive to rebellion. The _Katipunan_
League. 364
Arrest of prominent Filipinos. The first overt act of
rebellion. 366
War commences. The Battle of San Juan del Monte. 368
Execution of Sancho Valenzuela and others. 369
Andrés Bonifacio heads the movement. He is superseded by
Emilio Aguinaldo. 370
Imus (Cavite) is captured by the rebels. The history of
Imus. 372
Atrocities of the rebels. Rebel victory at Binacayan. 373
Execution of 13 rebels in Cavite. The rebel chief Llaneras
in Bulacan. 374
Volunteers are enrolled. Tragedy at Fort Santiago; cartloads
of corpses. 375
A court-martial cabal. Gov.-General Blanco is recalled. 376
The rebels destroy a part of the railway. They threaten an
assault on Manila. 377
General Camilo Polavieja succeeds Blanco as Gov.-General. 378
General Lachambre, the Liberator of Cavite. Polavieja returns
to Spain. 379
Dr. José Rizal, the Philippine ideal patriot; his career and
hopes. 381
His return to Manila; banishment, liberation, re-arrest,
and execution. 383
The love-romance of Dr. José Rizal's life. 387
General Primo de Rivera succeeds Polavieja as Gov.-General. 389
The Gov.-General decrees concentration; its bad effect. 391
The rebels define their demands in an exhortation to the
people. 392
Emilio Aguinaldo now claims independence. 394
Don Pedro A. Paterno acts as peace negotiator. 395
The Protocol of Peace between the Rebels and the
Gov.-General. 396
The alleged Treaty of Biac-na-bató (Dec. 14, 1897). 397
The Primo de Rivera-Paterno agreement as to indemnity
payment. 398
Emilio Aguinaldo in exile. Peace rejoicings. Spain
defaults. 399
The rebel chiefs being in exile, the people are goaded to
fresh revolt. 400
The tragedy of the _Calle de Camba_. Cebú Island rises in
revolt. 401
The Cebuános' raid on Cebú City; Lutao in flames; piles of
corpses. 402
Exciting adventures of American citizens. Heartrending scenes
in Cebú City. 404
Rajahmudah Datto Mandi visits Cebú. Rebels in Bolinao
(Zambales). 406
Relief of Bolinao. Father Santos of Malolos is murdered. 408
The peacemaker states his views on the reward he expects from
Spain. 409
Don Máximo Paterno, the Philippine "Grand Old Man". 411
Biographical sketch of his son, Don Pedro A. Paterno. 411
General Basilio Augusti succeeds Primo de Rivera as
Gov.-General. 413
The existence of a Peace Treaty with the rebels is denied in
the Spanish _Cortés_. 414
_Chapter_ XXIII
_The Tagálog Rebellion of 1896-98_
_Second Period_
_American Intervention_
Events leading to the Spanish-American War (April-Aug.,
1898). 417
Events preliminary to the naval Battle of Cavite (May 1,
1898). 419
Aspirations of the Revolutionary Party. 420
Revolutionary exhortation denouncing Spain. 421
Allocution of the Archbishop of Madrid to the Spanish army. 423
Gov.-General Basilio Augusti issues a call to arms. 424
His proclamation declaring a state of war with America. 425
War in the Islands approaching. Flight of non-combatants. 426
The naval Battle of Cavite. Destruction of the Spanish
Fleet. 427
The Stars and Stripes hoisted at Cavite. 429
The first news of the naval defeat raises panic in Madrid. 431
Emilio Aguinaldo returns from exile to Cavite (May 19,
1898). 432
Revolutionary exhortation to the people to aid America. 433
In the beleaguered city of Manila. German attitude. 434
The merchants' harvest. Run on the _Banco
Español-Filipino_. 435
General Aguinaldo becomes Dictator. Filipinos congratulate
America. 436
Conditions in and around Manila. Señor Paterno's pro-Spanish
Manifesto. 438
The revolutionists' refutation of Señor Paterno's
manifesto. 440
General Monet's terrible southward march with refugees. 445
Terror-stricken refugees' flight for life. The _Macabebes_. 446
The Revolutionary Government proclaimed. Statutes of
Constitution. 448
Message of the Revolutionary President accompanying the
proclamation. 454
The Revolutionists' appeal to the Powers for recognition. 457
Spain makes peace overtures to America. The Protocol of
Peace. 458
The Americans prepare for the attack on Manila. 460
The Americans again demand the surrender of Manila. 461
The Americans' attack on Manila (Aug. 13, 1898). 462
Spain's blood-sacrifice for "the honour of the country". 464
Capitulation of Manila to the Americans (Aug. 14, 1898). 465
The Americans' first measures of administration in Manila. 467
Trade resumed. Liberty of the Press. Malolos (Bulacan) the
rebel capital. 468
General Aguinaldo's triumphal entry into Malolos. 470
The Paris Peace Commission (Oct.-Dec., 1898). 471
Peace concluded in Paris between America and Spain (Dec. 10,
1898). 472
Innovations in Manila customs. Spanish government in
Visayas. 473
Strained relations between the rebels and the Americans. 475
Rebels attack the Spaniards in Visayas. The Spaniards evacuate
the Visayas. 476
The end of Spanish rule. The rebels' disagreement. 478
Text of the Treaty of Peace between America and Spain. 479
_Chapter_ XXIV
_An Outline of the War of Independence Period, 1899-1901_
Insurgents prepare for the coming conflict. 484
Anti-American manifesto. The Philippine Republic. 486
The war begins; the opening shot. Battle of Paco. 487
Fighting around Manila; Gagalanging. Manila in flames. 489
Battle of Marilao. Capture of Malolos, the insurgent
capital. 490
Proclamation of American intentions. Santa Cruz (La Laguna)
captured. 493
Effect of the war on public opinion in America. 495
Insurgent defeat. Calumpit captured. Insurgents ask for an
armistice. 496
Insurgent tactics. General Lawton in Cavite. 499
Violent death of General Antonio Luna. 501
General Aguinaldo's manifesto; his pathetic allusion to the
past. 502
Insurgents destroy the s.s. _Saturnus_. Death of General
Lawton. 503
War on the wane. Many chiefs surrender. 505
Partial disbandment of the insurgent army urged by hunger. 506
Capture of General Emilio Aguinaldo (March 23, 1901). 507
He swears allegiance to America. His home at Canit (Cavite
Viejo). 509
_Chapter_ XXV
_The Philippine Republic in the Central and Southern Islands_
The Spaniards evacuate Yloilo (Dec., 1898). Native Government
there. 511
General Miller demands the surrender of Yloilo. The Panay
army. 512
Riotous insurgent soldiery. Flight of civilians. 513
The Yloilo native Government discusses the crisis in open
assembly. 514
Mob riot. Yloilo in flames. Looting, anarchy, and
terrorism. 515
Bombardment of Yloilo. The American forces enter and the
insurgents vanish. 516
Surrender of insurgent leaders. Peace
overtures. "Water-cure". 517
Formal surrender of the Panay army remnant at Jaro (Feb. 2,
1901). 518
Yloilo town. Native Government in Negros Island. Peaceful
settlement. 519
An armed rabble overruns Negros Island. 521
Native Government in Cebú Island. American occupation of Cebú
City. 522
Cebuáno insurgents on the warpath. Peace signed with
Cebuános. 524
Reformed government in Cebú Island. Cebú City. 526
American occupation of Bojol Island. Insurgent rising
quelled. 528
Native Government in Cottabato. Slaughter of the
Christians. 529
The Spaniards' critical position in Zamboanga (Mindanao
Is.). 531
Rival factions and anarchy in Zamboanga. Opportune American
advent. 532
The Rajahmudah Datto Maudi. Zamboanga town. 534
Sámar and Marinduque Islands under native leaders. 535
Slaughter of American officers and troops at Balangiga (Sámar
Is.). 536
_Chapter_ XXVI
_The Spanish Prisoners_
The approximate number of Spanish prisoners and their
treatment. 537
The Spanish Government's dilemma in the matter of the
prisoners. 538
Why the prisoners were detained. Baron Du Marais' ill-fated
mission. 539
Further efforts to obtain their release. The captors state
their terms. 541
Discussions between Generals E. S. Otis and Nicolás
Jaramillo. 542
The Spanish commissioners' ruse to obtain the prisoners'
release fails. 543
The end of the Spaniards' captivity. 544
_Chapter_ XXVII
_End of the War of Independence and After_
The last of the recognized insurgent leaders. Notorious
outlaws. 545
Apolinario Mabini. Brigands of the old and of the new type. 546
Ferocity of the new caste of brigands. 548
The Montalón and Felizardo outlaw bands. 549
The "Guards of Honour." The _Pulaján_ in gloomy Sámar. 550
Army and Constabulary Statistics. Insurgent navy. 553
Sedition. Seditious plays. 554
Landownership is conducive to social tranquillity. 555
_Chapter_ XXVIII
_Modern Manila_
Innovations under American rule. 556
Clubs. Theatres. Hotels. "Saloons." The Walled City. 558
The Insular Government. Feast-days. Municipality. 560
Emoluments of high officials. The Schurman Commission. 561
The Taft Commission. The "Philippines for the Filipinos"
doctrine. 563
The Philippine Civil Service. Civil government established. 565
Constabulary. Secret Police. The Vagrant Act. 567
Army strength. Military Division. Scout Corps. 569
_Chapter_ XXIX
_The Land of the Moros_
The Bates Agreement with the Sultan of Sulu. 571
The warlike _Dattos_ and their clansmen. 573
Captain Pershing's brilliant exploits around Lake Lanao. 574
Storming the _Cottas_. American pluck. 575
American policy in Moroland. Maj.-General Leonard Wood. 576
Constitution of the Moro Province. 577
Municipalities. Tribal Wards. Moro Province finances. 578
Moro Province armed forces. Gen. Wood's victory at
Kudarangan. 580
Datto Pedro Cuevas of Basílan Island. His career. 582
General Wood in Sulu Island. Panglima Hassan. Major
H. L. Scott. 584
Major Hugh L. Scott vanquishes Panglima Hassan. A
_bichâra_. 585
Joló town. H.H. The Sultan of Sulu. 587
American policy towards the Moro chiefs. 588
The Manguiguin's eventful visit to Zamboanga. 589
Education and progress in the Moro Province. 591
What the Moro Province needs. The prospect therein. 592
_Chapter_ XXX
_The Spanish Friars, After 1898_
Free cult. Causes of the anti-friar feeling. 594
Attitude of the Philippine clergy. Monsignor Chapelle. 596
The question of the friars' lands. American view. 597
The American Government negotiates with the Holy See. 599
The Pope's contrary view of the friars' case. 600
The friars'-lands purchase. The approximate acreage. Monsignor
Guidi. 601
The anti-friar feeling diminishes. The Philippine Independent
Church. 602
The head of the Philippine Independent Church throws off
allegiance to the Pope. 604
Conflict between Catholics and Schismatics. 606
Aglipayan doctrine. Native clergy. Monsignor Agius. 607
American education. The Normal School. The Nautical School. 608
The School for Chinese. The Spanish Schools. 610
The English language for Orientals. Native politics. 611
The Philippine Assembly. The cry for "independence". 612
The native interpretation of the term "Protection". 613
Capacity for self-government. Population. Benguet road. 614
Census Statistics. Regulations affecting foreign
travellers. 616
Administration of justice. Provincial Courts. Justices of
the peace. 618
_Chapter_ XXXI
_Trade and Agriculture Since the American Advent_
Trade in war-time. After-effect of war on trade and
agriculture. 620
Losses in tilth-cattle. The Congressional Relief Fund. 621
Fruitless endeavours to replace the lost buffalo herds. 622
Government supplies rice to the needy. Planters'
embarrassments. 623
Agitation for an Agricultural Bank. Bureau of Agriculture. 624
Land-tax. Manila Port Works. The Southern ports. 626
Need of roads. Railway projects. 627
The carrying-trade. The Shipping Law. Revenue and
Expenditure. 628
The Internal Revenue Law. Enormous increase in cost of
living. 630
"The Democratic Labour Union." The Chinese Exclusion Act. 632
Social position of the Chinese in the Islands since 1898. 634
The new Philippine currency (_Peso Conant_). 635
American Banks. The commercial policy of the future. 637
Trade Statistics. Total Import and Export values. Hemp
shipments. 639
Total Chief Exports. Total Sugar Export. 640
Tobacco, Cigar, and Coprah shipments. Values of Coprah and
Cocoanut-oil. 644
Sapan-wood, Gum Mastic, and Coffee shipments. 646
Gold and Silver Imports and Exports. Tonnage. Exchange. 647
Proportionate table of Total Exports. 648
Proportionate table of Total Imports. 649
Proportionate table of Staple Exports and Rice Imports. 650
_Chronological Table of Leading Events_. 651
_Index_. 655
List of Illustrations
_The Author_ _Frontispiece_
_Taal Volcano_ _Facing_ 16
_Mavon Volcano_ 16
_Effect of the Hurricane of September 26, 1905_ 23
_A Negrito Family_ 120
_An Igorrote Type (Luzon)_ 128
_A Pagan Type (Mindanao)_ 128
_A Tagálog Girl_ 128
_Moro Weapons_ 132
_A Scene in the Moro Country_ 148
_Zamboanga Fortress ("Fuerza del Pilar")_ 148
_A Visayan Girl_ 164
_A Tagálog Girl_ 164
_A Visayan Planter_ 172
_A Chinese Half-caste_ 172
_A Tagálog Milkwoman_ 182
_A Tagálog Townsman_ 182
_Middle-class Tagálog Natives_ 196
_A Spanish-Mexican Galleon_ 244
_A Canoe_ 244
_A Casco (Sailing-barge)_ 244
_A Prahu (Sailing-canoe)_ 244
_A Sugar-estate House, Southern Philippines_ 275
_Shipping Hemp in the Provinces_ 288
_Botanical Specimen_ 321
_Botanical Specimen_ 322
_Botanical Specimen_ _Facing_ 323
_Botanical Specimen_ 324
_The Old Walls of Manila City_ 344
_La Escolta_ in the Business Quarter of Manila 347
_A Riverside Washing-scene_ 359
_Dr. José Rizal_ 381
_Don Felipe Agoncillo_ 381
_General Emilio Aguinaldo_ 396
_Don Pedro a Paterno_ 396
_Admiral Patricio Montojo_ 430
_Admiral George Dewey_ 430
_General Basilio Augusti_ 430
_Maj.-General Wesley Merritt_ 430
_Archbishop Bernardino Nozaleda_ 430
_Tagálog Bowie-knives and Weapons_ 485
_A Pandita (Mahometan Priest)_ 534
_Rajahmudah Datto Mandi and Wife_ 534
_Santa Cruz Church (Manila Suburb)_ 559
_Panglima Hassan (of Sulu)_ 584
_A Mindanao Datto and Suite_ 584
_The Rt. Rev. Bishop Gregorio Aglípay_ 604
_A Roadside Scene in Bulacan Province_ 627
_Maps_
_The Province of Cavite_ 371
_Map of the Archipelago_ _at the end_
Introduction
"Nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice."
_Othello_, Act V., Sc. 2.
During the three centuries and a quarter of more or less effective
Spanish dominion, this Archipelago never ranked above the most
primitive of colonial possessions.
That powerful nation which in centuries gone by was built up by
Iberians, Celts, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Visigoths, Romans,
and Arabs was in its zenith of glory when the conquering spirit and
dauntless energy of its people led them to gallant enterprises of
discovery which astonished the civilized world. Whatever may have
been the incentive which impelled the Spanish monarchs to encourage
the conquest of these Islands, there can, at least, be no doubt as to
the earnestness of the individuals entrusted to carry out the royal
will. The nerve and muscle of chivalrous Spain ploughing through a
wide unknown ocean in quest of glory and adventure, the unswerving
devotion of the ecclesiastics to the cause of Catholic supremacy,
each bearing intense privations, cannot fail to excite the wonder of
succeeding generations. But they were satisfied with conquering and
leaving unimproved their conquests, for whilst only a small fraction
of this Archipelago was subdued, millions of dollars and hundreds
of lives were expended in futile attempts at conquest in Gamboge,
Siam, Pegu, Moluccas, Borneo, Japan, etc.--and for all these toils
there came no reward, not even the sterile laurels of victory. The
Manila seat of government had not been founded five years when the
Governor-General solicited royal permission to conquer China!
Extension of dominion seized them like a mania. Had they followed up
their discoveries by progressive social enlightenment, by encouragement
to commerce, by the concentration of their efforts in the development
of the territory and the new resources already under their sway, half
the money and energy squandered on fruitless and inglorious expeditions
would have sufficed to make high roads crossing and recrossing the
Islands; tenfold wealth would have accrued; civilization would have
followed as a natural consequence; and they would, perhaps even
to this day, have preserved the loyalty of those who struggled for
and obtained freer institutions. But they had elected to follow the
principles of that religious age, and all we can credit them with
is the conversion of millions to Christianity and the consequent
civility at the expense of cherished liberty, for ever on the track
of that fearless band of warriors followed the monk, ready to pass
the breach opened for him by the sword, to conclude the conquest by
the persuasive influence of the Holy Cross.
The civilization of the world is but the outcome of wars, and probably
as long as the world lasts the ultimate appeal in all questions will
be made to force, notwithstanding Peace Conferences. The hope of ever
extinguishing warfare is as meagre as the advantage such a state of
things would be. The idea of totally suppressing martial instinct in
the whole civilized community is as hopeless as the effort to convert
all the human race to one religious system. Moreover, the common
good derived from war generally exceeds the losses it inflicts on
individuals; nor is war an isolated instance of the few suffering
for the good of the many. "_Salus populi suprema lex_." "Nearly
every step in the world's progress has been reached by warfare. In
modern times the peace of Europe is only maintained by the equality
of power to coerce by force. Liberty in England, gained first by an
exhibition of force, would have been lost but for bloodshed. The great
American Republic owes its existence and the preservation of its unity
to this inevitable means, and neither arbitration, moral persuasion,
nor sentimental argument would ever have exchanged Philippine monastic
oppression for freedom of thought and liberal institutions.
The right of conquest is admissible when it is exercised for the
advancement of civilization, and the conqueror not only takes upon
himself, but carries out, the moral obligation to improve the condition
of the subjected peoples and render them happier. How far the Spaniards
of each generation fulfilled that obligation may be judged from these
pages, the works of Mr. W. H. Prescott, the writings of Padre de las
Casas, and other chroniclers of Spanish colonial achievements. The
happiest colony is that which yearns for nothing at the hands of
the mother country; the most durable bonds are those engendered by
gratitude and contentment. Such bonds can never be created by religious
teaching alone, unaccompanied by the twofold inseparable conditions
of moral and material improvement. There are colonies wherein equal
justice, moral example, and constant care for the welfare of the
people have riveted European dominion without the dispensable adjunct
of an enforced State religion. The reader will judge the merits of
that civilization which the Spaniards engrafted on the races they
subdued; for as mankind has no philosophical criterion of truth, it is
a matter of opinion where the unpolluted fountain of the truest modern
civilization is to be found. It is claimed by China and by Europe, and
the whole universe is schismatic on the subject. When Japan was only
known to the world as a nation of artists, Europe called her barbarous;
when she had killed fifty thousand Russians in Manchuria, she was
proclaimed to be highly civilized. There are even some who regard
the adoption of European dress and the utterance of a few phrases in
a foreign tongue as signs of civilization. And there is a Continental
nation, proud of its culture, whose sense of military honour, dignity,
and discipline involves inhuman brutality of the lowest degree.
Juan de la Concepcion, [1] who wrote in the eighteenth century,
bases the Spaniards' right to conquest solely on the religious
theory. He affirms that the Spanish kings inherited a divine right
to these Islands, their dominion being directly prophesied in Isaiah
xviii. He assures us that this title from Heaven was confirmed by
apostolic authority, [2] and by "the many manifest miracles with
which God, the Virgin, and the Saints, as auxiliaries of our arms,
demonstrated its unquestionable justice." Saint Augustine, he states,
considered it a sin to doubt the justice of war which God determines;
but, let it be remembered, the same _savant_ insisted that the world
was flat, and that the sun hid every night behind a mountain!
An apology for conquest cannot be rightly based upon the sole desire
to spread any particular religion, more especially when we treat of
Christianity, the benign radiance of which was overshadowed by that
debasing institution the Inquisition, which sought out the brightest
intellects only to destroy them. But whether conversion by coercion
be justifiable or not, one is bound to acknowledge that all the
urbanity of the Filipinos of to-day is due to Spanish training,
which has raised millions from obscurity to a relative condition
of culture. The fatal defect in the Spanish system was the futile
endeavour to stem the tide of modern methods and influences.
The government of the Archipelago alone was no mean task.
A group of islands inhabited by several heathen races--surrounded
by a sea exposed to typhoons, pirates, and Christian-hating
Mussulmans--had to be ruled by a handful of Europeans with inadequate
funds, bad ships, and scant war material. For nearly two centuries
the financial administration was a chaos, and military organization
hardly existed. Local enterprise was disregarded and discouraged so
long as abundance of silver dollars came from across the Pacific. Such
a short-sighted, unstable dependence left the Colony resourceless
when bold foreign traders stamped out monopoly and brought commerce
to its natural level by competition. In the meantime the astute
ecclesiastics quietly took possession of rich arable lands in many
places, the most valuable being within easy reach of the Capital
and the Arsenal of Cavite. Landed property was undefined. It all
nominally belonged to the State, which, however, granted no titles;
"squatters" took up land where they chose without determined limits,
and the embroilment continues, in a measure, to the present day.
About the year 1885 the question was brought forward of granting
Government titles to all who could establish claims to land. Indeed,
for about a year, there was a certain enthusiasm displayed both by the
applicants and the officials in the matter of "Titulos Reales." But
the large majority of landholders--among whom the monastic element
conspicuously figured--could only show their title by actual
possession. [3] It might have been sufficient, but the fact is that
the clergy favoured neither the granting of "Titulos Reales" nor the
establishment of the projected Real Estate Registration Offices.
Agrarian disputes had been the cause of so many armed risings against
themselves in particular, during the nineteenth century, that they
opposed an investigation of the land question, which would only have
revived old animosities, without giving satisfaction to either native
or friar, seeing that both parties were intransigent. [4]
The fundamental laws, considered as a whole, were the wisest devisable
to suit the peculiar circumstances of the Colony; but whilst many of
them were disregarded or treated as a dead letter, so many loopholes
were invented by the dispensers of those in operation as to render
the whole system a wearisome, dilatory process. Up to the last every
possible impediment was placed in the way of trade expansion; and in
former times, when worldly majesty and sanctity were a joint idea,
the struggle with the King and his councillors for the right of
legitimate traffic was fierce.
So long as the Archipelago was a dependency of Mexico (up to 1819)
not one Spanish colonist in a thousand brought any cash capital to
this colony with which to develop its resources. During the first
two centuries and a quarter Spain's exclusive policy forbade the
establishment of any foreigner in the Islands; but after they did
settle there they were treated with such courteous consideration
by the Spanish officials that they could often secure favours with
greater ease than the Spanish colonists themselves.
Everywhere the white race urged activity like one who sits behind a
horse and goads it with the whip. But good advice without example
was lost to an ignorant class more apt to learn through the eye
than through the ear. The rougher class of colonist either forgot,
or did not know, that, to civilize a people, every act one performs,
or intelligible word one utters, carries an influence which pervades
and gives a colour to the future life and thoughts of the native,
and makes it felt upon the whole frame of the society in embryo. On
the other hand, the value of prestige was perfectly well understood by
the higher officials, and the rigid maintenance of their dignity, both
in private life and in their public offices, played an important part
in the moral conquest of the Filipinos. Equality of races was never
dreamed of, either by the conquerors or the conquered; and the latter,
up to the last days of Spanish rule, truly believed in the superiority
of the white man. This belief was a moral force which considerably
aided the Spaniards in their task of civilization, and has left its
impression on the character of polite Philippine society to this day.
Christianity was not only the basis of education, but the symbol of
civilization; and that the Government should have left education
to the care of the missionaries during the proselytizing period
was undoubtedly the most natural course to take. It was desirable
that conversion from paganism should precede any kind of secular
tuition. But the friars, to the last, held tenaciously to their old
monopoly; hence the University, the High Schools, and the Colleges
(except the Jesuit Schools) were in their hands, and they remained as
stumbling-blocks in the intellectual advancement of the Colony. Instead
of the State holding the fountains of knowledge within its direct
control, it yielded them to the exclusive manipulation of those who
eked out the measure as it suited their own interests.
Successful government by that sublime ethical essence called "moral
philosophy" has fallen away before a more practical _régime_. Liberty
to think, to speak, to write, to trade, to travel, was only partially
and reluctantly yielded under extraneous pressure. The venality of the
conqueror's administration, the judicial complicacy, want of public
works, weak imperial government, and arrogant local rule tended to
dismember the once powerful Spanish Empire. The same causes have
produced the same effects in all Spain's distant colonies, and to-day
the mother country is almost childless. Criticism, physical discovery
of the age, and contact with foreigners shook the ancient belief
in the fabulous and the supernatural; the rising generation began
to inquire about more certain scientific theses. The immutability
of Theology is inharmonious to Science--the School of Progress;
and long before they had finished their course in these Islands the
friars quaked at the possible consequences. The dogmatical affirmation
"_qui non credit anathema sit_," so indiscriminately used, had lost
its power. Public opinion protested against an order of things which
checked the social and material onward movement of the Colony. And,
strange as it may seem, Spain was absolutely impotent, even though
it cost her the whole territory (as indeed happened) to remedy the
evil. In these Islands what was known to the world as the Government
of Spain was virtually the Executive of the Religious Corporations, who
constituted the real Government, the members of which never understood
patriotism as men of the world understand it. Every interest was made
subservient to the welfare of the Orders. If, one day, the Colony
must be lost to _them_, it was a matter of perfect indifference into
whose hands it passed. It was their happy hunting-ground and last
refuge. But the real Government could not exist without its Executive;
and when that Executive was attacked and expelled by America, the
real Government fell as a consequence. If the Executive had been
strong enough to emancipate itself from the dominion of the friars
only two decades ago, the Philippines might have remained a Spanish
colony to-day. But the wealth in hard cash and the moral religious
influence of the Monastic Orders were factors too powerful for any
number of executive ministers, who would have fallen like ninepins
if they had attempted to extricate themselves from the thraldom of
sacerdotalism. Outside political circles there was, and still is in
Spain, a class who shrink from the abandonment of ideas of centuries'
duration. Whatever the fallacy may be, not a few are beguiled into
thinking that its antiquity should command respect.
The conquest of this Colony was decidedly far more a religious
achievement than a military one, and to the _friars of old_ their
nation's gratitude is fairly due for having contributed to her glory,
but that gratitude is not an inheritance.
Prosperity began to dawn upon the Philippines when restrictions
on trade were gradually relaxed since the second decade of last
century. As each year came round reforms were introduced, but
so clumsily that no distinction was made between those who were
educationally or intellectually prepared to receive them and those who
were not; hence the small minority of natives, who had acquired the
habits and necessities of their conquerors, sought to acquire for _all_
an equal status, for which the masses were unprepared. The abolition of
tribute in 1884 obliterated caste distinction; the university graduate
and the herder were on a legal equality if they each carried a _cédula
personal_, whilst certain Spanish legislators exercised a rare effort
to persuade themselves and their partisans that the Colony was ripe for
the impossible combination of liberal administration and monastic rule.
It will be shown in these pages that the government of these Islands
was practically as theocratic as it was civil. Upon the principle of
religious pre-eminence all its statutes were founded, and the reader
will now understand whence the innumerable Church and State contentions
originated. Historical facts lead one to inquire: How far was Spain
ever a _moral_ potential factor in the world's progress? Spanish
colonization seems to have been only a colonizing mission preparatory
to the attainment, by her colonists, of more congenial conditions
under other _régimes_; for the repeated struggles for liberty,
generation after generation, in all her colonies, tend to show that
Spain's sovereignty was maintained through the inspiration of fear
rather than love and sympathy, and that she entirely failed to render
her colonial subjects happier than they were before.
One cannot help feeling pity for the Spanish nation, which has let
the Pearl of the Orient slip out of its fingers through culpable
and stubborn mismanagement, after repeated warnings and similar
experiences in other quarters of the globe. Yet although Spain's
lethargic, petrified conservatism has had to yield to the progressive
spirit of the times, the loss to her is more sentimental than real,
and Spaniards of the next century will probably care as little about
it as Britons do about the secession of their transatlantic colonies.
Happiness is merely comparative: with a lovely climate--a continual
summer--and all the absolute requirements of life at hand, there is not
one-tenth of the misery in the Philippines that there is in Europe, and
none of that forlorn wretchedness facing the public gaze. Beggary--that
constant attribute of the highest civilization--hardly exists,
and suicide is extremely rare. There are no ferocious animals,
insects, or reptiles that one cannot reasonably guard against; it
is essentially one of those countries where "man's greatest enemy is
man." There is ample room for double the population, and yet a million
acres of virgin soil only awaiting the co-operation of husbandman
and capitalist to turn it to lucrative account. A humdrum life is
incompatible here with the constant emotion kept up by typhoons,
shipwrecks, earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanic eruptions, brigands,
epidemics, devastating fires, etc.
It is a beautiful country, copiously endowed by Nature, where the
effulgent morning sun contributes to a happy frame of mind--where the
colonist's rural life passes pleasantly enough to soothe the longing
for "home, sweet home."
"And yet perhaps if countries we compare
And estimate the blessings which they share,
Though patriots flatter, yet shall wisdom find
An equal portion dealt to all mankind."
Such is America's new possession, wherein she has assumed the moral
responsibility of establishing a form of government on principles
quite opposite to those of the defunct Spanish _régime_: whether
it will be for better or for worse cannot be determined at this
tentative stage. Without venturing on the prophetic, one may not
only draw conclusions from accomplished facts, but also reasonably
assume, in the light of past events, what might have happened under
other circumstances. There is scarcely a Power which has not, in
the zenith of its prosperity, consciously or unconsciously felt the
"divine right" impulse, and claimed that Providence has singled it
out to engraft upon an unwilling people its particular conception of
human progress. The venture assumes, in time, the more dignified name
of "mission"; and when the consequent torrents of blood recede from
memory with the ebbing tide of forgetfulness, the conqueror soothes
his conscience with a profession of "moral duty," which the conquered
seldom appreciate in the first generation. No unforeseen circumstances
whatever caused the United States to drift unwillingly into Philippine
affairs. The war in Cuba had not the remotest connexion with these
Islands. The adversary's army and navy were too busy with the task
of quelling the Tagálog rebellion for any one to imagine they could
be sent to the Atlantic. It was hardly possible to believe that
the defective Spanish-Philippine squadron could have accomplished
the voyage to the Antilles, in time of war, with every neutral port
_en route_ closed against it. In any case, so far as the ostensible
motive of the Spanish-American War was concerned, American operations
in the Philippines might have ended with the Battle of Cavite. The
Tagálog rebels were neither seeking nor desiring a change of masters,
but the state of war with Spain afforded America the opportunity,
internationally recognized as legitimate, to seize any of the enemy's
possessions; hence the acquisition of the Philippines by conquest. Up
to this point there is nothing to criticize, in face of the universal
tacit recognition, from time immemorial, of the right of might.
American dominion has never been welcomed by the Filipinos. All the
principal Christianized islands, practically representing the whole
Archipelago, except Moroland, resisted it by force of arms, until,
after two years of warfare, they were so far vanquished that those
still remaining in the field, claiming to be warriors, were, judged
by their exploits, undistinguishable from the brigand gangs which have
infested the Islands for a century and a half. The general desire was,
and is, for sovereign independence; and although a pro-American party
now exists, it is only in the hope of gaining peacefully that which
they despaired of securing by armed resistance to superior force. The
question as to how much nearer they are to the goal of their ambition
belongs to the future; but there is nothing to show, by a review of
accomplished facts, that, without foreign intervention, the Filipinos
would have prospered in their rebellion against Spain. Even if they
had expelled the Spaniards their independence would have been of
short duration, for they would have lost it again in the struggle
with some colony-grabbing nation. A united Archipelago under the
Malolos Government would have been simply untenable; for, apart
from the possible secessions of one or more islands, like Negros,
for instance, no Christian Philippine Government could ever have
conquered Mindanao and the Sulu Sultanate; indeed, the attempt might
have brought about their own ruin, by exhaustion of funds, want of
unity in the hopeless contest with the Moro, and foreign intervention
to terminate the internecine war. Seeing that Emilio Aguinaldo had to
suppress two rivals, even in the midst of the bloody struggle when
union was most essential for the attainment of a common end, how
many more would have risen up against him in the period of peaceful
victory? The expulsion of the friars and the confiscation of their
lands would have surprised no one cognizant of Philippine history. But
what would have become of religion? Would the predominant religion
in the Philippines, fifty years hence, have been Christian? Recent
events lead one to conjecture that liberty of cult, under native rule,
would have been a misnomer, and Roman Catholicism a persecuted cause,
with the civilizing labours of generations ceasing to bear fruit.
No generous, high-minded man, enjoying the glorious privilege of
liberty, would withhold from his fellow-men the fullest measure of
independence which they were capable of maintaining. If America's
intentions be as the world understands them, she is endeavouring to
break down the obstacles which the Filipinos, desiring a lasting
independence, would have found insuperable. America claims (as
other colonizing nations have done) to have a "mission" to perform,
which, in the present case, includes teaching the Filipinos the art of
self-government. Did one not reflect that America, from her birth as an
independent state, has never pretended to follow on the beaten tracts
of the Old World, her brand-new method of colonization would surprise
her older contemporaries in a similar task. She has been the first to
teach Asiatics the doctrine of equality of races--a theory which the
proletariat has interpreted by a self-assertion hitherto unknown, and
a gradual relinquishment of that courteous deference towards the white
man formerly observable by every European. This democratic doctrine,
suddenly launched upon the masses, is changing their character. The
polite and submissive native of yore is developing into an ill-bred,
up-to-date, wrangling politician. Hence rule by coercion, instead
of sentiment, is forced upon America, for up to the present she
has made no progress in winning the hearts of the people. Outside
the high-salaried circle of Filipinos one never hears a spontaneous
utterance of gratitude for the boon of individual liberty or for the
suppression of monastic tyranny. The Filipinos craving for immediate
independence, regard the United States only in the light of a useful
medium for its attainment, and there are indications that their
future attachment to their stepmother country will be limited to an
unsentimental acceptance of her protection as a material necessity.
Measures of practical utility and of immediate need have been set
aside for the pursuit of costly fantastic ideals, which excite more
the wonder than the enthusiasm of the people, who see left in abeyance
the reforms they most desire. The system of civilizing the natives
on a curriculum of higher mathematics, literature, and history,
without concurrent material improvement to an equal extent, is like
feeding the mind at the expense of the body. No harbour improvements
have been made, except at Manila; no canals have been cut; few new
provincial roads have been constructed, except for military purposes;
no rivers are deepened for navigation, and not a mile of railway
opened. The enormous sums of money expended on such unnecessary works
as the Benguet road and the creation of multifarious bureaux, with a
superfluity of public servants, might have been better employed in
the development of agriculture and cognate wealth-producing public
works. The excessive salaries paid to high officials seem to be out of
all proportion to those of the subordinate assistants. Extravagance in
public expenditure necessarily brings increasing taxation to meet it;
the luxuries introduced for the sake of American trade are gradually,
and unfortunately, becoming necessities, whereas it would be more
considerate to reduce them if it were possible. It is no blessing to
create a desire in the common people for that which they can very
well dispense with and feel just as happy without the knowledge
of. The deliberate forcing up of the cost of living has converted
a cheap country into an expensive one, and an income which was
once a modest competence is now a miserable pittance. The infinite
vexatious regulations and complicated restrictions affecting trade
and traffic are irritating to every class of business men, whilst
the Colony's indebtedness is increasing, the budget shows a deficit,
and agriculture--the only local source of wealth--is languishing.
Innovations, costing immense sums to introduce, are forced upon the
people, not at all in harmony with their real wants, their instincts,
or their character. What is good for America is not necessarily good
for the Philippines. One could more readily conceive the feasibility of
"assimilation" with the Japanese than with the Anglo-Saxon. To rule and
to assimilate are two very different propositions: the latter requires
the existence of much in common between the parties. No legislation,
example, or tuition will remould a people's life in direct opposition
to their natural environment. Even the descendants of whites in the
Philippines tend to merge into, rather than alter, the conditions of
the surrounding race, and _vice versa_. It is quite impossible for
a race born and living in the Tropics to adopt the characteristics
and thought of a Temperate Zone people. The Filipinos are not an
industrious, thrifty people, or lovers of work, and no power on earth
will make them so. The Colony's resources are, consequently, not a
quarter developed, and are not likely to be by a strict application
of the theory of the "Philippines for the Filipinos." But why
worry about their lethargy, if, with it, they are on the way to
"perfect contentment"?--that summit of human happiness which no one
attains. Ideal government may reach a point where its exactions tend
to make life a burden; practical government stops this side of that
point. White men will not be found willing to develop a policy which
offers them no hope of bettering themselves; and as to labour--other
willing Asiatics are always close at hand. Uncertainty of legislation,
constantly changing laws, new regulations, the fear of a tax on
capital, and general prospective insecurity make large investors pause.
Democratic principles have been too suddenly sprung upon the
masses. The autonomy granted to the provinces needs more control
than the civil government originally intended, and ends in an
appeal on almost every conceivable question being made to one
man--the Gov.-General: this excessive concentration makes efficient
administration too dependent on the abilities of one person. There
are many who still think, and not without reason, that ten years of
military rule would have been better for the people themselves. Even
now military government might be advantageously re-established in Sámar
Island, where the common people are not anxious for the franchise,
or care much about political rights. A reasonable amount of personal
freedom, with justice, would suffice for them; whilst the trading class
would welcome any effective and continuous protection, rather than have
to shift for themselves with the risk of being persecuted for having
given succour to the _pulajanes_ to save their own lives and property.
Civil government, prematurely inaugurated, without sufficient
preparation, has had a disastrous effect, and the present state of
many provinces is that of a wilderness overrun by brigand bands too
strong for the civil authority to deal with. But one cannot fail to
recognize and appreciate the humane motives which urged the premature
establishment of civil administration. Scores of nobodies before the
rebellion became somebodies during the four or five years of social
turmoil. Some of them influenced the final issue, others were mere
show-figures, really not more important than the _beau sabreur_ in
comic opera. Yet one and all claimed compensation for laying aside
their weapons, and in changing the play from anarchy to civil life
these actors had to be included in the new cast to keep them from
further mischief.
The moral conquest of the Philippines has hardly commenced. The
benevolent intentions of the Washington Government, and the
irreproachable character and purpose of its eminent members who wield
the destiny of these islanders, are unknown to the untutored masses,
who judge their new masters by the individuals with whom they come into
close contact. The hearts of the people cannot be won without moral
prestige, which is blighted by the presence of that undesirable class
of immigrants to whom Maj.-General Leonard Wood refers so forcibly in
his "First Report of the Moro Province." In this particular region,
which is ruled semi-independently of the Philippine Commission,
the peculiar conditions require a special legislation. But, apart
from this, the common policy of its enlightened Gov.-General would
serve as a pattern of what it might be, with advantage, throughout
the Archipelago.
So much United States money and energy have been already expended
in these Islands, and so far-reaching are the pledges made to their
inhabitants, that American and Philippine interests are indissolubly
associated for many a generation to come. It does not necessarily
follow that the fullest measure of national liberty will create real
personal liberty. Such an idea does not at all appeal to Asiatics,
according to whose instinct every man dominates over, or is dominated
by, another. If America should succeed in establishing a permanently
peaceful independent Asiatic government on democratic principles,
it will be one of the unparalleled achievements of the age.
CHAPTER I
General Description of the Archipelago
The Philippine Islands, with the Sulu Protectorate, extend a little
over 16 degrees of latitude--from 4° 45' to 21° N., and longitude
from 116° 40' to 126° 30' E.--and number some 600 islands, many of
which are mere islets, besides several hundreds of rocks jutting out
of the sea. The 11 islands of primary geographical importance are
Luzon, Mindanao, Sámar, Panay, Negros, Palaúan (Parágua), Mindoro,
Leyte, Cebú, Masbate, and Bojol. Ancient maps show the islands and
provinces under a different nomenclature. For example: (old names in
parentheses) Albay (Ibalon); Batangas (Comintan); Basílan (Taguima);
Bulacan (Meycauayan); Cápis (Panay); Cavite (Cauit); Cebú (Sogbu);
Leyte (Baybay); Mindoro (Mait); Negros (Buglas); Rizal (Tondo; later
on Manila); Surigao (Caraga); Sámar (Ibabao); Tayabas (Calilayan).
Luzon and Mindanao united would be larger in area than all the rest
of the islands put together. Luzon is said to have over 40,000 square
miles of land area. The northern half of Luzon is a mountainous region
formed by ramifications of the great cordilleras, which run N. to
S. All the islands are mountainous in the interior, the principal
peaks being the following, viz.:--
Feet above sea level
Halcon (Mindoro) 8,868
Apo [5] (Mindanao) 8,804
Mayon (Luzon) 8,283
San Cristóbal (Luzon) 7,375
Isarog (Luzon) 6,443
Banájao (Luzon) 6,097
Labo (Luzon) 5,090
South Caraballo (Luzon) 4,720
Caraballo del Baler (Luzon) 3,933
Maquíling (Luzon) 3,720
Most of these mountains and subordinate ranges are thickly covered
with forest and light undergrowth, whilst the stately trees are gaily
festooned with clustering creepers and flowering parasites of the most
brilliant hues. The Mayon, which is an active volcano, is comparatively
bare, whilst also the Apo, although no longer in eruption, exhibits
abundant traces of volcanic action in acres of lava and blackened
scoriae. Between the numberless forest-clad ranges are luxuriant plains
glowing in all the splendour of tropical vegetation. The valleys,
generally of rich fertility, are about one-third under cultivation.
There are numerous rivers, few of which are navigable by sea-going
ships. Vessels drawing up to 13 feet can enter the Pasig River,
but this is due to the artificial means employed.
The principal Rivers are:--In _Luzon Island_ the Rio Grande de Cagayán,
which rises in the South Caraballo Mountain in the centre of the
island, and runs in a tortuous stream to the northern coast. It has two
chief affluents, the Rio Chico de Cagayán and the Rio Magat, besides
a number of streams which find their way to its main course. Steamers
of 11-feet draught have entered the Rio Grande, but the sand shoals
at the mouth are very shifty, and frequently the entrance is closed
to navigation. The river, which yearly overflows its banks, bathes
the great Cagayan Valley,--the richest tobacco-growing district in
the Colony. Immense trunks of trees are carried down in the torrent
with great rapidity, rendering it impossible for even small craft--the
_barangayanes_--to make their way up or down the river at that period.
The Rio Grande de la Pampanga rises in the same mountain and flows
in the opposite direction--southwards,--through an extensive plain,
until it empties itself by some 20 mouths into the Manila Bay. The
whole of the Pampanga Valley and the course of the river present a
beautiful panorama from the summit of Arayat Mountain, which has an
elevation of 2,877 feet above the sea level.
The whole of this flat country is laid out into embanked rice fields
and sugar-cane plantations. The towns and villages interspersed are
numerous. All the primeval forest, at one time dense, has disappeared;
for this being one of the first districts brought under European
subjection, it supplied timber to the invaders from the earliest days
of Spanish colonization.
The Rio Agno rises in a mountainous range towards the west coast
about 50 miles N.N.W. of the South Caraballo--runs southwards as
far as lat. 16°, where it takes a S.W. direction down to lat. 15°
48'--thence a N.W. course up to lat. 16°, whence it empties itself by
two mouths into the Gulf of Lingayen. At the highest tides there is
a maximum depth of 11 feet of water on the sand bank at the E. mouth,
on which is situated the port of Dagupan.
The Bicol River, which flows from the Bató Lake to the Bay of San
Miguel, has sufficient depth of water to admit vessels of small
draught a few miles up from its mouth.
In _Mindanao Island_ the Butuan River or Rio Agusan rises at a distance
of about 25 miles from the southern coast and empties itself on the
northern coast, so that it nearly divides the island, and is navigable
for a few miles from the mouth.
The Rio Grande de Mindanao rises in the centre of the island and
empties itself on the west coast by two mouths, and is navigable
for some miles by light-draught steamers. It has a great number of
affluents of little importance.
The only river in _Negros Island_ of any appreciable extent is the
Danao, which rises in the mountain range running down the centre of
the island, and finds its outlet on the east coast. At the mouth it
is about a quarter of a mile wide, but too shallow to permit large
vessels to enter, although past the mouth it has sufficient depth
for any ship. I went up this river, six hours' journey in a boat,
and saw some fine timber near its banks in many places. Here and
there it opens out very wide, the sides becoming mangrove swamps.
The most important Lakes are:--In _Luzon Island_ the Bay Lake or
Laguna de Bay, supplied by numberless small streams coming from the
mountainous district around it. Its greatest length from E. to W. is
25 miles, and its greatest breadth N. to S. 21 miles. In it there
is a mountainous island--Talim,--of no agricultural importance, and
several islets. Its overflow forms the Pasig River, which empties
itself into the Manila Bay. Each wet season--in the middle of the
year--the shores of this lake are flooded. These floods recede as the
dry season approaches, but only partially so from the south coast,
which is gradually being incorporated into the lake bed.
Bombon Lake, in the centre of which is a volcano in constant activity,
has a width E. to W. of 11 miles, and its length from N. to S. is
14 miles. The origin of this lake is apparently volcanic. According
to tradition it was formed by the terrific upheaval of a mountain
7,000 or 8,000 feet high, in the year 1700. It is not supplied by any
streams emptying themselves into it (further than two insignificant
rivulets), and it is connected with the sea by the Pansipít River,
which flows into the Gulf of Balayan at lat. 13° 52' N.
Cagayán Lake, in the extreme N.E. of the island, is about 7 miles
long by 5 miles broad.
Lake Bató, 3 miles across each way, and Lake Buhi, 3 miles N. to S. and
2 1/2 miles wide, situated in the eastern extremity of Luzon Island,
are very shallow.
In the centre of Luzon Island, in the large valley watered by
the above-mentioned Pampanga and Agno Rivers, are three lakes,
respectively Canarem, Mangabol, and Candava; the last two being
lowland meres flooded and navigable by canoes in the rainy season only.
In _Mindoro Island_ there is one lake called Naujan, 2 1/2 miles from
the N.E. coast. Its greatest width is 3 miles, with 4 miles in length.
In _Mindanao Island_ there are the Lakes Maguindanao or Boayan, in
the centre of the island (20 miles E. to W. by 12 N. to S.); Lanao,
18 miles distant from the north coast; Liguasan and Buluan towards
the south, connected with the Rio Grande de Mindanao, and a group of
four small lakes on the Agusuan River.
The Lanao Lake has great historical associations with the struggles
between Christians and Moslems during the period of the Spanish
dominion, and is to this day a centre of strife with the Americans.
In some of the straits dividing the islands there are strong currents,
rendering navigation of sailing vessels very difficult, notably in
the San Bernadino Straits separating the Islands of Luzon and Sámar,
the roadstead of Yloilo between Panay and Guimarrás Islands, and the
passage between the south points of Cebú and Negros Islands.
Most of the islets, if not indeed the whole Archipelago, are of
volcanic origin. There are many volcanoes, two of them in frequent
intermittent activity, viz. the Mayon, in the extreme east of
Luzon Island, and the Taal Volcano, in the centre of Bombon Lake,
34 miles due south of Manila. Also in Negros Island the Canlaúan
Volcano--N. lat. 10° 24'--is occasionally in visible eruption. In
1886 a portion of its crater subsided, accompanied by a tremendous
noise and a slight ejection of lava. In the picturesque Island of
Camiguín a volcano mountain suddenly arose from the plain in 1872.
The _Mayon Volcano_ is in the north of the Province of Albay;
hence it is popularly known as the Albay Volcano. Around its base
there are several towns and villages, the chief being Albay, the
capital of the province; Cagsaua (called Darága) and Camáling on
the one side, and Malinao, Tobaco, etc., on the side facing the east
coast. The earliest eruption recorded is that of 1616, mentioned by
Spilbergen. In 1769 there was a serious eruption, which destroyed the
towns of Cagsaua and Malinao, besides several villages, and devastated
property within a radius of 20 miles. Lava and ashes were thrown out
incessantly during two months, and cataracts of water were formed. In
1811 loud subterranean noises were heard proceeding from the volcano,
which caused the inhabitants around to fear an early renewal of its
activity, but their misfortune was postponed. On February 1, 1814,
[6] it burst with terrible violence. Cagsaua, Badiao, and three other
towns were totally demolished. Stones and ashes were ejected in all
directions. The inhabitants fled to caves to shelter themselves. So
sudden was the occurrence, that many natives were overtaken by the
volcanic projectiles and a few by lava streams. In Cagsaua nearly
all property was lost. Father Aragoneses estimates that 2,200 persons
were killed, besides many being wounded.
Another eruption, remarkable for its duration, took place in 1881-82,
and again in the spring of 1887; but only a small quantity of ashes
was thrown out, and did very little or no damage to the property in
the surrounding towns and villages.
The eruption of July 9, 1888, severely damaged the towns of Libog
and Legaspi; plantations were destroyed in the villages of Bigaá and
Bonco; several houses were fired, others had the roofs crushed in;
a great many domestic animals were killed; fifteen natives lost their
lives, and the loss of live-stock (buffaloes and oxen) was estimated
at 500. The ejection of lava and ashes and stones from the crater
continued for one night, which was illuminated by a column of fire.
The last great eruption occurred in May, 1897. Showers of red-hot
lava fell like rain in a radius of 20 miles from the crater. In
the immediate environs about 400 persons were killed. In the
village of Bacacay houses were entirely buried beneath the lava,
ashes, and sand. The road to the port of Legaspi was covered out of
sight. In the important town of Tobaco there was total darkness and
the earth opened. Hemp plantations and a large number of cattle were
destroyed. In Libog over 100 inhabitants perished in the ruins. The
hamlets of San Roque, Misericordia, and Santo Niño, with over
150 inhabitants, were completely covered with burning _débris_. At
night-time the sight of the fire column, heaving up thousands of tons
of stones, accompanied by noises like the booming of cannon afar off,
was indescribably grand, but it was the greatest public calamity
which had befallen the province for some years past.
The mountain is remarkable for the perfection of its conic form. Owing
to the perpendicular walls of lava formed on the slopes all around,
it would seem impossible to reach the crater. The elevation of the
peak has been computed at between 8,200 and 8,400 feet. I have been
around the base on the E. and S. sides, but the grandest view is to
be obtained from Cagsaua (Darága). On a clear night, when the moon
is hidden, a stream of fire is distinctly seen to flow from the crest.
_Taal Volcano_ is in the island of the Bombon Lake referred to
above. The journey by the ordinary route from the capital would be
about 60 miles. This volcano has been in an active state from time
immemorial, and many eruptions have taken place with more or less
effect. The first one of historical importance appears to have occurred
in 1641; again in 1709 the crater vomited fire with a deafening noise;
on September 21, 1716, it threw out burning stones and lava over the
whole island from which it rises, but so far no harm had befallen
the villagers in its vicinity. In 1731 from the waters of the lake
three tall columns of earth and sand arose in a few days, eventually
subsiding into the form of an island about a mile in circumference. In
1749 there was a famous outburst which dilacerated the coniform peak
of the volcano, leaving the crater disclosed as it now is. Being
only 850 feet high, it is remarkable as one of the lowest volcanoes
in the world.
The last and most desolating of all the eruptions of importance
occurred in the year 1754, when the stones, lava, ashes, and waves
of the lake, caused by volcanic action, contributed to the utter
destruction of the towns of Taal, Tanaúan, Sala, and Lipa, and
seriously damaged property in Balayán, 15 miles away, whilst cinders
are said to have reached Manila, 34 miles distant in a straight
line. One writer says in his MS., [7] compiled 36 years after the
occurrence, that people in Manila dined with lighted candles at midday,
and walked about the streets confounded and thunderstruck, clamouring
for confession during the eight days that the calamity was visible. The
author adds that the smell of the sulphur and fire lasted six months
after the event, and was followed by malignant fever, to which half the
inhabitants of the province fell victims. Moreover, adds the writer,
the lake waters threw up dead alligators and fish, including sharks.
The best detailed account extant is that of the parish priest of Sala
at the time of the event. [8] He says that about 11 o'clock at night
on August 11, 1749, he saw a strong light on the top of the Volcano
Island, but did not take further notice. At 3 o'clock the next morning
he heard a gradually increasing noise like artillery firing, which
he supposed would proceed from the guns of the galleon expected in
Manila from Mexico, saluting the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Cagsaysay
whilst passing. He only became anxious when the number of shots he
heard far exceeded the royal salute, for he had already counted a
hundred times, and still it continued. So he arose, and it occurred
to him that there might be a naval engagement off the coast. He was
soon undeceived, for four old natives suddenly called out, "Father,
let us flee!" and on his inquiry they informed him that the island had
burst, hence the noise. Daylight came and exposed to view an immense
column of smoke gushing from the summit of the volcano, and here and
there from its sides smaller streams rose like plumes. He was joyed
at the spectacle, which interested him so profoundly that he did not
heed the exhortations of the natives to escape from the grand but
awful scene. It was a magnificent sight to watch mountains of sand
hurled from the lake into the air in the form of erect pyramids,
and then falling again like the stream from a fountain jet. Whilst
contemplating this imposing phenomenon with tranquil delight, a
strong earthquake came and upset everything in the convent. Then he
reflected that it might be time to go; pillars of sand ascended out
of the water nearer to the shore of the town, and remained erect,
until, by a second earthquake, they, with the trees on the islet,
were violently thrown down and submerged in the lake. The earth
opened out here and there as far as the shores of the Laguna de Bay,
and the lands of Sala and Tanaúan shifted. Streams found new beds and
took other courses, whilst in several places trees were engulfed in
the fissures made in the soil. Houses, which one used to go up into,
one now had to go down into, but the natives continued to inhabit
them without the least concern. The volcano, on this occasion, was
in activity for three weeks; the first three days ashes fell like
rain. After this incident, the natives extracted sulphur from the
open crater, and continued to do so until the year 1754.
In that year (1754), the same chronicler continues, between nine and
ten o'clock at night on May 15, the volcano ejected boiling lava,
which ran down its sides in such quantities that only the waters
of the lake saved the people on shore from being burnt. Towards the
north, stones reached the shore and fell in a place called Bayoyongan,
in the jurisdiction of Taal. Stones and fire incessantly came from
the crater until June 2, when a volume of smoke arose which seemed
to meet the skies. It was clearly seen from Bauan, which is on a low
level about four leagues (14 miles) from the lake.
Matters continued so until July 10, when there fell a heavy shower
of mud as black as ink. The wind changed its direction and a suburb
of Sala, called Balili, was swamped with mud. This phenomenon was
accompanied by a noise so great that the people of Batangas and Bauan,
who that day had seen the galleon from Acapulco passing on her home
voyage, conjectured that she had saluted the Shrine of Our Lady of
Cagsaysay on her way. The noise ceased, but fire still continued to
issue from the crater until September 25. Stones fell all that night;
and the people of Taal had to abandon their homes, for the roofs were
falling in with the weight upon them. The chronicler was at Taal
at this date, and in the midst of the column of smoke a tempest of
thunder and lightning raged and continued without intermission until
December 4.
The night of All Saints' day (Nov. 1) was a memorable one, for the
quantity of falling fire-stones, sand, and ashes increased, gradually
diminishing again towards November 15. Then, on that night, after
vespers, great noises were heard. A long melancholy sound dinned in
one's ears; volumes of black smoke rose; an infinite number of stones
fell, and great waves proceeded from the lake, beating the shores with
appalling fury. This was followed by another great shower of stones,
brought up amidst the black smoke, which lasted until 10 o'clock at
night. For a short while the devastation was suspended prior to the
last supreme effort. All looked half dead and much exhausted after
seven months of suffering in the way described. [9] It was resolved
to remove the image of Our Lady of Cagsaysay and put in its place
the second image of the Holy Virgin.
On November 29, from seven o'clock in the evening, the volcano threw
up more fire than all put together in the preceding seven months. The
burning column seemed to mingle with the clouds; the whole of the
island was one ignited mass. A wind blew. And as the priests and the
mayor (_Alcalde_) were just remarking that the fire might reach the
town, a mass of stones was thrown up with great violence; thunderclaps
and subterranean noises were heard; everybody looked aghast, and nearly
all knelt to pray. Then the waters of the lake began to encroach
upon the houses, and the inhabitants took to flight, the natives
carrying away whatever chattels they could. Cries and lamentations
were heard all around; mothers were looking for their children in
dismay; half-caste women of the Parian were calling for confession,
some of them beseechingly falling on their knees in the middle of
the streets. The panic was intense, and was in no way lessened by
the Chinese, who took to yelling in their own jargonic syllables.
After the terrible night of November 29 they thought all was over,
when again several columns of smoke appeared, and the priest went off
to the Sanctuary of Cagsaysay, where the prior was. Taal was entirely
abandoned, the natives having gone in all directions away from the
lake. On November 29 and 30 there was complete darkness around the
lake vicinity, and when light reappeared a layer of cinders about
five inches thick was seen over the lands and houses, and it was
still increasing. Total darkness returned, so that one could not
distinguish another's face, and all were more horror-stricken than
ever. In Cagsaysay the natives climbed on to the housetops and threw
down the cinders, which were over-weighting the structures. On November
30 smoke and strange sounds came with greater fury than anything
yet experienced, while lightning flashed in the dense obscurity. It
seemed as if the end of the world was arriving. When light returned,
the destruction was horribly visible; the church roof was dangerously
covered with ashes and earth, and the chronicler opines that its not
having fallen in might be attributed to a miracle! Then there was
a day of comparative quietude, followed by a hurricane which lasted
two days. All were in a state of melancholy, which was increased when
they received the news that the whole of Taal had collapsed; amongst
the ruins being the Government House and Stores, the Prison, State
warehouses and the Royal Rope Walk, besides the Church and Convent.
The Gov.-General sent food and clothing in a vessel, which was nearly
wrecked by storms, whilst the crew pumped and baled out continually
to keep her afloat, until at length she broke up on the shoals at
the mouth of the Pansipit River. Another craft had her mast split by
a flash of lightning, but reached port.
With all this, some daft natives lingered about the site of the town
of Taal till the last, and two men were sepulchred in the Government
House ruins. A woman left her house just before the roof fell in
and was carried away by a flood, from which she escaped, and was
then struck dead by a flash of lightning. A man who had escaped from
Mussulman pirates, by whom he had been held in captivity for years,
was killed during the eruption. He had settled in Taal, and was held
to be a perfect genius, for he could mend a clock!
The road from Taal to Balayan was impassable for a while on account
of the quantity of lava. Taal, once so important as a trading centre,
was now gone, and Batangas, on the coast, became the future capital
of the province.
The actual duration of this last eruption was 6 months and 17 days.
In 1780 the natives again extracted sulphur, but in 1790 a writer at
that date [10] says that he was unable to reach the crater owing to
the depth of soft lava and ashes on the slopes.
There is a tradition current amongst the natives that an Englishman
some years ago attempted to cut a tunnel from the base to the centre
of the volcanic mountain, probably to extract some metallic product
or sulphur. It is said that during the work the excavation partially
fell in upon the Englishman, who perished there. The cave-like entrance
is pointed out to travellers as the _Cueva del Inglés_.
Referring to the volcano, Fray Gaspar de San Agustin in his History
[11] remarks as follows:--"The volcano formerly emitted many large
fire-stones which destroyed the cotton, sweet potato and other
plantations belonging to the natives of Taal on the slopes of the
(volcano) mountain. Also it happened that if three persons arrived
on the volcanic island, one of them had infallibly to die there
without being able to ascertain the cause of this circumstance. This
was related to Father Albuquerque, [12] who after a fervent deesis
entreating compassion on the natives, went to the island, exorcised
the evil spirits there and blessed the land. A religious procession was
made, and Mass was celebrated with great humility. On the elevation of
the Host, horrible sounds were heard, accompanied by groaning voices
and sad lamentations; two craters opened out, one with sulphur in it
and the other with green water (sic), which is constantly boiling. The
crater on the Lipa side is about a quarter of a league wide; the other
is smaller, and in time smoke began to ascend from this opening so that
the natives, fearful of some new calamity, went to Father Bartholomew,
who repeated the ceremonies already described. Mass was said a second
time, so that since then the volcano has not thrown out any more fire
or smoke. [13] However, whilst Fray Thomas Abresi was parish priest
of Taal (about 1611), thunder and plaintive cries were again heard,
therefore the priest had a cross, made of Anobing wood, borne to the
top of the volcano by more than 400 natives, with the result that
not only the volcano ceased to do harm, but the island has regained
its original fertile condition."
The Taal Volcano is reached with facility from the N. side of the
island, the ascent on foot occupying about half an hour. Looking
into the crater, which would be about 4,500 feet wide from one border
to the other of the shell, one sees three distinct lakes of boiling
liquid, the colours of which change from time to time. I have been
up to the crater four times; the last time the liquids in the lakes
were respectively of green, yellow, and chocolate colours. At the
time of my last visit there was also a lava chimney in the middle,
from which arose a snow-white volume of smoke.
The Philippine Islands have numberless creeks and bays forming
natural harbours, but navigation on the W. coasts of Cebú, Negros and
Palaúan Islands is dangerous for any but very light-draught vessels,
the water being very shallow, whilst there are dangerous reefs all
along the W. coast of Palaúan (Parágua) and between the south point
of this island and Balábac Island.
The S.W. monsoon brings rain to most of the islands, and the wet
season lasts nominally six months,--from about the end of April. The
other half of the year is the dry season. However, on those coasts
directly facing the Pacific Ocean, the seasons are the reverse of this.
The hottest season is from March to May inclusive, except on the coasts
washed by the Pacific, where the greatest heat is felt in June, July,
and August. The temperature throughout the year varies but slightly,
the average heat in Luzon Island being about 81° 50' Fahr. In the
highlands of north Luzon, on an elevation above 4,000 feet, the maximum
temperature is 78° Fahr. and the minimum 46° Fahr. Zamboanga, which is
over 400 miles south of Manila, is cooler than the capital. The average
number of rainy days in Luzon during the years 1881 to 1883 was 203.
Commencing July 11, 1904, three days of incessant rain in Rizal
Province produced the greatest inundation of Manila suburbs within
living memory. Human lives were lost; many cattle were washed away;
barges in the river were wrenched from their moorings and dashed
against the bridge piers; pirogues were used instead of vehicles in
the thoroughfares; considerable damage was done in the shops and many
persons had to wade through the flooded streets knee-deep in water.
The climate is a continual summer, which maintains a rich verdure
throughout the year; and during nine months of the twelve an alternate
heat and moisture stimulates the soil to the spontaneous production
of every form of vegetable life. The country generally is healthy.
The whole of the Archipelago, as far south as 10° lat., is affected
by the monsoons, and periodically disturbed by terrible hurricanes,
which cause great devastation to the crops and other property. The
last destructive hurricane took place in September, 1905.
Earthquakes are also very frequent, the last of great importance having
occurred in 1863, 1880, 1892, 1894, and 1897. In 1897 a tremendous
tidal wave affected the Island of Leyte, causing great destruction of
life and property. A portion of Taclóban, the capital of the island,
was swept away, rendering it necessary to extend the town in another
direction.
In the wet season the rivers swell considerably, and often overflow
their banks; whilst the mountain torrents carry away bridges, cattle,
tree trunks, etc., with terrific force, rendering travelling in some
parts of the interior dangerous and difficult. In the dry season long
droughts occasionally occur (about once in three years), to the great
detriment of the crops and live-stock.
The southern boundary of the Archipelago is formed by a chain of some
140 islands, stretching from the large island of Mindanao as far as
Borneo, and constitutes the Sulu Archipelago, the Sultanate of which
was under the protection of Spain (_vide_ Chap. xxix.). It is now
being absorbed, under American rule, in the rest of the Archipelago,
under the denomination of Moro Province (q.v.).
CHAPTER II
Discovery of the Archipelago
The discoveries of Christopher Columbus in 1492, the adventures and
conquests of Hernan Cortés, Blasco Nuñez de Balboa and others in
the South Atlantic, had awakened an ardent desire amongst those of
enterprizing spirit to seek beyond those regions which had hitherto
been traversed. It is true the Pacific Ocean had been seen by Balboa,
who crossed the Isthmus of Panamá, but how to arrive there with his
ships was as yet a mystery.
On April 10, 1495, the Spanish Government published a general
concession to all who wished to search for unknown lands. This was a
direct attack upon the privileges of Columbus at the instigation of
Fonseca, Bishop of Búrgos, who had the control of the Indian affairs
of the realm. Rich merchants of Cadiz and Seville, whose imagination
was inflamed by the reports of the abundance of pearls and gold on the
American coast, fitted out ships to be manned by the roughest class
of gold-hunters: so great were the abuses of this common licence that
it was withdrawn by Royal Decree of June 2, 1497.
It was the age of chivalry, and the restless cavalier who had won
his spurs in Europe lent a listening ear to the accounts of romantic
glory and wealth attained across the seas. That an immense ocean washed
the western shores of the great American continent was an established
fact. That there was a passage connecting the great Southern sea--the
Atlantic--with that vast ocean was an accepted hypothesis. Many had
sought the passage in vain; the honour of its discovery was reserved
for Hernando de Maghallanes (Portuguese, Fernão da Magalhães).
This celebrated man was a Portuguese noble who had received the most
complete education in the palace of King John II. Having studied
mathematics and navigation, at an early age he joined the Portuguese
fleet which left for India in 1505 under the command of Almeida. He
was present at the siege of Malacca under the famous Albuquerque, and
accompanied another expedition to the rich Moluccas, or Spice Islands,
when the Islands of Banda, Tidor, and Ternate were discovered. It
was here he obtained the information which led him to contemplate
the voyage which he subsequently realized.
On his return to Portugal he searched the Crown Archives to see
if the Moluccas were situated within the demarcation accorded to
Spain. [14] In the meantime he repaired to the wars in Africa, where
he was wounded in the knee, with the result that he became permanently
lame. He consequently retired to Portugal, and his companions in arms,
jealous of his prowess, took advantage of his affliction to assail him
with vile imputations. The King Emmanuel encouraged the complaints,
and accused him of feigning a malady of which he was completely
cured. Wounded to the quick by such an assertion, and convinced of
having lost the royal favour, Maghallanes renounced for ever, by a
formal and public instrument, his duties and rights as a Portuguese
subject, and henceforth became a naturalized Spaniard. He then
presented himself at the Spanish Court, at that time in Valladolid,
where he was well received by the King Charles I., the Bishop of
Búrgos, Juan Rodriguez Fonseca, Minister of Indian Affairs, and by
the King's chancellor. They listened attentively to his narration,
and he had the good fortune to secure the personal protection of His
Majesty, himself a well-tried warrior, experienced in adventure.
The Portuguese Ambassador, Alvaro de Acosta, incensed at the success
of his late countryman, and fearing that the project under discussion
would lead to the conquest of the Spice Islands by the rival kingdom,
made every effort to influence the Court against him. At the same
time he ineffectually urged Maghallanes to return to Lisbon, alleging
that his resolution to abandon Portuguese citizenship required the
sovereign sanction. Others even meditated his assassination to save
the interests of the King of Portugal. This powerful opposition only
served to delay the expedition, for finally the King of Portugal
was satisfied that his Spanish rival had no intention to authorize
a violation of the Convention of Demarcation.
Between King Charles and Maghallanes a contract was signed in Saragossa
by virtue of which the latter pledged himself to seek the discovery
of rich spice islands within the limits of the Spanish Empire. If
he should not have succeeded in the venture after ten years from
the date of sailing he would thenceforth be permitted to navigate
and trade without further royal assent, reserving one-twentieth of
his net gains for the Crown. The King accorded to him the title
of Cavalier and invested him with the habit of St. James and the
hereditary government in male succession of all the islands he might
annex. The Crown of Castile reserved to itself the supreme authority
over such government. If Maghallanes discovered so many as six islands,
he was to embark merchandise in the King's own ships to the value of
one thousand ducats as royal dues. If the islands numbered only two,
he would pay to the Crown one-fifteenth of the net profits. The King,
however, was to receive one-fifth part of the total cargo sent in the
_first_ return expedition. The King would defray the expense of fitting
out and arming five ships of from 60 to 130 tons with a total crew
of 234 men; he would also appoint captains and officials of the Royal
Treasury to represent the State interests in the division of the spoil.
Orders to fulfil the contract were issued to the Crown officers in the
port of Seville, and the expedition was slowly prepared, consisting
of the following vessels, viz.: The commodore ship _La Trinidad_,
under the immediate command of Maghallanes; the _San Antonio_,
Captain Juan de Cartagena; the _Victoria_, Captain Luis de Mendoza;
the _Santiago_, Captain Juan Rodriguez Serrano; and the _Concepcion_,
Captain Gaspar de Quesada.
The little fleet had not yet sailed when dissensions arose.
Maghallanes wished to carry his own ensign, whilst Doctor Sancho
Matienza insisted that it should be the Royal Standard.
Another, named Talero, disputed the question of who should be the
standard-bearer. The King himself had to settle these quarrels by his
own arbitrary authority. Talero was disembarked and the Royal Standard
was formally presented to Maghallanes by injunction of the King in
the Church of Santa Maria de la Victoria de la Triana, in Seville,
where he and his companions swore to observe the usages and customs
of Castile, and to remain faithful and loyal to His Catholic Majesty.
On August 10, 1519, the expedition left the port of San Lúcar de
Barrameda in the direction of the Canary Islands.
On December 13 they arrived safely at Rio Janeiro.
Following the coast in search of the longed-for passage to the
Pacific Ocean, they entered the Solis River--so called because its
discoverer, João de Solis, a Portuguese, was murdered there. Its name
was afterwards changed to that of Rio de la Plata (the Silver River).
Continuing their course, the intense cold determined Maghallanes to
winter in the next large river, known then as San Julian.
Tumults arose; some wished to return home; others harboured a desire
to separate from the fleet, but Maghallanes had sufficient tact
to persuade the crews to remain with him, reminding them of the
shame which would befall them if they returned only to relate their
failure. He added that, so far as he was concerned, nothing but death
would deter him from executing the royal commission.
As to the rebellious captains, Juan de Cartagena was already put
in irons and sentenced to be cast ashore with provisions, and a
disaffected French priest for a companion. The sentence was carried
out later on. Then Maghallanes sent a boat to each of three of the
ships to inquire of the captains whom they served. The reply from all
was that they were for the King and themselves. Thereupon 30 men were
sent to the _Victoria_ with a letter to Mendoza, and whilst he was
reading it, they rushed on board and stabbed him to death. Quesada
then brought his ship alongside of the _Trinidad_, and, with sword and
shield in hand, called in vain upon his men to attack. Maghallanes,
with great promptitude, gave orders to board Quesada's vessel. The
next day Quesada was executed. After these vigorous but justifiable
measures, obedience was ensured.
Still bearing southwards within sight of the coast, on October 28,
1520, the expedition reached and entered the seaway thenceforth known
as the Magellan Straits, dividing the Island of Tierra del Fuego from
the mainland of Patagonia. [15]
On the way one ship had become a total wreck, and now the _San Antonio_
deserted the expedition; her captain having been wounded and made
prisoner by his mutinous officers, she was sailed in the direction of
New Guinea. The three remaining vessels waited for the _San Antonio_
several days, and then passed through the Straits. Great was the
rejoicing of all when, on November 26, 1520, they found themselves
on the Pacific Ocean! It was a memorable day. All doubt was now at
an end as they cheerfully navigated across that broad expanse of sea.
On March 16, 1521, the Ladrone Islands were reached. There the ships
were so crowded with natives that they were obliged to be expelled by
force. They stole one of the ship's boats, and ninety men were sent on
shore to recover it. After a bloody combat the boat was regained, and
the fleet continued its course westward until it hove to off an islet,
then called Jomonjol, now known as Malhou, situated in the channel
between Sámar and Dinagat Islands (_vide_ map). Then coasting along
the north of the Island of Mindanao, they arrived at the mouth of the
Butuan River, where they were supplied with provisions by the chief. It
was Easter week, and on this shore the first Mass was celebrated in
the Philippines. The natives showed great friendliness, in return
for which Maghallanes took formal possession of their territory in
the name of Charles I. The chieftain himself volunteered to pilot
the ships to a fertile island, the kingdom of a relation of his, and,
passing between the Islands of Bojol and Leyte, the expedition arrived
on April 7 at Cebú, where, on receiving the news, over two thousand
men appeared on the beach in battle array with lances and shields.
The Butuan chief went on shore and explained that the expedition
brought people of peace who sought provisions. The King agreed to
a treaty, and proposed that it should be ratified according to the
native formula--drawing blood from the breast of each party, the
one drinking that of the other. This form of bond was called by the
Spaniards the _Pacto de sangre_, or the Blood compact (q.v.).
Maghallanes accepted the conditions, and a hut was built on shore in
which to say Mass. Then he disembarked with his followers, and the
King, Queen, and Prince came to satisfy their natural curiosity. They
appeared to take great interest in the Christian religious rites and
received baptism, although it would be venturesome to suppose they
understood their meaning, as subsequent events proved. The princes
and headmen of the district followed their example, and swore fealty
and obedience to the King of Spain.
Maghallanes espoused the cause of his new allies, who were at war with
the tribes on the opposite coast, and on April 25, 1521, he passed
over to Magtan Island. In the affray he was mortally wounded by an
arrow, and thus ended his brief but lustrous career, which fills one
of the most brilliant pages in Spanish annals.
Maghallanes called the group of islands, so far discovered, the Saint
Lazarus Archipelago. In Spain they were usually referred to as the
Islas del Poniente, and in Portugal as the Islas del Oriente.
On the left bank of the Pasig River, facing the City of Manila, stands
a monument to Maghallanes' memory. Another has been erected on the
spot in Magtan Island, where he is supposed to have been slain on
April 27, 1521. Also in the city of Cebú, near the beach, there is
an obelisk to commemorate these heroic events.
It was perhaps well for Maghallanes to have ended his days out of
reach of his royal master. Had he returned to Spain he would probably
have met a fate similar to that which befell Columbus after all his
glories. The _San Antonio_, which, as already mentioned, deserted the
fleet at the Magellan Straits, continued her voyage from New Guinea to
Spain, arriving at San Lúcar de Barrameda in March, 1521. The captain,
Alvaro Mesquita, was landed as a prisoner, accused of having seconded
Maghallanes in repressing insubordination. To Maghallanes were ascribed
the worst cruelties and infraction of the royal instructions. Accused
and accusers were alike cast into prison, and the King, unable to
lay hands on the deceased Maghallanes, sought this hero's wife and
children. These innocent victims of royal vengeance were at once
arrested and conveyed to Búrgos, where the Court happened to be,
whilst the _San Antonio_ was placed under embargo.
On the decease of Maghallanes, the supreme command of the expedition in
Cebú Island was assumed by Duarte de Barbosa, who, with twenty-six of
his followers, was slain at a banquet to which they had been invited
by Hamabar, the King of the island. Juan Serrano had so ingratiated
himself with the natives during the sojourn on shore that his life
was spared for a while. Stripped of his raiment and armour, he was
conducted to the beach, where the natives demanded a ransom for his
person of two cannons from the ships' artillery. Those on board saw
what was passing and understood the request, but they were loath
to endanger the lives of all for the sake of one--"_Melius est ut
pereat unus quam ut pereat communitas_" (Saint Augustine)--so they
raised anchors and sailed out of the port, leaving Serrano to meet
his terrible fate.
Due to sickness, murder during the revolts, and the slaughter in Cebú,
the exploring party, now reduced to 100 souls all told, was deemed
insufficient to conveniently manage three vessels. It was resolved
therefore to burn the most dilapidated one--the _Concepcion_. At a
general council, Juan Caraballo was chosen Commander-in-Chief of
the expedition, with Gonzalo Gomez de Espinosa as Captain of the
_Victoria_. The royal instructions were read, and it was decided
to go to the Island of Borneo, already known to the Portuguese
and marked on their charts. On the way they provisioned the ships
off the coast of Palaúan Island (Parágua), and thence navigated to
within ten miles of the capital of Borneo (probably Brunei). Here
they fell in with a number of native canoes, in one of which was the
King's secretary. There was a great noise with the sound of drums
and trumpets, and the ships saluted the strangers with their guns.
The natives came on board, embraced the Spaniards as if they were old
friends, and asked them who they were and what they came for. They
replied that they were vassals of the King of Spain and wished to
barter goods. Presents were exchanged, and several of the Spaniards
went ashore. They were met on the way by over two thousand armed
men, and safely escorted to the King's quarters. After satisfying
his Majesty's numerous inquiries, Captain Espinosa was permitted to
return with his companions. He reported to Caraballo all he had seen,
and in a council it was agreed that the town was too large and the
armed men too numerous to warrant the safety of a longer stay. However,
being in need of certain commodities, five men were despatched to the
town. As days passed by, their prolonged absence caused suspicion
and anxiety, so the Spaniards took in reprisal the son of the King
of Luzon Island, who had arrived there to trade, accompanied by 100
men and five women in a large prahu. The prince made a solemn vow to
see that the five Spaniards returned, and left two of his women and
eight chiefs as hostages. Then Caraballo sent a message to the King
of Borneo, intimating that if his people were not liberated he would
seize all the junks and merchandise he might fall in with and kill
their crews. Thereupon two of the retained Spaniards were set free,
but, in spite of the seizure of craft laden with silk and cotton, the
three men remaining had to be abandoned, and the expedition set sail.
For reasons not very clear, Caraballo was deprived of the supreme
command and Espinosa was appointed in his place, whilst Juan Sebastian
Elcano was elected Captain of the _Victoria_. With a native pilot,
captured from a junk which they met on the way, the ships shaped
their course towards the Moluccas Islands, and on November 8, 1521,
they arrived at the Island of Tidor. Thus the essential object of
the expedition was gained--the discovery of a western route to the
Spice Islands.
Years previous the Portuguese had opened up trade and still continued
to traffic with these islands, which were rich in nutmegs, cloves,
cinnamon, ginger, sage, pepper, etc. It is said that Saint Francis
Xavier had propagated his views amongst these islanders, some of whom
professed the Christian faith.
The King, richly attired, went out with his suite to receive and
welcome the Spaniards. He was anxious to barter with them, and
when the _Trinidad_ was consequently laden with valuable spices it
was discovered that she had sprung a leak. Her cargo was therefore
transferred to the sister ship, whilst the _Trinidad_ remained in
Tidor for repairs, and Elcano was deputed to make the voyage home
with the _Victoria_, taking the western route of the Portuguese in
violation of the Treaty of Tordesillas. Elcano's crew consisted of
fifty-three Europeans and a dozen natives of Tidor. The _Victoria_
started for Spain at the beginning of the year 1522; passed through
the Sunda Straits at great risk of being seized by the Portuguese;
experienced violent storms in the Mozambique Channel, and was almost
wrecked rounding the Cape of Good Hope. A few of the crew died--their
only food was a scanty ration of rice--and in their extreme distress
they put in at Santiago Island, 350 miles W. of Cape Verd, to procure
provisions and beg assistance from the Portuguese Governor. It was
like jumping into the lion's mouth. The Governor imprisoned those who
went to him, in defence of his Sovereign's treaty rights; he seized
the boat which brought them ashore; inquired of them where they had
obtained the cargo; and projected the capture of the _Victoria_.
Captain Elcano was not slow to comprehend the situation; he raised
anchor and cleared out of the harbour, and, as it had happened several
times before, those who had the misfortune to be sent ashore were
abandoned by their countrymen.
The _Victoria_ made the port of San Lúcar de Barrameda on September
6, 1522, so that in a little over three years Juan Sebastian Elcano
had performed the most notable voyage hitherto on record--it was the
first yet accomplished round the world. It must, however, be borne in
mind that the discovery of the way to the Moluccas, going westward,
was due to Maghallanes--of Portuguese birth--and that the route thence
to Europe, continuing westward, had long before been determined by
the Portuguese traders, whose charts Elcano used.
When Elcano and his 17 companions disembarked, their appearance was
most pitiable--mere skeletons of men, weather-beaten and famished. The
City of Seville received them with acclamation; but their first
act was to walk barefooted, in procession, holding lighted candles
in their hands, to the church to give thanks to the Almighty for
their safe deliverance from the hundred dangers which they had
encountered. Clothes, money, and all necessaries were supplied
to them by royal bounty, whilst Elcano and the most intelligent
of his companions were cited to appear at Court to narrate their
adventures. His Majesty received them with marked deference. Elcano was
rewarded with a life pension of 500 ducats (worth at that date about
£112 10s.), and as a lasting remembrance of his unprecedented feat,
his royal master knighted him and conceded to him the right of using
on his escutcheon a globe bearing the motto, "_Primus circundedit me_."
Two of Elcano's officers, Miguel de Rodas and Francisco Alva, were
each awarded a life pension of 50,000 maravedis (worth at that time
about 14 guineas), whilst the King ordered one-fourth of that fifth
part of the cargo, which by contract with Maghallanes belonged to the
State Treasury, to be distributed amongst the crew, including those
imprisoned in Santiago Island.
The cargo of the _Victoria_ consisted of twenty-six and a half tons
of cloves, a quantity of cinnamon, sandal wood, nutmegs, etc. Amongst
the Tidor Islanders who were presented to the King, one of them was
not allowed to return to his native home, because he had carefully
inquired the value of the spices in the Spanish bazaars.
Meanwhile the _Trinidad_ was repaired in Tidor and on her way to
Panamá, when continued tempests and the horrible sufferings of the
crew determined them to retrace their course to the Moluccas. In this
interval Portuguese ships had arrived there, and a fort was being
constructed to defend Portuguese interests against the Spaniards,
whom they regarded as interlopers. The _Trinidad_ was seized, and
the Captain Espinosa with the survivors of his crew were granted a
passage to Lisbon, which place they reached five years after they
had set out with Maghallanes.
The enthusiasm of King Charles was equal to the importance of the
discoveries which gave renown to his subjects and added glory to his
Crown. Notwithstanding a protracted controversy with the Portuguese
Court, which claimed the exclusive right of trading with the Spice
Islands, he ordered another squadron of six ships to be fitted
out for a voyage to the Moluccas. The supreme command was confided
to Garcia Yofre de Loaisa, Knight of Saint John, whilst Sebastian
Elcano was appointed captain of one of the vessels. After passing
through the Magellan Straits, the Commander Loaisa succumbed to the
fatigues and privations of the stormy voyage. Elcano succeeded him,
but only for four days, when he too expired. The expedition, however,
arrived safely at the Moluccas Islands, where they found the Portuguese
in full possession and strongly established, but the long series of
combats, struggles and altercations which ensued between the rival
Powers, in which Captain Andrés de Urdaneta prominently figured,
left no decisive advantage to either nation.
But the King was in no way disheartened. A third expedition--the last
under his auspices--was organized and despatched from the Pacific
Coast of Mexico by the Viceroy, by royal mandate. It was composed of
two ships, two transports and one galley, well manned and armed, chosen
from the fleet of Pedro Alvarado, the late Governor of Guatemala. Under
the leadership of Ruy Lopez de Villalobos it sailed on November 1,
1542; discovered many small islands in the Pacific; lost the galley on
the way, and anchored off an island about 20 miles in circumference
which was named Antonia. They found its inhabitants very hostile. A
fight ensued, but the natives finally fled, leaving several Spaniards
wounded, of whom six died. Villalobos then announced his intention
of remaining here some time, and ordered his men to plant maize. At
first they demurred, saying that they had come to fight, not to till
land, but at length necessity urged them to obedience, and a small
but insufficient crop was reaped in due season. Hard pressed for
food, they lived principally on cats, rats, lizards, snakes, dogs,
roots and wild fruit, and several died of disease. In this plight a
ship was sent to Mindanao Island, commanded by Bernado de la Torre,
to seek provisions. The voyage was fruitless. The party was opposed
by the inhabitants, who fortified themselves, but were dislodged
and slain. Then a vessel was commissioned to Mexico with news and to
solicit reinforcements. On the way, Volcano Island (of the Ladrone
Islands group) was discovered on August 6, 1543. A most important
event followed. The island, now known as Sámar, was called the _Isla
Philipina_, and a galiot was built and despatched to the group (it
is doubtful which), named by this expedition the _Philippine Islands_
in honour of Philip, Prince of Asturias, the son of King Charles I.,
heir apparent to the throne of Castile, to which he ascended in 1555
under the title of Philip II. on the abdication of his father.
The craft returned from the Philippine Islands laden with abundance of
provisions, with which the ships were enabled to continue the voyage.
By the royal instructions, Ruy Lopez de Villalobos was strictly
enjoined not to touch at the Moluccas Islands, peace having been
concluded with Portugal. Heavy gales forced him nevertheless to take
refuge at Gilolo. The Portuguese, suspicious of his intentions in
view of the treaty, arrayed their forces against his, inciting the
King of the island also to discard all Spanish overtures and refuse
assistance to Villalobos. The discord and contentions between the
Portuguese and Spaniards were increasing; nothing was being gained
by either party. Villalobos personally was sorely disheartened
in the struggle, fearing all the while that his opposition to the
Portuguese in contravention of the royal instructions would only
excite the King's displeasure and lead to his own downfall. Hence
he decided to capitulate with his rival and accepted a safe conduct
for himself and party to Europe in Portuguese ships. They arrived at
Amboina Island, where Villalobos, already crushed by grief, succumbed
to disease. The survivors of the expedition, amongst whom were several
priests, continued the journey home via Cochin China, Malacca and Goa,
where they embarked for Lisbon, arriving there in 1549.
In 1558 King Charles was no more, but the memory of his ambition
outlived him. His son Philip, equally emulous and unscrupulous,
was too narrow-minded and subtly cautious to initiate an expensive
enterprise encompassed by so many hazards--as materially unproductive
as it was devoid of immediate political importance. Indeed the basis
of the first expedition was merely to discover a Western route to
the rich Spice Islands, already known to exist; the second went there
to attempt to establish Spanish empire; and the third to search for,
and annex to, the Spanish Crown, lands as wealthy as those claimed by,
and now yielded to, the Portuguese.
But the value of the Philippine Islands, of which the possession was
but recent and nominal, was thus far a matter of doubt.
One of the most brave and intrepid captains of the Loaisa
expedition--Andrés de Urdaneta--returned to Spain in 1536. In former
years he had fought under King Charles I., in his wars in Italy,
when the study of navigation served him as a favourite pastime. Since
his return from the Moluccas his constant attention was given to the
project of a new expedition to the Far West, for which he unremittingly
solicited the royal sanction and assistance. But the King had grown
old and weary of the world, and whilst he did not openly discourage
Urdaneta's pretensions he gave him no effective aid. At length,
in 1553, two years before Charles abdicated, Urdaneta, convinced of
the futility of his importunity at the Spanish Court, and equally
unsuccessful with his scheme in other quarters, retired to Mexico,
where he took the habit of an Augustine monk. Ten years afterwards
King Philip, inspired by the religious sentiment which pervaded his
whole policy, urged his Viceroy in Mexico to fit out an expedition
to conquer and christianize the Philippine Islands. Urdaneta, now a
priest, was not overlooked. Accompanied by five priests of his Order,
he was entrusted with the spiritual care of the races to be subdued
by an expedition composed of four ships and one frigate well armed,
carrying 400 soldiers and sailors, commanded by a Basque navigator,
Miguel Lopez de Legaspi. This remarkable man was destined to acquire
the fame of having established Spanish dominion in these Islands. He
was of noble birth and a native of the Province of Guipúzcoa in
Spain. Having settled in the City of Mexico, of which place he was
elected Mayor, he there practised as a notary. Of undoubted piety,
he enjoyed reputation for his justice and loyalty; hence he was
appointed General of the forces equipped for the voyage.
The favourite desire to possess the valuable Spice Islands still
lurked in the minds of many Spaniards. Amongst them was Urdaneta, who
laboured in vain to persuade the Viceroy of the superior advantages
to be gained by annexing New Guinea instead of the Philippines, whence
the conquest of the Moluccas would be but a facile task. However, the
Viceroy was inexorable and resolved to fulfil the royal instructions
to the letter, so the expedition set sail from the Mexican port of
Navidad for the Philippine Islands on November 21, 1564.
The Ladrone Islands were passed on January 9, 1565, and on the 13th
of the following month the Philippines were sighted. A call for
provisions was made at several small islands, including Camiguín,
whence the expedition sailed to Bojol Island. A boat despatched to
the port of Butuan returned in a fortnight with the news that there
was much gold, wax, and cinnamon in that district. A small vessel was
also sent to Cebú, and on its return reported that the natives showed
hostility, having decapitated one of the crew whilst he was bathing.
Nevertheless, General Legaspi resolved to put in at Cebú, which was
a safe harbour; and on the way there the ships anchored off Limasana
Island (to the south of Leyte). Thence, running south-west, the port
of Dapítan (Mindanao Is.) was reached.
Prince Pagbuaya, who ruled there, was astonished at the sight
of such formidable ships, and commissioned one of his subjects,
specially chosen for his boldness, to take note of their movements,
and report to him. His account was uncommonly interesting. He related
that enormous men with long, pointed noses, dressed in fine robes,
ate stones (hard biscuits), drank fire, and blew smoke out of their
mouths and through their nostrils. Their power was such that they
commanded thunder and lightning (discharge of artillery), and that
at meal times they sat down at a clothed table. From their lofty
port, their bearded faces, and rich attire, they might have been
the very gods manifesting themselves to the natives; so the Prince
thought it wise to accept the friendly overtures of such marvellous
strangers. Besides obtaining ample provisions in barter for European
wares, Legaspi procured from this chieftain much useful information
respecting the condition of Cebú. He learnt that it was esteemed a
powerful kingdom, of which the magnificence was much vaunted amongst
the neighbouring states; that the roadstead was one of great safety,
and the most favourably situated amongst the islands of the painted
faces. [16]
The General resolved, therefore, to filch it from its native king
and annex it to the Crown of Castile.
He landed in Cebú on April 27, 1565, and negotiations were entered
into with the natives of that island. Remembering, by tradition,
the pretensions of the Maghallanes' party, they naturally opposed
this renewed menace to their independence. The Spaniards occupied
the town by force and sacked it, but for months were so harassed by
the surrounding tribes that a council was convened to discuss the
prudence of continuing the occupation. The General decided to remain;
little by little the natives yielded to the new condition of things,
and thus the first step towards the final conquest was achieved. The
natives were declared Spanish subjects, and hopeful with the success
thus far attained, Legaspi determined to send despatches to the King
by the priest Andrés de Urdaneta, who safely arrived at Navidad on
October 3, 1565, and proceeded thence to Spain. In a letter written
by Legaspi in 1567 he alluded, for the first time, to the whole
archipelago as the Islas Filipinas.
The pacification of Cebú and the adjacent islands was steadily and
successfully pursued by Legaspi; the confidence of the natives was
assured, and their dethroned King Tupas accepted Christian baptism,
whilst his daughter married a Spaniard.
In the midst of the invaders' felicity the Portuguese arrived to
dispute the possession, but they were compelled to retire. A fortress
was constructed and plots of land were marked out for the building
of the Spanish settlers' residences; and finally, in 1570, Cebú was
declared a city, after Legaspi had received from his royal master
the title of Gov.-General of all the lands which he might be able
to conquer.
In May, 1570, Captain Juan Salcedo, Legaspi's grandson, was despatched
to the Island of Luzon to reconnoitre the territory and bring it
under Spanish dominion.
The history of these early times is very confused, and there are
many contradictions in the authors of the Philippine chronicles,
none of which seem to have been written contemporaneously with the
first events. It appears, however, that Martin de Goiti and a few
soldiers accompanied Salcedo to the north. They were well received
by the native chiefs or petty kings Lacandola, Rajah of Tondo (known
as Rajah Matandá, which means in native dialect the aged Rajah),
and his nephew the young Rajah Soliman of Manila.
The sight of a body of European troops armed as was the custom in
the 16th century, must have profoundly impressed and overawed these
chieftains, otherwise it seems almost incredible that they should
have consented, without protest, or attempt at resistance, to (for
ever) give up their territory, yield their independence, pay tribute,
[17] and become the tools of invading foreigners for the conquest of
their own race without recompense whatsoever.
A treaty of peace was signed and ratified by an exchange of drops of
blood between the parties thereto. Soliman, however, soon repented of
his poltroonery, and roused the war-cry among some of his tribes. To
save his capital (then called Maynila) falling into the hands of the
invaders he set fire to it. Lacandola remained passively watching the
issue. Soliman was completely routed by Salcedo, and pardoned on his
again swearing fealty to the King of Spain. Goiti remained in the
vicinity of Manila with his troops, whilst Salcedo fought his way
to the Bombon Lake (Taal) district. The present Batangas Province
was subdued by him and included in the jurisdiction of Mindoro
Island. During the campaign Salcedo was severely wounded by an arrow
and returned to Manila.
Legaspi was in the Island of Fanay when Salcedo (some writers say
Goiti) arrived to advise him of what had occurred in Luzon. They at
once proceeded together to Cavite, where Lacandola visited Legaspi
on board, and, prostrating himself, averred his submission. Then
Legaspi continued his journey to Manila, and was received there
with acclamation. He took formal possession of the surrounding
territory, declared Manila to be the capital of the Archipelago,
and proclaimed the sovereignty of the King of Spain over the whole
group of islands. Gaspar de San Agustin, writing of this period, says:
"He (Legaspi) ordered them (the natives) to finish the building of
the fort in construction at the mouth of the river (Pasig) so that
His Majesty's artillery might be mounted therein for the defence of
the fort and the town. Also he ordered them to build a large house
inside the battlement walls for Legaspi's own residence--another
large house and church for the priests, etc. ... Besides these two
large houses, he told them to erect a hundred and fifty dwellings of
moderate size for the remainder of the Spaniards to live in. All this
they promptly promised to do, but they did not obey, for the Spaniards
were themselves obliged to terminate the work of the fortifications."
The City Council of Manila was constituted on June 24, 1571. On August
20, 1572, Miguel Lopez de Legaspi succumbed to the fatigues of his
arduous life, leaving behind him a name which will always hold a
prominent place in Spanish colonial history. He was buried in Manila
in the Augustine Chapel of San Fausto, where hung the Royal Standard
and the hero's armorial bearings until the British troops occupied
the city in 1763. A street in Manila and others in provincial towns
bear his name. Near the Luneta Esplanade, Manila, there is a very
beautiful Legaspi (and Urdaneta) monument, erected shortly after the
Rebellion of 1896.
"Death makes no conquest of this conqueror,
For now he lives in fame, though not in life."
_Richard III._, Act 3, Sc. 1.
In the meantime Salcedo continued his task of subjecting the tribes in
the interior. The natives of Taytay and Cainta, in the Spanish military
district of Mórong, (now Rizal Province) submitted to him on August
15, 1571. He returned to the Laguna de Bay to pacify the villagers,
and penetrated as far as Camarines Norte to explore the Bicol
River. Bolinao and the provinces of Pangasinán and Ilocos yielded to
his prowess, and in this last province he had well established himself
when the defence of the capital obliged him to return to Manila.
At the same time Martin de Goiti was actively employed in overrunning
the Pampanga territory with the double object of procuring supplies for
the Manila camp and coercing the inhabitants on his way to acknowledge
their new liege lord. It is recorded that in this expedition Goiti
was joined by the Rajahs of Tondo and Manila. Yet Lacandola appears to
have been regarded more as a servant of the Spaniards _nolens volens_
than as a free ally, for, because he absented himself from Goiti's camp
"without licence from the _Maestre de Campo_," he was suspected by
some writers of having favoured opposition to the Spaniards' incursions
in the Marshes of Hagonoy (Pampanga coast, N. boundary of Manila Bay).
The district which constituted the ancient province of Taal
y Balayan, subsequently denominated Province of Batangas, was
formerly governed by a number of caciques, the most notable of
whom were Gatpagil and Gatjinlintan. They were usually at war
with their neighbours. Gatjinlintan, the cacique of the Batangas
River (Pansipít?) at the time of the conquest, was famous for his
valour. Gatsungayan, who ruled on the other side of the river,
was celebrated as a hunter of deer and wild boar. These men were
half-castes of Borneo and Aeta extraction, who formed a distinct
race called by the natives Daghagang. None of them would submit to
the King of Spain or become Christians, hence their descendants were
offered no privileges.
The Aetas collected tribute. Gabriel Montoya, a Spanish soldier of
Legaspi's legion, partially conquered those races, and supported
the mission of an Austin friar amongst them. This was probably Fray
Diego Móxica, who undertook the mission of Batangas on its separation
from the local administration of Mindoro Island in 1581. The first
Governor of San Pablo or Sampaloc in the name of the King of Spain was
appointed by the soldier Montoya, and was called Bartolomé Maghayin;
the second was Cristóbal Somangalit and the third was Bernabé Pindan,
all of whom had adopted Christianity. Bay, on the borders of the lake
of that name, and four leagues from San Pablo, was originally ruled
by the cacique Agustin Maglansangan. Calilayan, now called Tayabas,
was founded by the woman Ladía, and subsequently administered by a
native _Alcalde_, who gave such satisfaction that he was three times
appointed the King's lieutenant and baptized as Francisco de San Juan.
San Pablo, the centre of a once independent district, is situated at
the foot of the mountains of San Cristóbal and Banájao, from which
over fourteen streams of fresh water flow through the villages.
The system established by Juan Salcedo was to let the conquered lands
be governed by the native caciques and their male successors so long as
they did so in the name of the King of Castile. Territorial possession
seems to have been the chief aim of the earliest European invaders,
and records of having improved the condition of the people or of
having opened up means of communication and traffic as they went on
conquering, or even of having explored the natural resources of the
colony for their own benefit, are extremely rare.
CHAPTER III
Philippine Dependencies, Up To 1898
The Ladrones, Carolines and Pelew Islands
In 1521 Maghallanes cast anchor off the Ladrone Islands (situated
between 17° and 20° N. lat. by 146° E. long.) on his way to the
discovery of those Islands afterwards denominated the Philippines. This
group was named by him Islas de las Velas. [18] Legaspi called them
the Ladrones. [19] Subsequently several navigators sighted or touched
at these Islands, and the indistinct demarcation which comprised them
acquired the name of Saint Lazarus' Archipelago.
In 1662 the Spanish vessel _San Damian_, on her course from Mexico
to Luzon, anchored here. On board was a missionary, Fray Diego Luis
de San Victores, who was so impressed with the dejected condition
of the natives, that on reaching Manila he made it his common theme
of conversation. In fact, so importunately did he pursue the subject
with his superiors that he had to be constrained to silence. In the
following year the Governor, Diego Salcedo, replied to his urgent
appeal for a mission there in terms which permitted no further
solicitation in that quarter. But the friar was persistent in his
project, and petitioned the Archbishop's aid. The prelate submitted
the matter to King Philip IV., and the friar himself wrote to his
father, who presented a memorial to His Majesty and another to the
Queen beseeching her influence. Consequently in 1666 a Royal Decree
was received in Manila sanctioning a mission to the Ladrones.
Fray Diego took his passage in the galleon _San Diego_, and having
arrived safely in the Viceregal Court of Mexico, he pressed his views
on the Viceroy, who declared that he had no orders. Then the priest
appealed to the Viceroy's wife, who, it is said, was entreating her
husband's help on bended knee, when an earthquake occurred which
considerably damaged the city. It was a manifestation from heaven,
the wily priest avowed, and the Viceroy, yielding to the superstition
of the age, complied with the friar's request.
Therefore, in March, 1668, Fray Diego started from Acapulco in charge
of a Jesuit mission for the Ladrones, where they subsequently received
a pension of P3,000 per annum from Queen Maria Ana, who, meanwhile,
had become a widow and Regent. To commemorate this royal munificence,
these Islands have since been called by the Spaniards "Islas Marianas,"
although the older name--Ladrones--is better known to the world.
When the mission was fairly established, troops were sent there,
consisting of twelve Spaniards and nineteen Philippine natives,
with two pieces of artillery.
The acquiescence of the Ladrone natives was being steadily gained by
the old policy of conquest, under the veil of Christianity, when they
suddenly rebelled against the stranger's religion, which brought with
it restraint of liberty and a social dominion practically amounting
to slavery. Fortunately, Nature came again to the aid of Fray Diego,
for, whilst the natives were in open revolt, a severe storm levelled
their huts to the ground, and the priest having convinced them that
it was a visitation from heaven, peace was concluded.
Fray Diego left the mission for Visayas, where he was killed. After
his departure the natives again revolted against servile subjection,
and many priests were slain from time to time--some in the exercise
of their sacerdotal functions, others in open warfare.
In 1778 a Governor was sent there from Mexico with thirty soldiers,
but he resigned his charge after two years' service, and others
succeeded him.
The Islands are very poor. The products are Rice, Sago, Cocoanuts,
and Cane-sugar to a small extent; there are also pigs and fowls in
abundance. The Spaniards taught the natives the use of fire. They
were a warlike people; every man had to carry arms. Their language
is Chamorro, much resembling the Visayan dialect. The population,
for a hundred years after the Spanish occupation, diminished. Women
purposely sterilised themselves. Some threw their new born offspring
into the sea, hoping to liberate them from a world of woe, and
that they would regenerate in happiness. In the beginning of the
17th century the population was further diminished by an epidemic
disease. During the first century of Spanish rule, the Government
were never able to exact the payment of tribute. Up to the Spanish
evacuation the revenue of these Islands was not nearly sufficient
to cover the entire cost of administration. About twenty years ago
Governor Pazos was assassinated there by a rebellious group.
There were nine towns with parish priests. All the churches were
built of stone, and roofed with reed thatching, except that of the
capital, which had an iron roof. Six of the towns had Town Halls made
of bamboo and reed grass; one had a wooden building, and in two of them
(including the capital) the Town Halls were of stone.
The Seat of Government was at Agaña (called in old official documents
the "City of San Ignacio de Agaña"). It is situated in the Island of
Guam, in the creek called the Port of Apra. Ships have to anchor about
two miles off Punta Piti, where passengers, stores, and mails are
conveyed to a wooden landing-stage. Five hundred yards from here was
the Harbour-master's office, built of stone, with a tile roof. From
Punta Piti there was a bad road of about five miles. The situation
of Agaña seems to be ill-suited for communication with vessels, and
proposals were ineffectually made by two Governors, since 1835, to
establish the capital town elsewhere. The central Government took no
heed of their recommendations. In Agaña there was a Government House,
a Military Hospital and Pharmacy, an Artillery Dépôt and Infantry
Barracks, a well-built Prison, a Town Hall, the Administrator's Office
(called by the natives "the shop"), and the ruins of former public
buildings. It is a rather pretty town, but there is nothing notable
to be seen.
The natives are as domesticated as the Philippine Islanders, and
have much better features. Spanish and a little English are spoken
by many of them, as these Islands in former years were the resort
of English-speaking whalemen. For the Elementary Education of the
natives, there was the College of San Juan de Letran for boys, and
a girls' school in Agaña; and in 7 of the towns there was, in 1888,
a total of 4 schools for boys, 5 schools for girls, and 9 schools
for both sexes, under the direction of 20 masters and 6 mistresses.
When the Ladrone Islands (Marianas) were a dependency of the
Spanish-Philippine General-Government, a subsidized mail steamer left
Manila for Agaña, and two or three other ports, every three months.
An island was discovered by one of the Spanish galleon pilots in
1686, and called _Carolina_, in honour of Charles II. of Spain,
but its bearings could not be found again for years.
In 1696 two canoes, with 29 Pelew Islanders, drifted to the coast
of Sámar Island, and landed at the Town of Guivan. They were 60
days on the drift, and five of them died of privations. They were
terror-stricken when they saw a man on shore making signs to them. When
he went out to them in a boat, and boarded one of the canoes, they all
jumped out and got into the other; then when the man got into that,
they were in utter despair, considering themselves prisoners.
They were conducted to the Spanish priest of Guivan, whom they supposed
would be the King of the Island, and on whom would depend their lives
and liberty. They prostrated themselves, and implored his mercy and
the favour of sparing their lives, whilst the priest did all he could,
by signs, to reassure them.
It happened that there had been living here, for some years, two other
strange men brought to this shore by currents and contrary winds. These
came forward to see the novelty, and served as interpreters, so that
the newcomers were all lodged in native houses in twos and threes,
and received the best hospitality.
They related that their Islands numbered 32, and only produced
fowls and sea-birds. One man made a map, by placing stones in the
relative position of the Islands. When asked about the number of the
inhabitants, one took a handful of sand to demonstrate that they were
countless. There was a King, they explained, who held his court in
the Island of Lamurrec, to whom the chiefs were subject. They much
respected and obeyed him. Among the castaways was a chief, with his
wife--the daughter of the King.
The men had a leaf-fibre garment around their loins, and to it
was attached a piece of stuff in front, which was thrown over the
shoulders and hung loose at the back. The women were dressed the
same as the men, except that their loin vestment reached to their
knees. The King's daughter wore, moreover, tortoise-shell ornaments.
They were afraid when they saw a cow and a dog, their Island having
no quadrupeds. Their sole occupation consisted in providing food for
their families. Their mark of courtesy was to take the hand of the
person whom they saluted and pass it softly over the face.
The priest gave them pieces of iron, which they prized as if they
had been of gold, and slept with them under their heads. Their only
arms were lances, with human bones for points. They seemed to be a
pacific people, intelligent and well-proportioned physically. Both
sexes wore long hair down to their shoulders.
Very content to find so much luxury in Sámar, they offered to return
and bring their people to trade. The Jesuits considered this a capital
pretext for subjecting their Islands, and the Government approved of
it. At the instance of the Pope, the King ordered the Gov.-General,
Domingo Zabálburu, to send out expeditions in quest of these Islands;
and, between 1708 and 1710, several unsuccessful efforts were made
to come across them. In 1710, two islands were discovered, and named
San Andrés. Several canoes arrived alongside of the ship, and the
occupants accepted the Commander's invitation to come on board. They
were much astonished to see the Spaniards smoke, and admired the
iron fastenings of the vessel. When they got near shore, they all
began to dance, clapping their hands to beat time. They measured the
ship, and wondered where such a large piece of wood could have come
from. They counted the crew, and presented them with cocoanuts, fish,
and herbs from their canoes. The vessel anchored near to the shore,
but there was a strong current and a fresh wind blowing, so that it was
imprudent to disembark. However, two priests insisted upon erecting
a cross on the shore, and were accompanied by the quarter-master and
an officer of the troops. The weather compelled the master to weigh
anchor, and the vessel set sail, leaving on land the four Europeans,
who were ultimately murdered. For a quarter of a century these Islands
were lost again to the Spaniards.
In 1721 two Caroline prahus were wafted to the Ladrone Islands, where
D. Luiz Sanchez was Governor. The Caroline Islanders had no idea
where they had landed, and were quite surprised when they beheld the
priest. He forcibly detained these unfortunate people, and handed
them over to the Governor, whom they entreated, with tears--but
all in vain--to be allowed to return to their homes. There they
remained prisoners, until it suited the Governor's convenience to
send a vessel with a priest to their Island. The priest went there,
and thence to Manila, where a fresh expedition was fitted out. It
was headed by a missionary, and included a number of soldiers whom
the natives massacred soon after their arrival. All further attempt
to subdue the Caroline Islands was necessarily postponed.
The natives, at that time, had no religion at all, or were, in a
vague sense, polytheists. Their wise men communicated with the
souls of the defunct. They were polygamists, but had a horror
of adultery. Divorce was at once granted by the chiefs on proof
of infidelity. They were cannibals. In each island there was a
chief, regarded as a semi-spiritual being, to whom the natives were
profoundly obedient. Huts were found used as astrological schools,
where also the winds and currents were studied. They made cloth of
plantain-fibre--hatchets with stone heads. Between sunset and sunrise
they slept. When war was declared between two villages or tribes,
each formed three lines of warriors, 1st, young men; 2nd, tall men;
3rd, old men; then the combatants pelted each other with stones and
lances. A man _hors de combat_ was replaced by one of the back file
coming forward. When one party acknowledged themselves vanquished,
it was an understood privilege of the victors to shower invectives on
their retiring adversaries. They lived on fruits, roots and fish. There
were no quadrupeds and no agriculture.
Many Spanish descendants were found, purely native in their habits,
and it was remembered that about the year 1566, several Spaniards
from an expedition went ashore on some islands, supposed to be these,
and were compelled to remain there.
The Carolines ("Islas Carolinas") and Pelews ("Islas Palaos")
comprise some 48 groups of islands and islets, making a total of about
500. Their relative position to the Ladrone Islands is--of the former,
S.S.W. stretching to S.E.; of the latter, S.W. Both groups lie due
E. of Mindanao Island (_vide_ map). The principal Pelew Islands
are Babel-Druap and Kosor--Yap and Ponapé (Ascencion Is.) are the
most important of the Carolines. The centres of Spanish Government
were respectively in Yap and Babel-Druap, with a Vice-Governor
of the Eastern Carolines in Ponapé--all formerly dependent on the
General-Government in Manila. The Carolines and Pelews were included
in the Bishopric of Cebú, and were subject, judicially, to the Supreme
Court of Manila.
These Islands were subsequently many times visited by ships of other
nations, and a barter trade gradually sprang up in dried cocoanut
kernels (coprah) for the extraction of oil in Europe and America. Later
on, when the natives were thoroughly accustomed to the foreigners,
British, American, and German traders established themselves on shore,
and vessels continued to arrive with European and American manufactures
in exchange for coprah, trepang, ivory-nuts, tortoise-shell, etc.
Anglo-American missionaries have settled there, and a great number
of natives profess Christianity in the Protestant form. Religious
books in native dialect, published in Honolulu (Sandwich Is.) by the
Hawaiian Evangelical Association, are distributed by the American
missionaries. I have one before me now, entitled "Kapas Fel, Puk Eu,"
describing incidents from the Old Testament. A few of the natives
can make themselves understood in English. Besides coprah (the
chief export) the Islands produce Rice, Yams, Bread-fruit (_rima_),
Sugar-cane, etc. Until 1886 there was no Government, except that of
several petty kings or chiefs, each of whom still rules over his own
tribe, although the Protestant missionaries exercised a considerable
social influence.
In 1885 a Spanish naval officer, named Capriles, having been appointed
Governor of the Islands, arrived at Yap, ostensibly with the object
of landing to hoist the Spanish flag as a signal of possession,
for it was known in official quarters that the Germans were about
to claim sovereignty. However, three days were squandered (perhaps
intentionally) in trivial formalities, and although two Spanish
men-o'-war--the _Manila_ and the _San Quintin_--were already anchored
in the Port of Yap, the German warship _Iltis_ entered, landed marines,
and hoisted their national flag, whilst the Spaniards looked on. Then
the German Commander went on board the _San Quintin_ to tell the
Commander that possession of the Islands had been taken in the name of
the Emperor of Germany. Neither Capriles, the appointed Governor, nor
España, the Commander of the _San Quintin_, made any resistance; and
as we can hardly attribute their inactivity to cowardice, presumably
they followed their Government's instructions. Capriles and España
returned to Manila, and were both rewarded for their inaction; the
former being appointed to the Government of Mindoro Island. In Manila
an alarming report was circulated that the Germans contemplated an
attack upon the Philippines. Earthworks were thrown up outside the
city wall; cannons were mounted, and the cry of invasion resounded
all over the Colony. Hundreds of families fled from the capital and
environs to adjacent provinces, and the personal safety of the German
residents was menaced by individual patriotic enthusiasts.
In Madrid, popular riots followed the publication of the incident. The
German Embassy was assaulted, and its escutcheon was burnt in the
streets by the indignant mob, although, probably, not five per
cent. of the rioters had any idea where the Caroline Islands were
situated, or anything about them. Spain acted so feebly, and Germany
so vigorously, in this affair, that many asked--was it not due to
a secret understanding between the respective Ministries, disrupted
only by the weight of Spanish public opinion? Diplomatic notes were
exchanged between Madrid and Berlin, and Germany, anxious to withdraw
with apparent dignity from an affair over which it was probably never
intended to waste powder and shot, referred the question to the Pope,
who arbitrated in favour of Spain.
But for these events, it is probable that Spain would never have done
anything to demonstrate possession of the Caroline Islands, and for
16 months after the question was solved by Pontific mediation, there
was a Spanish Governor in Yap--Sr. Elisa--a few troops and officials,
but no Government. No laws were promulgated, and everybody continued
to do as heretofore.
In Ponapé (Ascencion Is.) Sr. Posadillo was appointed Governor. A
few troops were stationed there under a sub-lieutenant, whilst some
Capuchin friars--European ecclesiastics of the meanest type--were
sent there to compete with the American Protestant missionaries in
the salvation of natives' souls. A collision naturally took place,
and the Governor--well known to all of us in Manila as crack-brained
and tactless--sent the chief Protestant missionary, Mr. E. T. Doane,
a prisoner to Manila on June 16, 1887. [20] He was sent back free to
Ponapé by the Gov.-General, but, during his absence, the eccentric
Posadillo exercised a most arbitrary authority over the natives. The
chiefs were compelled to serve him as menials, and their subjects
were formed into gangs, to work like convicts; native teachers were
suspended from their duties under threat, and the Capuchins disputed
the possession of land, and attempted to coerce the natives to accept
their religion.
On July 1 the natives did not return to their bondage, and all the
soldiers, led by the sub-lieutenant, were sent to bring them in by
force. A fight ensued, and the officer and troops, to the last man,
were killed or mortally wounded by clubs, stones and knives. The
astonished Governor fortified his place, which was surrounded by the
enemy. The tribes of the chiefs Nott and Jockets were up in arms. There
was the hulk _Da. Maria de Molina_ anchored in the roadstead, and the
Capuchins fled to it on the first alarm. The Governor escaped from
his house on the night of July 4 with his companions, and rushed to
the sea, probably intending to swim out to the hulk. But who knows? He
and all his partisans were chased and killed by the natives.
On September 21 the news of the tragedy reached Manila by the
man-o'-war _San Quintin._ About six weeks afterwards, three men-o'-war
were sent to Ponapé with infantry, artillery, a mountain battery, and
a section of Engineers--a total of about 558 men--but on their arrival
they met an American warship--the _Essex_--which had hastened on to
protect American interests. The Spaniards limited their operations
to the seizure of a few accused individuals, whom they brought to
Manila, and the garrison of Yap was increased to 100 men, under a
Captain and subordinate officers. The prisoners were tried in Manila
by court-martial, and I acted as interpreter. It was found that they
had only been loyal to the bidding of their chiefs, and were not
morally culpable, whilst the action of the late Governor of Ponapé
met with general reprobation.
Again, in July, 1890, a party of 54 soldiers, under Lieutenant Porras,
whilst engaged in felling timber in the forest, was attacked by
the Malatana (Caroline) tribe, who killed the officer and 27 of his
men. The news was telegraphed to the Home Government, and caused a
great sensation in Madrid. A conference of Ministers was at once held,
and the Cánovas del Castillo Ministry cabled to the Gov.-General Weyler
discretionary power to punish these islanders. Within a few months
troops were sent from Manila for that purpose. Instead, however,
of chastising the _Kanakas_, the Government forces were repulsed
by them with great slaughter. The commissariat arrangements were
most deficient: my friend Colonel Gutierrez Soto, who commanded the
expedition, was so inadequately supported by the War Department that,
yielding to despair, and crestfallen by reason of the open and adverse
criticism of his plan of campaign, he shot himself.
Under the Treaty of Paris (1898) the Island of Guam (Ladrone group)
was ceded by Spain to the United States, together with the Philippine
Islands. The remainder of the Ladrone group, the Caroline and the
Pelew Islands were sold by Spain to Germany in June, 1899.
CHAPTER IV
Attempted Conquest by Chinese
On the death of General Legaspi, the Government of the Colony was
assumed by the Royal Treasurer, Guido de Lavezares, in conformity
with the sealed instructions from the Supreme Court of Mexico, which
were now opened. During this period, the possession of the Islands
was unsuccessfully disputed by a rival expedition under the command
of a Chinaman, Li-ma-hong, whom the Spaniards were pleased to term a
pirate, forgetting, perhaps, that they themselves had only recently
wrested the country from its former possessors by virtue of might
against right. On the coasts of his native country he had indeed been
a pirate. For the many depredations committed by him against private
traders and property, the Celestial Emperor, failing to catch him by
cajolery, outlawed him.
Born in the port of Tiuchiu, Li-ma-hong at an early age evinced a
martial spirit and joined a band of corsairs which for a long time
had been the terror of the China coasts. On the demise of his chief
he was unanimously elected leader of the buccaneering cruisers. At
length, pursued in all directions by the imperial ships of war, he
determined to attempt the conquest of the Philippines. Presumably
the same incentives which impelled the Spanish mariners to conquer
lands and overthrow dynasties--the vision of wealth, glory and
empire,--awakened a like ambition in the Chinese adventurer. It was
the spirit of the age. [21] In his sea-wanderings he happened to
fall in with a Chinese trading junk returning from Manila with the
proceeds of her cargo sold there. This he seized, and the captive
crew were constrained to pilot his fleet towards the capital of
Luzon. From them he learnt how easily the natives had been plundered
by a handful of foreigners--the probable extent of the opposition he
might encounter--the defences established--the wealth and resources
of the district, and the nature of its inhabitants.
His fleet consisted of 62 war ships or armed junks, well found,
having on board 2,000 sailors, 2,000 soldiers, 1,500 women, a number
of artisans, and all that could be conveniently carried with which
to gain and organize his new kingdom. On its way the squadron cast
anchor off the Province of Ilocos Sur, where a few troops were sent
ashore to get provisions. Whilst returning to the junks, they sacked
the village and set fire to the huts. The news of this outrage was
hastily communicated to Juan Salcedo, who had been pacifying the
Northern Provinces since July, 1572, and was at the time in Villa
Fernandina (now called Vigan). Li-ma-hong continued his course until
calms compelled his ships to anchor in the roads of Caoayan (Ilocos
coast), where a few Spanish soldiers were stationed under the orders
of Juan Salcedo, who still was in the immediate town of Vigan. Under
his direction preparations were made to prevent the enemy entering the
river, but such was not Li-ma-hong's intention. He again set sail;
whilst Salcedo, naturally supposing his course would be towards
Manila, also started at the same time for the capital with all the
fighting men he could collect, leaving only 30 men to garrison Vigan
and protect the State interests there.
On November 29, 1574, the squadron arrived in the Bay of Manila,
and Li-ma-hong sent forward his Lieutenant Sioco--a Japanese--at the
head of 600 fighting men to demand the surrender of the Spaniards. A
strong gale, however, destroyed several of his junks, in which about
200 men perished.
With the remainder he reached the coast at Parañaque, a village seven
miles south of Manila. Thence, with tow-lines, the 400 soldiers hauled
their junks up to the beach of the capital.
Already at the village of Malate the alarm was raised, but the
Spaniards could not give credit to the reports, and no resistance was
offered until the Chinese were within the gates of the city. Martin de
Goiti, the _Maestre de Campo_, [22] second in command to the Governor,
was the first victim of the attack.
The flames and smoke arising from his burning residence were the
first indications which the Governor received of what was going
on. The Spaniards took refuge in the Fort of Santiago, which the
Chinese were on the point of taking by storm, when their attention
was drawn elsewhere by the arrival of fresh troops led by a Spanish
sub-lieutenant. Under the mistaken impression that these were the
vanguard of a formidable corps, Sioco sounded the retreat. A bloody
hand-to-hand combat followed, and with great difficulty the Chinese
collected their dead and regained their junks.
In the meantime Li-ma-hong, with the reserved forces, was lying in
the roadstead of Cavite, and Sioco hastened to report to him the
result of the attack, which had cost the invader over one hundred
dead and more than that number wounded. Thereupon Li-ma-hong resolved
to rest his troops and renew the conflict in two days' time under
his personal supervision. The next day Juan Salcedo arrived by sea
with reinforcements from Vigan, and preparations were unceasingly
made for the expected encounter. Salcedo having been appointed to
the office of _Maestre de Campo_, vacant since the death of Goiti,
the organization of the defence was entrusted to his immediate care.
By daybreak on December 3 the enemy's fleet hove-to off the capital,
where Li-ma-hong harangued his troops, whilst the cornets and drums
of the Spaniards were sounding the alarm for their fighting men to
assemble in the fort.
Then 1,500 chosen men, well armed, were disembarked under the
leadership of Sioco, who swore to take the place or die in the
attempt. Sioco separated his forces into three divisions. The city
was set fire to, and Sioco advanced towards the fort, into which
hand-grenades were thrown, whilst Li-ma-hong supported the attack
with his ships' cannon.
Sioco, with his division, at length entered the fort, and a
hand-to-hand fight ensued. For a while the issue was doubtful. Salcedo
fought like a lion. Even the aged Governor was well to the front
to encourage the deadly struggle for existence. The Spaniards
finally gained the victory; the Chinese were repulsed with great
slaughter, and their leader having been killed, they fled in complete
disorder. Salcedo, profiting by the confusion, now took the offensive
and followed up the enemy, pursuing them along the sea-shore,
where they were joined by the third division, which had remained
inactive. The panic of the Chinese spread rapidly, and Li-ma-hong,
in despair, landed another contingent of about 500 men, whilst he
still continued afloat; but even with this reinforcement the _morale_
of his army could not be restored.
The Chinese troops therefore, harassed on all sides, made a precipitate
retreat on board the fleet, and Li-ma-hong set sail again for the
west coast of the island. Foiled in the attempt to possess himself
of Manila, Li-ma-hong determined to set up his capital in other
parts. In a few days he arrived at the mouth of the Agno River, in
the province of Pangasinán, where he proclaimed to the natives that he
had gained a signal victory over the Spaniards. The inhabitants there,
having no particular choice between two masters, received Li-ma-hong
with welcome, and he thereupon set about the foundation of his new
capital some four miles from the mouth of the river. Months passed
before the Spaniards came in force to dislodge the invader. Feeling
themselves secure in their new abode, the Chinese had built many
dwellings, a small fortress, a pagoda, etc. At length an expedition
was despatched under the command of Juan Salcedo. This was composed
of about 250 Spaniards and 1,600 natives well equipped with small
arms, ammunition and artillery. The flower of the Spanish Colony,
accompanied by two priests and the Rajah of Tondo, set out to expel
the formidable foe. Li-ma-hong made a bold resistance, and refused to
come to terms with Salcedo. In the meantime, the Viceroy of Fokien,
having heard of Li-ma-hong's daring exploits, had commissioned a
ship of war to discover the whereabouts of his imperial master's
old enemy. The envoy was received with delight by the Spaniards,
who invited him to accompany them to Manila to interview the Governor.
Li-ma-hong still held out, but perceiving that an irresistible
onslaught was being projected against him by Salcedo's party, he
very cunningly and quite unexpectedly slipped away, and sailed out
of the river with his ships by one of the mouths unknown to his
enemies. [23] In order to divert the attention of the Spaniards,
Li-ma-hong ingeniously feigned an assault in an opposite quarter. Of
course, on his escape, he had to abandon the troops employed in this
manoeuvre. These, losing all hope, and having indeed nothing but
their lives to fight for, fled to the mountains. Hence it is popularly
supposed that from these fugitives descends the race of people in the
hill district north of that province still distinguishable by their
oblique eyes and known by the name of Igorrote-Chinese.
"_Aide-toi et Dieu t'aidera_" is an old French maxim, but the Spaniards
chose to attribute their deliverance from their Chinese rivals to
the friendly intervention of Saint Andrew. This Saint was declared
thenceforth to be the Patron Saint of Manila, and in his honour High
Mass was celebrated in the Cathedral at 8 a.m. on the 30th of each
November. In Spanish times it was a public holiday and gala-day, when
all the highest civil, military and religious authorities attended
the _Funcion votiva de San Andrés_. This opportunity to assert the
supremacy of ecclesiastical power was not lost to the Church, and for
many years it was the custom, after hearing Mass, to spread the Spanish
national flag on the floor of the Cathedral for the metropolitan
Archbishop to walk over it. However, a few years prior to the Spanish
evacuation the Gov.-General refused to witness this antiquated formula
and it subsequently became the practice to carry the Royal Standard
before the altar. Both before and after the Mass, the bearer (_Alférez
Real_), wearing his hat and accompanied by the Mayor of the City,
stood on the altar floor, raised his hat three times, and three times
dipped the flag before the Image of Christ, then, facing the public,
he repeated this ceremony. On Saint Andrew's Eve the Royal Standard was
borne in procession from the Cathedral through the principal streets
of the city, escorted by civil functionaries and followed by a band
of music. This ceremony was known as the _Paseo del Real Pendon_.
According to Juan de la Concepcion, the Rajahs [24] Soliman and
Lacandola took advantage of these troubles to raise a rebellion
against the Spaniards. The natives, too, of Mindoro Island revolted
and maltreated the priests, but all these disturbances were speedily
quelled by a detachment of soldiers.
The Governor willingly accepted the offer of the commander of the
Chinese man-o'-war to convey ambassadors to his country to visit
the Viceroy and make a commercial treaty. Therefore two priests,
Martin Rada and Gerónimo Martin, were commissioned to carry a letter
of greeting and presents to this personage, who received them with
great distinction, but objected to their residing in the country.
After the defeat of Li-ma-hong, Juan Salcedo again set out to the
Northern Provinces of Luzon Island, to continue his task of reducing
the natives to submission. On March 11, 1576, he died of fever near
Vigan (then called Villa Fernandina), capital of the Province of
Ilocos Sur. A year afterwards, what could be found of his bones were
placed in the ossuary of his illustrious grandfather, Legaspi, in the
Augustine Chapel of Saint Fausto, Manila. His skull, however, which had
been carried off by the natives of Ilocos, could not be recovered in
spite of all threats and promises. In Vigan there is a small monument
raised to commemorate the deeds of this famous warrior, and there is
also a street bearing his name in Vigan and another in Manila.
For several years following these events, the question of prestige
in the civil affairs of the Colony was acrimoniously contested by
the Gov.-General, the Supreme Court, and the ecclesiastics.
The Governor was censured by his opponents for alleged undue exercise
of arbitrary authority. The Supreme Court, established on the Mexican
model, was reproached with seeking to overstep the limits of its
functions. Every legal quibble was adjusted by a dilatory process,
impracticable in a colony yet in its infancy, where summary justice
was indispensable for the maintenance of order imperfectly understood
by the masses. But the fault lay less with the justices than with
the constitution of the Court itself. Nor was this state of affairs
improved by the growing discontent and immoderate ambition of the
clergy, who unremittingly urged their pretensions to immunity from
State control, affirming the supramundane condition of their office.
An excellent code of laws, called the _Leyes de Indias_, in force
in Mexico, was adopted here, but modifications in harmony with the
special conditions of this Colony were urgently necessary, whilst all
the branches of government called for reorganization or reform. Under
these circumstances, the Bishop of Manila, Domingo Salazar, [25]
took the initiative in commissioning an Austin friar, Alonso Sánchez,
to repair firstly to the Viceroy of Mexico and afterwards to the King
of Spain, to expose the grievances of his party.
Alonso Sánchez left the Philippines with his appointment as
procurator-general for the Augustine Order of monks. As the execution
of the proposed reforms, which he was charged to lay before His
Majesty, would, if conceded, be entrusted to the control of the
Government of Mexico, his first care was to seek the partisanship
of the Viceroy of that Colony; and in this he succeeded. Thence he
continued his journey to Seville, where the Court happened to be,
arriving there in September, 1587. He was at once granted an audience
of the King, to present his credentials and memorials relative
to Philippine affairs in general, and ecclesiastical, judicial,
military and native matters in particular. The King promised to peruse
all the documents, but suffering from gout, and having so many and
distinct State concerns to attend to, the negotiations were greatly
delayed. Finally, Alonso Sánchez sought a minister who had easy access
to the royal apartments, and this personage obtained from the King
permission to examine the documents and hand to him a succinct _résumé_
of the whole for His Majesty's consideration. A commission was then
appointed, including Sánchez, and the deliberations lasted five months.
At this period, public opinion in the Spanish Universities was
very divided with respect to Catholic missions in the Indies. Some
maintained that the propaganda of the faith ought to be purely
Apostolic, such as Jesus Christ taught to His disciples, inculcating
doctrines of humility and poverty without arms or violence; and if,
nevertheless, the heathens refused to welcome this mission of peace,
the missionaries should simply abandon them in silence without further
demonstration than that of shaking the dust off their feet.
Others held, and amongst them was Sánchez, that such a method was
useless and impracticable, and that it was justifiable to force their
religion upon primitive races at the point of the sword if necessary,
using any violence to enforce its acceptance.
Much ill-feeling was aroused in the discussion of these two and
distinct theories. Juan Volante, a Dominican friar of the Convent
of Our Lady of Atocha, presented a petition against the views of the
Sánchez faction, declaring that the idea of ingrafting religion with
the aid of arms was scandalous. Juan Volante was so importunate that he
had to be heard in Council, but neither party yielded. At length, the
intervention of the Bishops of Manila, Macao and Malacca and several
captains and governors in the Indies influenced the King to put an
end to the controversy, on the ground that it would lead to no good.
The King retired to the Monastery of the Escorial, and Sánchez was
cited to meet him there to learn the royal will. About the same time
the news reached the King of the loss of the so-called Invincible
Armada, sent under the command of the incompetent Duke of Medina
Sidonia to annex England. Notwithstanding this severe blow to the
vain ambition of Philip, the affairs of the Philippines were delayed
but a short time. On the basis of the recommendation of the junta,
the Royal Assent was given to an important decree, of which the
most significant articles are the following, namely:--The tribute
was fixed by the King at ten reales (5s.) per annum, payable by the
natives in gold, silver or grain, or part in one commodity and part
in the other. Of this tribute, eight reales were to be paid to the
Treasury, one-half real to the bishop and clergy (_sanctorum_ tax),
and one-and-a-half reales to be applied to the maintenance of the
soldiery. Full tribute was not to be exacted from the natives still
unsubjected to the Crown. Until their confidence and loyalty should
be gained by friendly overtures, they were to pay a small recognition
of vassalage, and subsequently the tribute in common with the rest.
Instead of one-fifth value of gold and hidden treasure due to His
Majesty (_real quinto_), he would thenceforth receive only one-tenth
of such value, excepting that of gold, which the natives would be
permitted to extract free of rebate.
A customs duty of three per cent. _ad valorem_ was to be paid on
merchandise sold, and this duty was to be spent on the army.
Export duty was to be paid on goods shipped to New Spain (Mexico), and
this impost was also to be exclusively spent on the armed forces. These
goods were chiefly Chinese manufactures.
The number of European troops in the Colony was fixed at 400
men-at-arms, divided into six companies, each under a captain, a
sublieutenant, a sergeant, and two corporals. Their pay was to be
as follows, namely:--Captain P35, sub-lieutenant P20, sergeant P10,
corporal P7, rank and file P6 per month; besides which, an annual
gratuity of P10,000 was to be proportionately distributed to all.
Recruits from Mexico, for military service in the Islands, were not
to enlist under the age of 15 years.
The Captain-General was to have a body-guard of 24 men (Halberdiers)
with the pay of those of the line, under the immediate command of a
Captain to be paid P15 per month.
Salaries due to State employees were to be punctually paid when due;
and when funds were wanted for that purpose, they were to be supplied
from Mexico.
The King made a donation of P12,000, which, with another like sum to
be contributed by the Spaniards themselves, would serve to liquidate
their debts incurred on their first occupation of the Islands.
The Governor and Bishop were recommended to consider the project
of a refuge for young Spanish women arrived from Spain and Mexico,
and to study the question of dowries for native women married to
poor Spaniards.
The offices of Secretaries and Notaries were no longer to be sold,
but conferred on persons who merited such appointments.
The governors were instructed not to make grants of land to their
relations, servants or friends, but solely to those who should have
resided at least three years in the Islands, and have worked the
lands so conceded. Any grants which might have already been made to
the relations of the governors or magistrates were to be cancelled.
The rent paid by the Chinese for the land they occupied was to be
applied to the necessities of the capital.
The Governor and Bishop were to enjoin the judges not to permit
costly lawsuits, but to execute summary justice verbally, and so far
as possible, fines were not to be inflicted.
The City of Manila was to be fortified in a manner to ensure it
against all further attacks or risings.
Four penitentiaries were to be established in the Islands in the most
convenient places, with the necessary garrisons, and six to eight
galleys and frigates well armed and ready for defence against the
English corsairs who might come by way of the Moluccas.
In the most remote and unexplored parts of the Islands, the Governor
was to have unlimited powers to act as he should please, without
consulting His Majesty; but projected enterprises of conversion,
pacification, etc., at the expense of the Royal Treasury, were to be
submitted to a Council comprising the Bishop, the captains, etc. The
Governor was authorized to capitulate and agree with the captain and
others who might care to undertake conversions and pacifications on
their own account, and to concede the title of _Maestre de Campo_
to such persons, on condition that such capitulations should be
forwarded to His Majesty for ratification.
Only those persons domiciled in the Islands would be permitted to
trade with them.
A sum of P1,000 was to be taken from the tributes paid into the Royal
Treasury for the foundation of the Hospital for the Spaniards, and
the annual sum of P600, appropriated by the Governor for its support,
was confirmed. Moreover, the Royal Treasury of Mexico was to send
clothing to the value of 400 ducats for the Hospital use.
The Hospital for the natives was to receive an annual donation of P600
for its support, and an immediate supply of clothing from Mexico to
the value of P200.
Slaves held by the Spaniards were to be immediately set at liberty. No
native was thenceforth to make slaves. All new-born natives were
declared free. The bondage of all existing slaves from ten years
of age was to cease on their attaining twenty years of age. Those
above twenty years of age were to serve five years longer, and then
become free. At any time, notwithstanding the foregoing conditions,
they would be entitled to purchase their liberty, the price of which
was to be determined by the Governor and the Bishop. [26]
There being no tithes payable to the Church by Spaniards or natives,
the clergy were to receive for their maintenance the half-real above
mentioned in lieu thereof, from the tribute paid by each native
subjected to the Crown. When the Spaniards should have crops, they
were to pay tithes to the clergy (_diezmos prediales_).
A grant was made of 12,000 ducats for the building and ornaments of
the Cathedral of Manila, and an immediate advance of 2,000 ducats
on account of this grant was made from the funds to be remitted
from Mexico.
Forty Austin friars were to be sent at once to the Philippines, to be
followed by missionaries from other corporations. The King allowed
P500 to be paid against the P1,000 passage money for each priest,
the balance to be defrayed out of the common funds of the clergy,
derived from their share of the tribute.
Missionaries in great numbers had already flocked to the Philippines
and roamed wherever they thought fit, without licence from the Bishop,
whose authority they utterly repudiated.
Affirming that they had the direct consent of His Holiness the Pope,
they menaced with excommunication whosoever attempted to impede
them in their free peregrination. Five years after the foundation of
Manila, the city and environs were infested with niggardly mendicant
friars, whose slothful habits placed their supercilious countrymen
in ridicule before the natives. They were tolerated but a short time
in the Islands; not altogether because of the ruin they would have
brought to European moral influence on the untutored tribes, but
because the Bishop was highly jealous of all competition against the
Augustine Order which he assisted. Consequent on the representations
of Alonso Sánchez, His Majesty ordained that all priests who went to
the Philippines were, in the first place, to resolve never to quit the
Islands without the Bishop's sanction, which was to be conceded with
great circumspection and only in extreme cases, whilst the Governor
was instructed not to afford them means of exit on his sole authority.
Neither did the Bishop regard with satisfaction the presence of the
Commissary of the Inquisition, whose secret investigations, shrouded
with mystery, curtailed the liberty of the loftiest functionary, sacred
or civil. At the instigation of Alonso Sánchez, the junta recommended
the King to recall the Commissary and extinguish the office, but
he refused to do so. In short, the chief aims of the Bishop were to
enhance the power of the friars, raise the dignity of the Colonial
mitre, and secure a religious monopoly for the Augustine Order.
Gomez Perez Dasmariñas was the next Governor appointed to these
Islands, on the recommendation of Alonso Sánchez. In the Royal
Instructions which he brought with him were embodied all the
above-mentioned civil, ecclesiastical and military reforms. At
the same time, King Philip abolished the Supreme Court. He wished
to put an end to the interminable lawsuits so prejudicial to the
development of the Colony. Therefore the President and Magistrates
were replaced by Justices of the Peace, and the former returned to
Mexico in 1591. This measure served only to widen the breach between
the Bishop and the Civil Government. Dasmariñas compelled him to
keep within the sphere of his sacerdotal functions, and tolerated no
rival in State concerns. There was no appeal on the spot against the
Governor's authority. This restraint irritated and disgusted the Bishop
to such a degree that, at the age of 78 years, he resolved to present
himself at the Spanish Court. On his arrival there, he explained to
the King the impossibility of one Bishop attending to the spiritual
wants of a people dispersed over so many Islands. For seven years after
the foundation of Manila as capital of the Archipelago, its principal
church was simply a parish church. In 1578 it was raised to the dignity
of a Cathedral, at the instance of the King. Three years after this
date the Cathedral of Manila was solemnly declared to be a "Suffragan
Cathedral of Mexico, under the advocation of Our Lady of the Immaculate
Conception"; Domingo Salazár being the first Bishop consecrated. He
now proposed to raise the Manila See to an Archbishopric, with three
Suffragan Bishops. The King gave his consent, subject to approval
from Rome, and this following in due course, Salazár was appointed
first Archbishop of Manila, but he died before the Papal Bull arrived,
dated August 14, 1595, officially authorizing his investiture.
In the meantime, Alonso Sánchez had proceeded to Rome in May,
1589. Amongst many other Pontifical favours conceded to him, he
obtained the right for himself, or his assigns, to use a die or stamp
of any form with one or more images, to be chosen by the holder, and
to contain also the figure of Christ, the Very Holy Virgin, or the
Saints Peter or Paul. On the reverse was to be engraven a bust portrait
of His Holiness, with the following indulgences attached thereto,
viz.:--"To him who should convey the word of God to the infidels,
or give them notice of the holy mysteries--each time 300 years'
indulgence. To him who, by industry, converted any one of these,
or brought him to the bosom of the Church--full indulgence for all
sins." A number of minor indulgences were conceded for services to
be rendered to the Pontificate, and for the praying so many Pater
Nosters and Ave Marias. This Bull was dated in Rome July 28, 1591.
Popes Gregory XIV. and Innocent IX. granted other Bulls relating to the
rewards for using beads, medals, crosses, pictures, blessed images,
etc., with which one could gain nine plenary indulgences every day
or rescue nine souls from purgatory; and each day, twice over, all
the full indulgences yet given in and out of Rome could be obtained
for living and deceased persons.
Sánchez returned to Spain (where he died), bringing with him the
body of Saint Policarp, relics of Saint Potenciana, and 157 Marytrs;
amongst them, 27 popes, for remission to the Cathedral of Manila.
The Supreme Court was re-established with the same faculties as
those of Mexico and Lima in 1598, and since then, on seven occasions,
when the Governorship has been vacant, it has acted _pro tem_. The
following interesting account of the pompous ceremonial attending
the reception of the Royal Seal, restoring this Court, is given by
Concepcion. [27] He says:--"The Royal Seal of office was received
from the ship with the accustomed solemnity. It was contained in a
chest covered with purple velvet and trimmings of silver and gold,
over which hung a cloth of silver and gold. It was escorted by
a majestic accompaniment, marching to the sounds of clarions and
cymbals and other musical instruments. The _cortége_ passed through
the noble city with rich vestments, with leg trimmings and uncovered
heads. Behind these followed a horse, gorgeously caparisoned and
girthed, upon whose back the President placed the coffer containing
the Royal Seal. The streets were beautifully adorned with exquisite
drapery. The High Bailiff, magnificently robed, took the reins in
hand to lead the horse under a purple velvet pall, bordered with
gold. The magistrates walked on either side; the aldermen of the city,
richly clad, carried their staves of office in the august procession,
which concluded with a military escort, standard bearers, etc., and
proceeded to the Cathedral, where it was met by the Dean, holding
a Cross. As the company entered the sacred edifice, the Te Deum was
intoned by a band of music."
In 1886 a Supreme Court, exactly similar to, and independent of,
that of Manila, was established in the City of Cebú. The question of
precedence in official acts having been soon after disputed between
the President of the Court and the Brigadier-Governor of Visayas, it
was decided in favour of the latter, on appeal to the Gov.-General. In
the meantime, the advisability of abolishing the Supreme Court of Cebú,
was warmly debated by the public.
For many years after the conquest, deep religious sentiment pervaded
the State policy, and not a few of the Governors-General acquired
fame for their demonstrations of piety. Nevertheless, the conflictive
ambition of the State and Church representatives was a powerful
hindrance to the progress of the Colony.
The quarrel between Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera (1635-44) and
the Archbishop arose from a circumstance of little concern to the
Colony. The Archbishop ordered a military officer, who had a slave,
either to sell or liberate her. The officer, rather than yield
to either condition, wished to marry her, but failing to obtain
her consent, he stabbed her to death. He thereupon took asylum in a
convent, whence he was forcibly removed, and publicly executed in front
of Saint Augustine's Church by order of the Governor. The Archbishop
protested against the act, which, in those days, was qualified as a
violation of sanctuary.
The churches were closed whilst the dispute lasted. The Jesuits,
always opposed to the Austin friars, sided with the Governor. The
Archbishop therefore prohibited them to preach outside their churches
in any public place, under pain of excommunication and 4,000 ducats
fine, whilst the other priests agreed to abstain from attending their
religious or literary _réunions_. Finally, a religious council was
called, but a coalition having been formed against the Archbishop,
he was excommunicated--his goods distrained--his salary stopped,
and he was suspended in his archiepiscopal functions under a penalty
of 4,000 ducats fine. At this crisis, he implored mercy and the
intervention of the Supreme Court. The magistrates decided against the
prelate's appeal, and allowed him twelve hours to comply, under pain
of continued excommunication and a further fine of 1,000 ducats. The
Archbishop thereupon retired to the Convent of Saint Francis, where
the Governor visited him. The Archbishop subsequently made the most
abject submission in an archiepiscopal decree which fully sets forth
the admission of his guilt. Such a violent settlement of disputes
did not long remain undisturbed, and the Archbishop again sought the
first opportunity of opposing the lay authority. In this he can only be
excused--if excuse it be--as the upholder of the traditions of cordial
discord between the two great factions--Church and State. The Supreme
Court, under the presidency of the Governor, resolved therefore to
banish the Archbishop from Manila. With this object, 50 soldiers
were deputed to seize the prelate, who was secretly forewarned of
their coming by his co-conspirators. On their approach he held the
Host in his hand, and it is related that the sub-lieutenant sent in
charge of the troops was so horrified at his mission that he placed
the hilt of his sword upon the floor and fell upon the point, but as
the sword bent he did not kill himself. The soldiers waited patiently
until the Archbishop was tired out and compelled, by fatigue, to
replace the Host on the altar. Then they immediately arrested him,
conducted him to a boat under a guard of five men, and landed him on
the desert Island of Corregidor. The churches were at once reopened;
the Jesuits preached where they chose; terms were dictated to the
contumacious Archbishop, who accepted everything unconditionally,
and was thereupon permitted to resume his office. The acts of Corcuera
were inquired into by his successor, who caused him to be imprisoned
for five years; but it is to be presumed that Corcuera was justified
in what he did, for on his release and return to Spain, the King
rewarded him with the Governorship of the Canary Islands.
It is chronicled that Sabiniano Manrique de Lara (1653-63), who
arrived in the galleon _San Francisco Xavier_ with the Archbishop
Poblete, refused to disembark until this dignitary had blessed the
earth he was going to tread. It was he too who had the privilege of
witnessing the expurgation of the Islands of the excommunications
and admonitions of Rome. The Archbishop brought peace and goodwill
to all men, being charged by His Holiness to sanctify the Colony.
The ceremony was performed with great solemnity, from an elevation,
in the presence of an immense concourse of people. Later on, the
pious Governor Lara was accused of perfidy to his royal master,
and was fined P60,000, but on being pardoned, he retired to Spain,
where he took holy orders.
His successor, Diego Salcedo (1663-68), was not so fortunate in his
relations with Archbishop Poblete, for during five years he warmly
contested his intervention in civil affairs. Poblete found it hard to
yield the exercise of veto in all matters which, by courtesy, had been
conceded to him by the late Governor Lara. The Archbishop refused to
obey the Royal Decrees relating to Church appointments under the Royal
patronage, such preferments being in the hands of the Gov.-General as
vice-royal patron. These decrees were twice notified to the Archbishop,
but as he still persisted in his disobedience, Salcedo signed an
order for his expulsion to Marivéles. This brought the prelate to his
senses, and he remained more submissive in future. It is recorded
that the relations between the Governor and the Archbishop became
so strained that the latter was compelled to pay a heavy fine--to
remain standing whilst awaiting an audience--to submit to contumely
during the interviews--and when he died, the Governor ordered royal
feasts to celebrate the joyful event, whilst he prohibited the _de
profundis_ Mass, on the ground that such would be inconsistent with
the secular festivities.
The King, on being apprised of this, permitted the Inquisition to
take its course. Diego Salcedo was surprised in his Palace, and
imprisoned by the bloodthirsty agents of the _Santo Oficio_. Some
years afterwards, he was shipped on board a galleon as a prisoner to
the Inquisitors of Mexico, but the ship had to put back under stress
of weather, and Salcedo returned to his dungeon. There he suffered
the worst privations, until he was again embarked for Mexico. On this
voyage he died of grief and melancholy. The King espoused the cause
of the ecclesiastics, and ordered Salcedo's goods, as well as those
of his partisans, to be confiscated.
Manuel de Leon (1669-77) managed to preserve a good understanding with
the clergy, and, on his decease, he bequeathed all his possessions
to the Obras Pias (q.v.).
Troubles with the Archbishop and friars were revived on the Government
being assumed by Juan de Nárgas (1678-84). In the last year of
his rule, the Archbishop was banished from Manila. It is difficult
to adequately appreciate the causes of this quarrel, and there is
doubt as to which was right--the Governor or the Archbishop. On his
restoration to his See, he was one of the few prelates--perhaps the
only one--who personally sought to avenge himself. During the dispute,
a number of friars had supported the Government, and these he caused
to stand on a raised platform in front of a church, and publicly recant
their former acts, declaring themselves miscreants. Juan de Nárgas had
just retired from the Governorship after seven years' service, and the
Archbishop called upon him likewise to abjure his past proceedings and
perform the following penance:--To wear a penitent's garb--to place a
rope around his neck, and carry a lighted candle to the doors of the
cathedral and the churches of the Parian, San Gabriel and Binondo,
on every feast day during four months. Nargas objected to this
degradation, and claimed privilege, arguing that the Archbishop had
no jurisdiction over him, as he was a Cavalier of the Military Order
of St. James. But the Archbishop only desisted in his pretensions to
humiliate Nárgas when the new Governor threatened to expel him again.
Fernando Bustamente Bustillo y Rueda (1717-19) adopted very
stringent measures to counteract the Archbishop's excessive claims to
immunity. Several individuals charged with heinous crimes had taken
church asylum and defied the civil power and justice. The Archbishop
was appealed to, to hand them over to the civil authorities, or allow
them to be taken. He refused to do either, supporting the claim of
immunity of sanctuary. At the same time it came to the knowledge of
the Governor that a movement had been set on foot against him by those
citizens who favoured the Archbishop's views, and that even the friars
had so debased themselves as to seek the aid of the Chinese residents
against the Governor. José Torralba (q.v.), the late acting-Governor,
was released from confinement by the Governor, and reinstated by him
as judge in the Supreme Court, although he was under an accusation of
embezzlement to the extent of P700,000. The Archbishop energetically
opposed this act. He notified to Torralba his excommunication and
ecclesiastical pains, and, on his own authority, attempted to seize his
person in violation of the privileges of the Supreme Court. Torralba,
with his sword and shield in hand, expelled the Archbishop's messenger
by force. Then, as judge in the Supreme Court, he hastened to avenge
himself of his enemies by issuing warrants against them. They fled to
Church asylum, and, with the moral support of the Archbishop, laughed
at the magistrates. There the refugees provided themselves with arms,
and prepared for rebellion. When the Archbishop was officially informed
of these facts, he still maintained that nothing could violate their
immunity. The Governor then caused the Archbishop to be arrested and
confined in a fortress, with all the ecclesiastics who had taken an
active part in the conspiracy against the Government.
Open riot ensued, and the priests marched to the Palace, amidst
hideous clamourings, collecting the mob and citizens on the way. It was
one of the most revolting scenes and remarkable events in Philippine
history. Priests of the Sacred Orders of Saint Francis, Saint Dominic,
and Saint Augustine joined the Recoletos in shouting "Viva la Iglesia,"
"Viva nuestro Rey Don Felipe Quinto." [28] The excited rabble rushed
to the Palace, and the Guard having fled, they easily forced their
way in. One priest who impudently dared to advance towards the
Governor, was promptly ordered by him to stand back. The Governor,
seeing himself encircled by an armed mob of laymen and servants of
Christ clamouring for his downfall, pulled the trigger of his gun,
but the flint failed to strike fire. Then the crowd took courage
and attacked him, whilst he defended himself bravely with a bayonet,
until he was overwhelmed by numbers. From the Palace he was dragged
to the common jail, and stabbed and maltreated on the way. His son,
hearing of this outrage, arrived on horseback, but was run through
by one of the rebels, and fell to the ground. He got up and tried to
cut his way through the infuriated rioters, but was soon surrounded
and killed, and his body horribly mutilated.
The populace, urged by the clerical party, now fought for the
liberty of the Archbishop. The prison doors were broken open, and the
Archbishop was amongst the number of offenders liberated. The prelate
came in triumph to the Palace, and assumed the Government in October,
1719. The mob, during their excesses, tore down the Royal Standard,
and maltreated those whom they met of the unfortunate Governor's
faithful friends. A mock inquiry into the circumstances of the riot
was made in Manila in apparent judicial form. Another investigation
was instituted in Mexico, which led to several of the minor actors in
this sad drama being made the scapegoat victims of the more exalted
criminals. The Archbishop held the Government for nine years, and
was then transferred to the Mexican Bishopric of Mechoacan.
Pedro Manuel de Arandia (1754-59) is said to have expired of
melancholy, consequent, in a measure, on his futile endeavours to
govern at peace with the friars, who always secured the favour of
the King.
On four occasions the Supreme State authority in the Colony has been
vested in the prelates. Archbishop Manuel Rojo, acting-Governor at
the time of the British occupation of Manila in 1763, is said to
have died of grief and shame in prison (1764) through the intrigues
of the violent Simon de Anda y Salazar (q.v.).
José Raon was Gov.-General in 1768, when the expulsion of the Jesuits
was decreed. After the secret determination was made known to him,
he was accused of having divulged it, and of having concealed his
instructions. He was thereupon placed under guard in his own residence,
where he expired (_vide_ Simon de Anda y Salazár).
Domingo Moriones y Murillo (1877-80), it is alleged, had grave
altercations with the friars, and found it necessary to remind the
Archbishop Payo that the supreme power in the Philippines belonged
to the State--not to the Church representative.
From the earliest times of Spanish dominion, it had been the practice
of the natives to expose to view the corpses of their relations
and friends in the public highways and villages whilst conveying
them to the parish churches, where they were again exhibited to the
common gaze, pending the pleasure of the parish priest to perform the
last obsequies. This outrage on public decorum was proscribed by the
Director-General of Civil Administration in a circular dated October,
18, 1887, addressed to the Provincial Governors, enjoining them to
prohibit such indecent scenes in future. Thereupon the parish priests
simply showed their contempt for the civil authorities by simulating
their inability to elucidate to the native petty governors the true
intent and meaning of the order. At the same time, the Archbishop
of Manila issued instructions on the subject to his subordinates
in very equivocal language. The native local authorities then
petitioned the Civil Governor of Manila to make the matter clear to
them. The Civil Governor forthwith referred the matter back to the
Director-General of Civil Administration. This functionary, in a new
circular dated November 4, confirmed his previous mandate of October
18, and censured the action of the parish priests, who "in improper
language and from the pulpit," had incited the native headmen to set
aside his authority. The author of the circular sarcastically added
the pregnant remark, that he was penetrated with the conviction that
the Archbishop's sense of patriotism and rectitude _would deter him
from subverting the law_. This incident seriously aroused the jealousy
of the friars holding vicarages, and did not improve the relations
between Church and State.
CHAPTER V
Early Relations With Japan
Two decades of existence in the 16th century was but a short period
in which to make known the conditions of this new Colony to its
neighbouring States, when its only regular intercourse with them was
through the Chinese who came to trade with Manila. Japanese mariners,
therefore, appear to have continued to regard the north of Luzon
as "no-man's-land"; for years after its nominal annexation by the
Spaniards they assembled there, whether as merchants or buccaneers
it is difficult to determine. Spanish authority had been asserted by
Salcedo along the west coast about as far as lat. 18° N., but in 1591
the north coast was only known to Europeans geographically. So far,
the natives there had not made the acquaintance of their new masters.
A large Spanish galley cruising in these waters met a Japanese vessel
off Cape Bojeador (N.W. point), and fired a shot which carried away the
stranger's mainmast, obliging him to heave-to. Then the galley-men,
intending to board the stranger, made fast the sterns, whilst the
Spaniards rushed to the bows; but the Japanese came first, boarded
the galley, and drove the Spaniards aft, where they would have all
perished had they not cut away the mizzenmast and let it fall with all
sail set. Behind this barricade they had time to load their arquebuses
and drive back the Japanese, over whom they gained a victory. The
Spaniards then entered the Rio Grande de Cagayán, where they met a
Japanese fleet, between which they passed peacefully. On shore they
formed trenches and mounted cannons on earthworks, but the Japanese
scaled the fortifications and pulled down the cannons by the mouths.
These were recovered, and the Spanish captain had the cannon mouths
greased, so that the Japanese tactics should not be repeated. A
battle was fought and the defeated Japanese set sail, whilst the
Spaniards remained to obtain the submission of the natives by force
or by persuasion.
The Japanese had also come to Manila to trade, and were located in
the neighbouring village of Dilao, [29] where the Franciscan friars
undertook their conversion to Christianity, whilst the Dominican Order
considered the spiritual care of the Chinese their especial charge.
The Portuguese had been in possession of Macao since the year 1557,
and traded with various Chinese ports, whilst in the Japanese town
of Nagasaki there was a small colony of Portuguese merchants. These
were the indirect sources whence the Emperor of Japan learnt that
Europeans had founded a colony in Luzon Island; and in 1593 he sent
a message to the Governor of the Philippines calling upon him to
surrender and become his vassal, threatening invasion in the event of
refusal. The Spanish colonies at that date were hardly in a position
to treat with haughty scorn the menaces of the Japanese potentate,
for they were simultaneously threatened with troubles with the Dutch
in the Moluccas, for which they were preparing an armament (_vide_
Chap. vi.). The want of men, ships, and war material obliged them
to seek conciliation with dignity. The Japanese Ambassador, Farranda
Kiemon, was received with great honours and treated with the utmost
deference during his sojourn in Manila.
The Governor replied to the Emperor, that being but a lieger of the
King of Spain--a mighty monarch of unlimited resources and power--he
was unable to acknowledge the Emperor's suzerainty; for the most
important duty imposed upon him by his Sovereign was the defence of
his vast domains against foreign aggression; that, on the other hand,
he was desirous of entering into amicable and mutually advantageous
relations with the Emperor, and solicited his conformity to a treaty
of commerce, the terms of which would be elucidated to him by an envoy.
A priest, Juan Cobo, and an infantry captain were thereupon accredited
to the Japanese Court as Philippine Ambassadors. On their arrival
they were, without delay, admitted in audience by the Emperor; the
treaty of commerce was adjusted to the satisfaction of both parties;
and the Ambassadors, with some Japanese nobles, set sail for Manila
in Japanese ships, which foundered on the voyage, and all perished.
Neither the political nor the clerical party in Manila was, however,
dismayed by this first disaster, and the prospect of penetrating
Japan was followed up by a second expedition.
Between the friars an animated discussion arose when the Jesuits
protested against members of any other Order being sent to Japan. Saint
Francis Xavier had, years before, obtained a Papal Bull from Pope
Gregory XIII., awarding Japan to his Order, which had been the first to
establish missions in Nagasaki. Jesuits were still there in numbers,
and the necessity of sending members of rival religious bodies is not
made clear in the historical records. The jealous feud between those
holy men was referred to the Governor, who naturally decided against
the Jesuits, in support of the King's policy of grasping territory
under the cloak of piety. A certain Fray Pedro Bautista was chosen as
Ambassador, and in his suite were three other priests. These embarked
in a Spanish frigate, whilst Farranda Kiemon, who had remained in
Manila the honoured guest of the Government, took his leave, and went
on board his own vessel. The authorities bade farewell to the two
embassies with ostentatious ceremonies, and amidst public rejoicings
the two ships started on their journey on May 26, 1593. After 30 days'
navigation one ship arrived safely at Nagasaki, and the other at a
port 35 miles further along the coast.
Pedro Bautista, introduced by Ferranda Kiemon, was presented to
the Emperor Taycosama, who welcomed him as an Ambassador authorized
to _negotiate a treaty of commerce, and conclude an offensive and
defensive alliance for mutual protection._ The Protocol was agreed
to and signed by both parties, and the relations between the Emperor
and Pedro Bautista became more and more cordial. The latter solicited,
and obtained, permission to reside indefinitely in the country and send
the treaty on by messenger to the Governor of the Philippines; hence
the ships in which the envoys had arrived remained about ten months in
port. A concession was also granted to build a church at Meaco, near
Osaka, and it was opened in 1594, when Mass was publicly celebrated.
In Nagasaki the Jesuits were allowed to reside unmolested and practise
their religious rites amongst the Portuguese population of traders
and others who might have voluntarily embraced Christianity. Bautista
went there to consult with the chief of the Jesuit Mission, who
energetically opposed what he held to be an encroachment upon the
monopoly rights of his Order, conceded by Pope Gregory XIII. and
confirmed by royal decrees. Bautista, however, showed a permission
which he had received from the Jesuit General, by virtue of which he
was suffered to continue his course pending that dignitary's arrival.
The Portuguese merchants in Nagasaki were not slow to comprehend that
Bautista's coming with priests at his command was but a prelude to
Spanish territorial conquest, which would naturally retard their
hoped-for emancipation from the Spanish yoke. [30] Therefore,
in their own interests, they forewarned the Governor of Nagasaki,
who prohibited Bautista from continuing his propaganda against the
established religion of the country in contravention of the Emperor's
commands; but as Bautista took no heed of this injunction, he was
expelled from Nagasaki for contumacy.
It was now manifest to the Emperor that he had been basely deceived,
and that under the pretext of concluding a commercial and political
treaty, Bautista and his party had, in effect, introduced themselves
into his realm with the clandestine object of seducing his subjects
from their allegiance, of undermining their consciences, perverting
them from the religion of their forefathers, and that all this would
bring about the dismemberment of his Empire and the overthrow of his
dynasty. Not only had Taycosama abstained from persecuting foreigners
for the exercise of their religious rites, but he freely licensed the
Jesuits to continue their mission in Nagasaki and wherever Catholics
happened to congregate. He had permitted the construction of their
temples, but he could not tolerate a deliberate propaganda which
foreshadowed his own ruin. [31]
Pedro Bautista's designs being prematurely obstructed, he took his
passage back to Manila from Nagasaki in a Japanese vessel, leaving
behind him his interpreter, Fray Jerome, with the other Franciscan
monks. An Imperial Decree was then issued to prohibit foreign priests
from interfering with the religion of Japanese subjects; but this law
having been set at naught by Bautista's colleagues, one was arrested
and imprisoned, and warrants were issued against the others; meanwhile
the Jesuits in Nagasaki were in no way restrained.
The Governor of Nagasaki caused the Franciscan propagandists to be
conducted on board a Portuguese ship and handed over to the charge
of the captain, under severe penalties if he aided or allowed their
escape, but they were free to go wherever they chose outside the
Japanese Empire. The captain, however, permitted one to return ashore,
and for some time he wandered about the country in disguise.
Pedro Bautista had reached Manila, where the ecclesiastical dignitaries
prevailed upon the Governor to sanction another expedition to Japan,
and Bautista arrived in that country a second time with a number of
Franciscan friars. The Emperor now lost all patience, and determined
not only to repress these venturesome foreigners, but to stamp out
the last vestige of their revolutionary machinations. Therefore, by
Imperial Decree, the arrest was ordered of all the Franciscan friars,
and all natives who persisted in their adhesion to these missionaries'
teachings. Twenty-six of those taken were tried and condemned to
ignominious exhibition and death--the Spaniards, because they had come
into the country and had received royal favours under false pretences,
representing themselves as political ambassadors and suite--the
Japanese, because they had forsworn the religion of their ancestors
and bid fair to become a constant danger and source of discord in the
realm. Amongst these Spaniards was Pedro Bautista. After their ears
and noses had been cut off, they were promenaded from town to town
in a cart, finally entering Nagasaki on horseback, each bearing the
sentence of death on a breast-board.
On a high ground, near the city and the port, in front of the Jesuits'
church, these 26 persons were crucified and stabbed to death with
lances, in expiation of their political offences. It was a sad fate for
men who conscientiously believed that they were justified in violating
rights and laws of nations for the propagation of their particular
views; but can one complain? Would Buddhist missionaries in Spain
have met with milder treatment at the hands of the Inquisitors? [32]
Each Catholic body was supposed to designate the same road to
heaven--each professed to teach the same means of obtaining the
grace of God; yet, strange to say, each bore the other an implacable
hatred--an inextinguishable jealousy! If conversion to Christianity
were for the glory of God only, what could it have mattered whether
souls of Japanese were saved by Jesuits or by others? For King Philip
it was the same whether his political tools were of one denomination or
the other, but many of the Jesuits in Japan happened to be Portuguese.
The Jesuits in Manila probably felt that in view of their opposition
to the Franciscan missions, public opinion might hold them morally
responsible for indirectly contributing to the unfortunate events
related; therefore, to justify their acts, they formally declared
that Pedro Bautista and his followers died excommunicated, because
they had disobeyed the Bull of Pope Gregory XIII.
The general public were much excited when the news spread through
the city, and a special Mass was said, followed by a religious
procession through the streets. The Governor sent a commission to
Japan, under the control of Luis de Navarrete, to ask for the dead
bodies and chattels of the executed priests. The Emperor showed no
rancour whatsoever; on the contrary, his policy was already carried
out; and to welcome the Spanish lay deputies, he gave a magnificent
banquet and entertained them sumptuously. Luis de Navarrete having
claimed the dead bodies of the priests, the Emperor at once ordered
the guards on the execution ground to retire, and told Navarrete
that he could dispose as he pleased of the mortal remains. Navarrete
therefore hastened to Nagasaki, but before he could reach there,
devout Catholics had cut up the bodies, one carrying away a head,
another a leg, and so forth. It happened, too, that Navarrete died
of disease a few days after his arrival in Nagasaki. His successor,
Diego de Losa, recovered the pieces of the deceased priests, which
he put into a box and shipped for Manila, but the vessel and box of
relics were lost on the way.
Diego de Losa returned to Manila, the bearer of a polite letter
and very acceptable presents from the Emperor to the Governor of
the Philippines.
The letter fully expatiated on recent events, and set forth a
well-reasoned justification of the Emperor's decrees against the
priests, in terms which proved that he was neither a tyrant nor a
wanton savage, but an astute politician. The letter stated, that under
the pretext of being ambassadors, the priests in question had come
into the country and had taught a diabolical law belonging to foreign
countries, and which aimed at superseding the rites and laws of his
own religion, confused his people, and destroyed his Government and
kingdom; for which reason he had rigorously proscribed it. Against
these prohibitions, the religious men of Luzon preached their law
publicly to humble people, such as servants and slaves. Not being
able to permit this persistence in law-breaking, he had ordered their
death by placing them on crosses; for he was informed that in the
kingdom where Spaniards dominated, this teaching of their religious
doctrine was but an artifice and stratagem by means of which the civil
power was deceitfully gained. He astutely asks the Gov.-General if
he would consent to Japanese preaching their laws in his territory,
perturbing public peace with such novelties amongst the lower classes?
Certainly it would be severely repressed, argued the Emperor, adding
that in the exercise of his absolute power and for the good of his
subjects, he had avoided the occurrence in his dominions of what had
taken place in those regions where the Spaniards deposed the legitimate
kings, and constituted themselves masters by religious fraud.
He explains that the seizure of the cargo of a Spanish ship was only a
reprisal for the harm which he had suffered by the tumult raised when
the edict was evaded. But as the Spanish Governor had thought fit to
send another ambassador from so far, risking the perils of the sea,
he was anxious for peace and mutual good-feeling, but only on the
precise condition that no more individuals should be sent to teach
a law foreign to his realm, and under these unalterable conditions
the Governor's subjects were at liberty to trade freely with Japan;
that by reason of his former friendship and royal clemency, he had
refrained from killing all the Spaniards with the priests and their
servants, and had allowed them to return to their country.
As to religion itself, Taycosama is said to have remarked that
among so many professed, one more was of little consequence,--hence
his toleration in the beginning, and his continued permission
to the Jesuits to maintain their doctrines amongst their own
sectarians. Moreover, it is said that a map was shown to Taycosama,
marking the domains of the King of Spain and Portugal, and that in
reply to his inquiry: "How could one man have conquered such vast
territory?"--a certain Father Guzman (probably a Portuguese) answered:
"By secretly sending religious men to teach their doctrine, and when a
sufficient number of persons were so converted, the Spanish soldiery,
with their aid, annexed their country and overthrew their kings." Such
an avowal naturally impressed Taycosama profoundly. [33]
In Seville there was quite a tumult when the details of the executions
in Japan were published.
In the meantime, the lamentable end of the Franciscan missionaries
did not deter others from making further attempts to follow their
example. During the first 20 years of the 17th century, priests
succeeded in entering Japan, under the pretence of trading, in spite
of the extreme measures adopted to discover them and the precautions
taken to uproot the new doctrine, which it was feared would become
the forerunner of sedition. Indeed, many Japanese nobles professing
Christianity had already taken up their residence in Manila, and were
regarded by the Emperor as a constant danger to his realm, hence he
was careful to avoid communication with the Philippines. During the
short reigns of Dayfusama and his son Xogusama, new decrees were
issued, not against foreign Christians, but against those who made
apostates amongst the Japanese; and consequently two more Spanish
priests were beheaded.
In September, 1622, a large number of Spanish missionaries
and Christian Japanese men and children were executed in
Nagasaki. Twenty-five of them were burnt and the rest beheaded,
their remains being thrown into the sea to avoid the Christians
following their odious custom of preserving parts of corpses as
relics. Two days afterwards, four Franciscan and two Dominican
friars with five Japanese were burnt in Omura. Then followed an
edict stating the pains and penalties, civil deprivations, etc.,
against all who refused to abandon their apostasy and return to the
faith of their forefathers. Another edict was issued imposing death
upon those who should conduct priests to Japan, and forfeiture of the
ships in which they should arrive and the merchandise with which they
should come. To all informers against native apostates the culprits'
estates and goods were transferred as a reward.
A Spanish deputation was sent to the Emperor of Japan in 1622,
alleging a desire to renew commercial relations, but the Emperor was
so exasperated at the recent defiance of his decrees that he refused
to accept the deputies' presents from the Philippine Government,
and sent them and the deputation away.
Still there were friars in Manila eager to seek martyrdom, but the
Philippine traders, in view of the danger of confiscation of their
ships and merchandise if they carried missionaries, resolved not
to despatch vessels to Japan if ecclesiastics insisted on taking
passage. The Government supported this resolution in the interests of
trade, and formally prohibited the transport of priests. The Archbishop
of Manila, on his part, imposed ecclesiastical penalties on those of
his subordinates who should clandestinely violate this prohibition.
Supplicatory letters from Japan reached the religious communities in
Manila, entreating them to send more priests to aid in the spread of
Christianity; therefore the chiefs of the Orders consulted together,
bought a ship, and paid high wages to its officers to carry four
Franciscan, four Dominican and two Recoleto priests to Japan. When
the Governor, Alonso Fajardo de Tua, heard of the intended expedition,
he threatened to prohibit it, affirming that he would not consent to
any more victims being sent to Japan. Thereupon representatives of the
religious Orders waited upon him, to state that if he persisted in
his prohibition, upon his conscience would fall the enormous charge
of having lost the souls which they had hoped to save. The Governor
therefore retired from the discussion, remitting the question to the
Archbishop, who at once permitted the ship to leave, conveying the ten
priests disguised as merchants. Several times the vessel was nearly
wrecked, but at length arrived safely in a Japanese port. The ten
priests landed, and were shortly afterwards burnt by Imperial order.
In Rome a very disputed inquiry had been made into the circumstances
of the Franciscan mission; but, in spite of the severe ordeal of the
_diaboli advocatus_, cononization was conceded to Pedro Bautista and
his companions.
In 1629 the Papal Bull of Urban VIII., dated September 14, 1627, was
published in Manila, amidst public feasts and popular rejoicing. The
Bull declared the missionaries of Japan to be Saints and Martyrs and
Patron Saints of the second class. Increased animation in favour of
missions to Japan became general in consequence. Ten thousand pesos
were collected to fit out a ship to carry 12 priests from Manila,
besides 24 priests who came from Pangasinán to embark privately. The
ship, however, was wrecked off the Ilocos Province coast (Luzon Is.),
but the crew and priests were saved.
A large junk was then secretly prepared at a distance from Manila
for the purpose of conveying another party of friars to Japan; but,
just as they were about to embark, the Governor sent a detachment
of soldiers with orders to prevent them doing so, and he definitely
prohibited further missionary expeditions.
In 1633 the final extinction of Christians was vigorously commenced
by the Emperor To-Kogunsama; and in the following year 79 persons
were executed. The same Emperor sent a ship to Manila with a present
of 150 lepers, saying that, as he did not permit Christians in his
country, and knowing that the priests had specially cared for these
unfortunate beings, he remitted them to their care. The first impulse
of the Spaniards was to sink the ship with cannon shots, but finally it
was agreed to receive the lepers, who were conducted with great pomp
through the city and lodged in a large shed at Dilao (now the suburb
of Paco). This gave rise to the foundation of the Saint Lazarus'
(Lepers') Hospital, existing at the present day. [34] The Governor
replied to the Emperor that if any more were sent he would kill them
and their conductors.
The Emperor then convoked a great assembly of his vassal kings and
nobles, and solemnly imposed upon them the strict obligation to fulfil
all the edicts against the entry and permanence of Christians, under
severe penalties, forfeiture of property, deprivation of dignities,
or death. So intent was this Prince on effectually annihilating
Christianity within his Empire, that he thenceforth interdicted all
trade with Macao; and when in 1640 his decree was disregarded by
four Portuguese traders, who, describing themselves as ambassadors,
arrived with a suite of 46 Orientals, they were all executed.
In the same year the Governor of the Philippines called a Congress of
local officials and ecclesiastics, amongst whom it was agreed that to
send missionaries to Japan was to send them directly to death, and it
was thenceforth resolved to abandon Catholic missions in that country.
Secret missions and consequent executions still continued until about
the year 1642, when the Dutch took Tanchiu--in Formosa Island--from
the Spaniards, and intercepted the passage to Japan of priests and
merchants alike. The conquest of Japan was a feat which all the
artifice of King Philip IV.'s favourites and their monastic agents
could not compass.
In 1862, during the Pontificate of Pius IX., 620 missionaries who had
met with martyrdom in Japan, in the 17th century, were canonized with
great pomp and appropriate ceremony in Rome.
CHAPTER VI
Conflicts with the Dutch
_Consequent_ on the union of the Crowns of Portugal and Spain
(1581-1640), the feuds, as between nations, diplomatically subsided,
although the individual antagonism was as rife as ever.
Spanish and Portuguese interests in the Moluccas, as elsewhere, were
thenceforth officially mutual. In the Molucca group, the old contests
between the once rival kingdoms had estranged the natives from their
ancient compulsory alliances. Anti-Portuguese and Philo-Portuguese
parties had sprung up amongst the petty sovereignties, but the
Portuguese fort and factory established in Ternate Island were held
for many years, despite all contentions. But another rivalry, as
formidable and more detrimental than that of the Portuguese in days
gone by, now menaced Spanish ascendancy.
From the close of the 16th century up to the year of the "Family
Compact" Wars (1763), Holland and Spain were relentless foes. To
recount the numerous combats between their respective fleets during
this period, would itself require a volume. It will suffice here to
show the bearing of these political conflicts upon the concerns of the
Philippine Colony. The Treaty of Antwerp, which was wrung from the
Spaniards in 1609, 28 years after the union of Spain and Portugal,
broke the scourge of their tyranny, whilst it failed to assuage
the mutual antipathy. One of the consequences of the "Wars of the
Flanders," which terminated with this treaty, was that the Dutch were
obliged to seek in the Far East the merchandise which had hitherto
been supplied to them from the Peninsula. The short-sighted policy
of the Spaniards in closing to the Dutch the Portuguese markets,
which were now theirs, brought upon themselves the destruction of
the monopolies which they had gained by the Union. The Dutch were
now free, and their old tyrant's policy induced them to establish
independently their own trading headquarters in the Molucca Islands,
whence they could obtain directly the produce forbidden to them in
the home ports. Hence, from those islands, the ships of a powerful
Netherlands Trading Company sallied forth from time to time to meet
the Spanish galleons from Mexico laden with silver and manufactured
goods. Previous to this, and during the Wars of the Flanders,
Dutch corsairs hovered about the waters of the Moluccas, to take
reprisals from the Spaniards. These encounters frequently took place
at the eastern entrance of the San Bernadino Straits, where the Dutch
were accustomed to heave-to in anticipation of the arrival of their
prizes. In this manner, constantly roving about the Philippine waters,
they enriched themselves at the expense of their detested adversary,
and, in a small degree, avenged themselves of the bloodshed and
oppression which for over sixty years had desolated the Low Countries.
The Philippine Colony lost immense sums in the seizure of its
galleons from Mexico, upon which it almost entirely depended for
subsistence. Being a dependency of New Spain, its whole intercourse
with the civilized world, its supplies of troops and European
manufactured articles, were contingent upon the safe arrival of the
galleons. Also the dollars with which they annually purchased cargoes
from the Chinese for the galleons came from Mexico. Consequently,
the Dutch usually took the aggressive in these sea-battles, although
they were not always victorious. When there were no ships to meet,
they bombarded the ports where others were being built. The Spaniards,
on their part, from time to time fitted out vessels to run down to
the Molucca Islands to attack the enemy in his own waters.
During the Governorship of Gomez Perez Dasmariñas (1590-93), the
native King of Siao Island--one of the Molucca group--came to Manila
to offer homage and vassalage to the representative of the King of
Spain and Portugal, in return for protection against the incursions
of the Dutch and the raids of the Ternate natives. Dasmariñas received
him and the Spanish priests who accompanied him with affability, and,
being satisfied with his credentials, he prepared a large expedition
to go to the Moluccas to set matters in order. The fleet was composed
of several frigates, 1 ship, 6 galleys, and 100 small vessels, all
well armed. The fighting men numbered 100 Spaniards, 400 Pampanga and
Tagálog arquebusiers, 1,000 Visaya archers and lancers, besides 100
Chinese to row the galleys. This expedition, which was calculated to
be amply sufficient to subdue all the Moluccas, sailed from Cavite
on October 6, 1593. The sailing ships having got far ahead of the
galleys, they hove-to off Punta de Azúfre (N. of Maricaban Is.) to
wait for them. The galleys arrived; and the next day they were able
to start again in company. Meanwhile, a conspiracy was formed by the
Chinese galleymen to murder all the Spaniards. Assuming these Chinese
to be volunteers, their action would appear to be extremely vile. If,
however, as is most probable, they were pressed into this military
service to foreigners, it seems quite natural, that being forced to
bloodshed without alternative, they should first fight for their own
liberty, seeing that they had come to the Islands to trade.
All but the Chinese were asleep, and they fell upon the Spaniards in
a body. Eighteen of the troops and four slaves escaped by jumping
into the sea. The Governor was sleeping in his cabin, but awoke on
hearing the noise. He supposed the ship had grounded, and was coming
up the companion _en déshabille_, when a Chinaman clove his head with
a cutlass. The Governor reached his state-room, and taking his Missal
and the Image of the Virgin in his hand, he died in six hours. The
Chinese did not venture below, where the priests and armed soldiers
were hidden. They cleared the decks of all their opponents, made fast
the hatches and gangways, and waited three days, when, after putting
ashore those who were still alive, they escaped to Cochin China, where
the King and Mandarins seized the vessel and all she carried. On board
were found 12,000 pesos in coin, some silver, and jewels belonging
to the Governor and his suite. Thus the expedition was brought to an
untimely end. The King of Siao, and the missionaries accompanying him,
had started in advance for Otong (Panay Is.) to wait for the Governor,
and there they received the news of the disaster.
Amongst the most notable of the successful expeditions of the
Spaniards, was that of Pedro Bravo de Acuña, in 1606, which consisted
of 19 frigates, 9 galleys, and 8 small craft, carrying a total
of about 2,000 men, and provisions for a prolonged struggle. The
result was that they subdued a petty sultan, friendly to the Dutch,
and established a fortress on his island.
About the year 1607 the Supreme Court (the Governorship being vacant
from 1606 to 1608), hearing that a Dutch vessel was hovering off
Ternate, sent a ship against it, commanded by Pedro de Heredia. A
combat ensued. The Dutch commander was taken prisoner with several of
his men, and lodged in the fort at Ternate, but was ransomed on payment
of P50,000 to the Spanish commander. Heredia returned joyfully to
Manila, where, much to his surprise, he was prosecuted by the Supreme
Court for exceeding his instructions, and expired of melancholy. The
ransomed Dutch leader was making his way back to his headquarters
in a small ship, peacefully, and without threatening the Spaniards
in any way, when the Supreme Court treacherously sent a galley and
a frigate after him to make him prisoner a second time. Overwhelmed
by numbers and arms, and little expecting such perfidious conduct
of the Spaniards, he was at once arrested and brought to Manila. The
Dutch returned 22 Spanish prisoners of war to Manila to ransom him,
but whilst these were retained, the Dutch commander was nevertheless
imprisoned for life.
Some years afterwards a Dutch squadron anchored off the south point
of Bataan Province, not far from Punta Marivéles, at the entrance
to Manila Bay. Juan de Silva, the Governor (1609-16), was in great
straits. Several ships had been lost by storms, others were away,
and there was no adequate floating armament with which to meet the
enemy. However, the Dutch lay-to for five or six months, waiting to
seize the Chinese and Japanese traders' goods on their way to the
Manila market. They secured immense booty, and were in no hurry to
open hostilities. This delay gave de Silva time to prepare vessels to
attack the foe. In the interval he dreamt that Saint Mark had offered
to help him defeat the Dutch. On awaking, he called a priest, whom he
consulted about the dream, and they agreed that the nocturnal vision
was a sign from Heaven denoting a victory. The priest went (from
Cavite) to Manila to procure a relic of this glorious intercessor,
and returned with his portrait to the Governor, who adored it. In
haste the ships and armament were prepared. On Saint Mark's day,
therefore, the Spaniards sallied forth from Cavite with six ships,
carrying 70 guns, and two galleys and two launches, also well armed,
besides a number of small, light vessels to assist in the formation
of line of battle.
All the European fighting men in Manila and Cavite embarked--over
1,000 Spaniards--the flower of the Colony, together with a large
force of natives, who were taught to believe that the Dutch were
infidels. On the issue of this day's events perchance depended
the possession of the Colony. Manila and Cavite were garrisoned by
volunteers. Orations were offered in the churches. The Miraculous
Image of Our Lady of the Guide was taken in procession from the
Hermitage, and exposed to public view in the Cathedral. The Saints
of the different churches and sanctuaries were adored and exhibited
daily. The Governor himself took the supreme command, and dispelled
all wavering doubt in his subordinates by proclaiming Saint Mark's
promise of intercession. On his ship he hoisted the Royal Standard,
on which was embroidered the Image of the Blessed Virgin, with the
motto "_Mostrate esse Matrem_" and over a beautifully calm sea he
led the way to battle and to victory.
A shot from the Spanish heavy artillery opened the bloody combat. The
Dutch were completely vanquished, after a fierce struggle, which
lasted six hours. Their three ships were destroyed, and their flags,
artillery, and plundered merchandise, to the value of P300,000, were
seized. This famous engagement was thenceforth known as the Battle
of Playa Honda.
Again, in 1611, under de Silva, a squadron sailed to the Moluccas
and defeated the Dutch off Gilolo Island.
In 1617 the Spaniards had a successful engagement off the Zambales
coast with the Dutch, who lost three of their ships.
In July, 1620, three Mexican galleons were met by three Dutch vessels
off Cape Espíritu Santo (Sámar Is.), at the entrance of the San
Bernadino Straits, but managed to escape in the dark. Two ran ashore
and broke up; the third reached Manila. After this, the Gov.-General,
Alonso Fajardo de Tua, ordered the course of the State ships to be
varied on each voyage.
In 1625 the Dutch again appeared off the Zambales coast, and Gerónimo
de Silva went out against them. The Spaniards, having lost one man,
relinquished the pursuit of the enemy, and the Commander was brought
to trial by the Supreme Court.
In 1626, at the close of the Governorship of Fernando de Silva, a
Spanish Colony was founded on Formosa Island, but no supplies were sent
to it, and consequently in 1642 it surrendered to the Dutch, who held
it for 20 years, until they were driven out by the Chinese adventurer
Koxinga. And thus for over a century and a half the strife continued,
until the Dutch concentrated their attention on the development of
their Eastern Colonies, which the power of Spain, growing more and
more effete, was incompetent to impede.
In the middle of the 17th century the Tartars invaded China and
overthrew the Min Dynasty--at that time represented by the Chinese
Emperor Yunglic. He was succeeded on the throne by the Tartar
Emperor Kungchi, to whose arbitrary power nearly all the Chinese
Empire had submitted. Amongst the few Mongol chiefs who held out
against Ta-Tsing dominion was a certain Mandarin known by the name of
Koxinga, who retired to the Island of Kinmuen, where he asserted his
independence and defied his nation's conqueror. Securely established
in his stronghold, he invited the Chinese to take refuge in his
island and oppose the Tartar's rule. Therefore the Emperor ordered
that no man should inhabit China within four leagues of the coast,
except in those provinces which were undoubtedly loyal to the new
Government. The coast was consequently laid bare; vessels, houses,
plantations, and everything useful to man, were destroyed in order to
cut off effectually all communications with lands beyond the Tartar
Empire. The Chinese from the coast, who for generations had earned a
living by fishing, etc., crowded into the interior, and their misery
was indescribable.
Koxinga, unable to communicate with the mainland of the Empire,
turned his attention to the conquest of Formosa Island, at the time
in the possession of the Dutch. According to Dutch accounts the
European settlers numbered about 600, with a garrison of 2,200. The
Dutch artillery, stores, and merchandise were valued at P8,000,000,
and the Chinese, who attacked them under Koxinga, were about 100,000
strong. The settlement surrendered to the invaders' superior numbers,
and Koxinga established himself as King of the Island. Koxinga had
become acquainted with an Italian Dominican missionary named Vittorio
Riccio, whom he created a Mandarin, and sent him as Ambassador to
the Governor of the Philippines. Riccio therefore arrived in Manila
in 1662, the bearer of Koxinga's despatches calling upon the Governor
to pay tribute, under threat of the Colony being attacked by Koxinga
if his demand were refused.
The position of Riccio as a European friar and Ambassador of a
Mongol adventurer was as awkward as it was novel. He was received
with great honour in Manila, where he disembarked, and rode to the
Government House in the full uniform of a Chinese envoy, through
lines of troops drawn up to salute him as he passed. At the same time,
letters from Formosa had also been received by the Chinese in Manila,
and the Government at once accused them of conniving at rebellion. All
available forces were concentrated in the capital; and to increase
the garrison the Governor published a decree, dated May 6, 1662,
ordering the demolition of the forts of Zamboanga, Ylígan (Mindanao
Is.), Calamianes and Ternale [35] (Moluccas).
The only provincial fort preserved was that of Surigao (then called
Caraga), consequently in the south the Mahometans became complete
masters on land and at sea for half a year.
The troops in Manila numbered 100 cavalry and 8,000
infantry. Fortifications were raised, and redoubts were constructed
in which to secrete the Treasury funds. When all the armament was in
readiness, the Spaniards incited the Chinese to rebel, in order to
afford a pretext for their massacre.
Two junk masters were seized, and the Chinese population was menaced;
therefore they prepared for their own defence, and then opened the
affray, for which the Government was secretly longing, by killing
a Spaniard in the market-place. Suddenly artillery fire was opened
on the Parian, and many of the peaceful Chinese traders, in their
terror, hanged themselves; many were drowned in the attempt to reach
the canoes in which to get away to sea; some few did safely arrive
in Formosa Island and joined Koxinga's camp, whilst others took
to the mountains. Some 8,000 to 9,000 Chinese remained quiet, but
ready for any event, when they were suddenly attacked by Spaniards
and natives. The confusion was general, and the Chinese seemed to
be gaining ground; therefore the Governor sent the Ambassador Riccio
and a certain Fray Joseph de Madrid to parley with them. The Chinese
accepted the terms offered by Riccio, who returned to the Governor,
leaving Fray Joseph with the rebels; but when Riccio went back with
a general pardon and a promise to restore the two junk masters,
he found that they had beheaded the priest. A general carnage of
the Mongols followed, and Juan de la Concepcion says [36] that the
original intention of the Spaniards was to kill every Chinaman,
but that they desisted in view of the inconvenience which would have
ensued from the want of tradesmen and mechanics. Therefore they made
a virtue of a necessity, and graciously pardoned in the name of His
Catholic Majesty all who laid down their arms.
Riccio returned to Formosa Island, and found Koxinga preparing for
warfare against the Philippines, but before he could carry out his
intentions he died of fever. The chiefs successor, of a less bellicose
spirit, sent Riccio a second time to Manila, and a treaty was agreed
to, re-establishing commercial relations with the Chinese. Shortly
after Koxinga's decease a rebellion was raised in Formosa; and
the Island, falling at length into the hands of a Tartar party,
became annexed to China under the new dynasty. Then Riccio was
called upon to relate the part he had taken in Koxinga's affairs,
and he was heard in council. Some present were in favour of invading
the Philippines in great force because of the cruel and unwarranted
general massacre of the Chinese in cold blood; but Riccio took pains
to show how powerful Spain was, and how justified was the action of
the Spaniards, as a measure of precaution, in view of the threatened
invasion of Koxinga. The Chinese party was appeased, but had the
Tartars cared to take up the cause of their conquered subjects,
the fate of the Philippines would have been doubtful.
The rule of the Governors-General of the Islands was, upon
the whole, benignant with respect to the natives who manifested
submission. Apart from the unconcealed animosity of the monastic party,
the Gov.-General's liberty of action was always very much locally
restrained by the Supreme Court and by individual officials. The
standing rule was, that in the event of the death or deprivation of
office of the Gov.-General, the Civil Government was to be assumed
by the Supreme Court, and the military administration by the senior
magistrate. Latterly, in the absence of a Gov.-General, from any cause
whatsoever, the sub-inspector of the forces became Acting-Gov.-General.
Up to the beginning of the last century the authority of the King's
absolute will was always jealously imposed, and the Governors-General
were frequently rebuked for having exercised independent action,
taking the initiative in what they deemed the best policy. But Royal
Decrees could not enforce honesty; the peculations and frauds on the
part of the secular authorities, and increasing quarrels and jealousies
amongst the several religious bodies, seemed to annihilate all prospect
of social and material progress of the Colony. As early as the reign
of Philip III. (1598-1621) the procurators of Manila had, during three
years, been unsuccessfully soliciting from the mother country financial
help for the Philippines to meet official discrepancies. The affairs
of the Colony were eventually submitted to a special Royal Commission
in Spain, the result being that the King was advised to abandon this
possession, which was not only unproductive, but had become a costly
centre of disputes and bad feeling. However, Fray Hernando de Moraga,
a missionary from the Philippines, happened to be in the Peninsula
at the time, and successfully implored the King to withhold his
ratification of the recommendation of the Commission. His Majesty
avowed that even though the maintenance of this Colony should exhaust
his Mexican Treasury, his conscience would not allow him to consent
to the perdition of souls which had been saved, nor to relinquish
the hope of rescuing yet far more in these distant regions.
During the first two centuries following the foundation of the Colony,
it was the custom for a Royal Commission to be appointed to inquire
into the official acts of the outgoing Governor before he could leave
the Islands--_Hacérle la residencia_, as it was called.
Whilst on the one hand this measure effectually served as a check
upon a Governor who might be inclined to adopt unjustifiable means
of coercion, or commit defalcations, it was also attended with many
abuses; for against an energetic ruler an antagonistic party was
always raised, ready to join in the ultimate ruin of the Governor
who had aroused their susceptibilities by refusing to favour their
nefarious schemes. Hence when a _prima facie_ case was made out
against a Governor, his inexperienced successor was often persuaded
to consent to his incarceration whilst the articles of impeachment
were being investigated.
Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera (1635-44) had been Governor of Panamá
before he was appointed to the Philippines. During his term of office
here he had usually sided with the Jesuits on important questions
taken up by the friars, and on being succeeded by Diego Fajardo,
he was brought to trial, fined P 25,000, and put into prison. After
five years' confinement he was released by Royal Order and returned
to Spain, where the King partially compensated him with the Government
of the Canary Islands.
Juan Vargas (1678-84) had been in office for nearly seven years,
and the Royal Commissioner who inquired into his acts took four years
to draw up his report. He filled 20 large volumes of a statement of
the charges made against the late Governor, some of which were grave,
but the majority of them were of a very frivolous character. This is
the longest inquiry of the kind on record.
Acting-Governor José Torralba (1715-17) was arrested on the
termination of his Governorship and confined in the Fortress of
Santiago, charged with embezzlement to the amount of P 700,000. He
had also to deposit the sum of P 20,000 for the expenses of the
inquiry commission. Several other officials were imprisoned with him
as accomplices in his crimes. He is said to have sent his son with
public funds on trading expeditions around the coasts, and his wife
and young children to Mexico with an enormous sum of money defrauded
from the Government. Figures at that date show, that when he took the
Government, there was a balance in the Treasury of P 238,849, and
when he left it in two years and a half, the balance was P 33,226,
leaving a deficit of P 205,623, whilst the expenses of the Colony
were not extraordinary during that period. Amongst other charges,
he was accused of having sold ten Provincial Government licences
(_encomiendas_), many offices of notaries, scriveners, etc., and
conceded 27 months' gambling licences to the Chinese in the Parian
without accounting to the Treasury. He was finally sentenced to pay
a fine of P 100,000, the costs of the trial, the forfeiture of the
P 20,000 already deposited, perpetual deprivation of public office,
and banishment from the Philippine Islands and Madrid. When the
Royal Order reached Manila he was so ill that his banishment was
postponed. He lived for a short time nominally under arrest, and was
permitted to beg alms for his subsistence within the city until he
died in the Hospital of San Juan de Dios in 1736.
The defalcations of some of the Governors caused no inconsiderable
anxiety to the Sovereign. Pedro de Arandia, in his dual capacity of
Gov.-General and Chief Justice (1754-59), was a corrupt administrator
of his country's wealth. He is said to have amassed a fortune of P
25,000 during his five years' term of office, and on his death he
left it all to pious works (_vide_ "Obras pias").
Governor Berenguer y Marquina (1788-93) was accused of bribery,
but the King absolved him.
In the last century a Governor of Yloilo is said to have absconded in
a sailing-ship with a large sum of the public funds. A local Governor
was then also _ex-officio_ administrator; and, although the system
was afterwards reformed, official extortion was rife throughout the
whole Spanish administration of the Colony, up to the last.
A strange drama of the year 1622 well portrays the spirit of the
times--the immunity of a Gov.-General in those days, as well as
the religious sentiment which accompanied his most questionable
acts. Alonso Fajardo de Tua having suspected his wife of infidelity,
went to the house where she was accustomed to meet her paramour. Her
attire was such as to confirm her husband's surmises. He called
a priest and instructed him to confess her, telling him that he
intended to take her life. The priest, failing to dissuade Fajardo from
inflicting such an extreme penalty, took her confession and proffered
her spiritual consolation. Then Fajardo, incensed with jealousy,
mortally stabbed her. No inquiry into the occurrence seems to have
been made, and he continued to govern for two years after the event,
when he died of melancholy. It is recorded that the paramour, who was
the son of a Cádiz merchant, had formerly been the accepted _fiancé_
of Fajardo's wife, and that he arrived in Manila in their company. The
Governor gave him time to confess before he killed him, after which
(according to one account) he caused his house to be razed to the
ground, and the land on which it stood to be strewn with salt. Juan
de la Concepcion, however, says that the house stood for one hundred
years after the event as a memorial of the punishment.
In 1640 Olivarez, King Philip IV.'s chief counsellor, had succeeded by
his arrogance and unprecedented policy of repression in arousing the
latent discontent of the Portuguese. A few years previously they had
made an unsuccessful effort to regain their independent nationality
under the sovereignty of the Duke of Braganza. At length, when a call
was made upon their boldest warriors to support the King of Spain in
his protracted struggle with the Catalonians, an insurrection broke
out, which only terminated when Portugal had thrown off, for ever,
the scourge of Spanish supremacy.
The Duke of Braganza was crowned King of Portugal under the title
of John IV., and every Portuguese colony declared in his favour,
except Ceuta, on the African coast. The news of the separation
of Portugal from Spain reached Manila in the following year. The
Gov.-General at that time--Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera--at once
sent out an expedition of picked men under Juan Claudio with orders
to take Macao,--a Portuguese settlement at the mouth of the Canton
River, about 40 miles west of Hongkong. The attempt miserably failed,
and the blue-and-white ensign continued to wave unscathed over the
little territory. The Governor of Macao, who was willing to yield,
was denounced a traitor to Portugal, and killed by the populace. Juan
Claudio, who was taken prisoner, was generously liberated by favour
of the Portuguese Viceroy of Goa, and returned to Manila to relate
his defeat. [37]
The Convent of Santa Clara was founded in Manila in 1621 by Gerónima
de la Asuncion, who, three years afterwards, was expelled from the
management by the friars because she refused to admit reforms in the
conventual regulations. The General Council subsequently restored
her to the matronship for 20 years. Public opinion was at this
time vividly aroused against the superiors of the convents, who,
it was alleged, made serious inroads on society by inveigling the
marriageable young women into taking the veil and to live unnatural
lives. The public demanded that there should be a fixed limit to
the number of nuns admitted. An ecclesiastic of high degree made
strenuous efforts to rescue three nuns who had just been admitted,
but the abbess persistently refused to surrender them until her
excommunication was published on the walls of the nunnery.
In 1750 a certain Mother Cecilia, who had been in the nunnery of Santa
Catalina since she was 16 years of age, fell in love with a Spaniard
who lived opposite, named Francisco Antonio de Figueroa, and begged
to be relieved of her vows and have her liberty restored to her. The
Archbishop was willing to grant her request, which was, however,
stoutly opposed by the Dominican friars. On appeal being made to the
Governor, as viceregal patron, he ordered her to be set at liberty. The
friars nevertheless defied the Governor, who, to sustain his authority,
was compelled to order the troops to be placed under arms, and the
commanding officer of the artillery to hold the cannons in readiness
to fire when and where necessary. In view of these preparations, the
friars allowed the nun to leave her confinement, and she was lodged in
the College of Santa Potenciana pending the dispute. Public excitement
was intense. The Archbishop ordered the girl to be liberated, but as
his subordinates were still contumacious to his bidding, the Bishop
of Cebú was invited to arbitrate on the question, but he declined
to interfere, therefore an appeal was remitted to the Archbishop of
Mexico. In the meantime the girl was married to her lover, and long
afterwards a citation arrived from Mexico for the woman to appear
at that ecclesiastical court. She went there with her husband, from
whom she was separated whilst the case was being tried, but in the
end her liberty and marriage were confirmed.
During the Government of Niño de Tabora (1626-32), the High Host
and sacred vessels were stolen from the Cathedral of Manila. The
Archbishop was in consequence sorely distressed, and walked barefooted
to the Jesuits' convent to weep with the priests, and therein find
a solace for his mental affliction. It was surmised that the wrath
of God at such a crime would assuredly be avenged by calamities on
the inhabitants, and confessions were made daily. The friars agreed
to appease the anger of the Almighty by making public penance and
by public prayer. The Archbishop subjected himself to a most rigid
abstinence. He perpetually fasted, ate herbs, drank only water,
slept on the floor with a stone for a pillow, and flagellated his own
body. On Corpus Christi day a religious procession passed through the
public thoroughfares solemnly exhorting the delinquents to restore
the body of Our Saviour, but all in vain. The melancholy prelate,
weak beyond recovery from his self-imposed privations, came to the
window of his retreat as the _cortége_ passed in front of it, and
there he breathed his last.
As in all other Spanish colonies, the Inquisition had its secret
agents or commissaries in the Philippines. Sometimes a priest would
hold powers for several years to inquire into the private lives and
acts of individuals, whilst no one knew who the informer was. The
Holy Office ordered that its _Letter of Anathema_, with the names in
full of all persons who had incurred pains and penalties for heresy,
should be read in public places every three years, but this order
was not fulfilled. The _Letter of Anathema_ was so read in 1669,
and the only time since then up to the present day was in 1718.
During the minority of the young Spanish King Charles II. the regency
was held by his mother, the Queen-Dowager, who was unfortunately
influenced by favourites, to the great disgust of the Court and
the people. Amongst these sycophants was a man named Valenzuela, of
noble birth, who, as a boy, had followed the custom of those days,
and entered as page to a nobleman--the Duke del Infantado--to learn
manners and Court etiquette.
The Duke went to Italy as Spanish ambassador, and took Valenzuela
under his protection. He was a handsome and talented young fellow,
learned for those times,--intelligent, well versed in all the generous
exercises of chivalry, and a poet by nature. On his return from Italy
with the Duke, his patron caused him to be created a Cavalier of the
Order of Saint James. The Duke shortly afterwards died, but through
the influence of the Dowager-Queen's confessor--the notorious Nitard,
also a favourite--young Valenzuela was presented at Court, where he
made love to one of the Queen's maids-of-honour--a German--and married
her. The Prince, Don Juan de Austria, who headed the party against
the Queen, expelled her favourite (Nitard) from Court, and Valenzuela
became Her Majesty's sole confidential adviser. Nearly every night,
at late hours, the Queen went to Valenzuela's apartment to confer
with him, whilst he daily brought her secret news gleaned from the
courtiers. The Queen created him Marquis of San Bartolome and of
Villa Sierra, a first-class Grandee of Spain, and Prime Minister. He
was a most perfect courtier; and it is related of him that when a
bull-fight took place, he used to go to the royal box richly adorned
in fighting attire, and, with profound reverence, beg Her Majesty's
leave to challenge the bull. The Queen, it is said, never refused him
the solicited permission, but tenderly begged of him not to expose
himself to such dangers. Sometimes he would appear in the ring as a
cavalier, in a black costume embroidered with silver and with a large
white-and-black plume, in imitation of the Queen's half mourning. It
was much remarked that on one occasion he wore a device of the sun with
an eagle looking down upon it, and the words, "_I alone have licence_."
He composed several comedies, and allowed them to be performed at his
expense for the free amusement of the people. He also much improved
the city of Madrid with fine buildings, bridges, and many public
works to sustain his popularity amongst the citizens.
The young King, now a youth, ordered a deer hunt to be prepared in
the Escorial grounds; and during the diversion His Majesty happened
to shoot Valenzuela in the muscle of his arm, whether intentionally or
accidentally is not known. However, the terrified Queen-mother fainted
and fell into the arms of her ladies-in-waiting. This circumstance was
much commented upon, and contributed in no small degree to the public
odium and final downfall of Valenzuela in 1684. At length Don Juan de
Austria returned to the Court, when the young King was of an age to
appreciate public concerns, and he became more the Court favourite
than ever Valenzuela or Nitard had been during the Dowager-Queen's
administration. Valenzuela fell at once from the exclusive position
he had held in royal circles and retired to the Escorial, where, by
order of Don Juan de Austria, a party of young noblemen, including Don
Juan's son, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the Marquis of Valparaiso,
and others of rank, accompanied by 200 horsemen, went to seize the
disfavoured courtier. He was out walking at the time of their arrival,
but he was speedily apprised of the danger by his bosom friend, the
Prior of Saint Jerome Monastery. The priest hid him in the roof of the
monastery, where, being nearly suffocated for want of ventilation,
a surgeon was sent up to bleed him and make him sleep. The search
party failed to find the refugee, and were about to return, when the
surgeon treacherously betrayed the secret to them, and Valenzuela
was discovered sleeping with arms by his side. He was made prisoner,
confined in a castle, degraded of all his honours and rank, and finally
banished by Don Juan de Austria to the furthermost Spanish possession
in the world--the Philippines,--whilst his family was incarcerated
in a convent at Talavera in Spain.
When the Pope heard of this violation of Church asylum in the Escorial
committed by the nobles, he excommunicated all concerned in it;
and in order to purge themselves of their sin and obtain absolution,
they were compelled to go to church in their shirts, each with a rope
around his neck. They actually performed this penance, and then the
Nuncio accredited to the Spanish Court, Cardinal Mellini, relieved
them of their ecclesiastical pains and penalties.
Valenzuela was permitted to establish a house within the prison of
Cavite, where he lived for several years as a State prisoner and
exile. When Don Juan de Austria died, the Dowager-Queen regained
in a measure her influence at Court, and one of the first favours
she begged of her son, the King, was the return of Valenzuela to
Madrid. The King granted her request, and she at once despatched a
ship to bring him to Spain, but the Secretary of State interfered
and stopped it. Nevertheless, Valenzuela, pardoned and liberated,
set out for the Peninsula, and reached Mexico, where he died from
the kick of a horse.
In 1703 a vessel arrived in Manila Bay from India, under an Armenian
captain, bringing a young man 35 years of age, a native of Turin,
who styled himself Monseigneur Charles Thomas Maillard de Tournon,
Visitor-General, Bishop of Savoy, Patriarch of Antioch, Apostolic
Nuncio and Legate _ad latere_ of the Pope. He was on his way to China
to visit the missions, and called at Manila with eight priests and
four Italian families.
Following the custom established with foreign ships, the custodian
of the Fort of Cavite placed guards on board this vessel. This act
seems to have aroused the indignation of the exalted stranger, who
assumed a very haughty tone, and arrogantly insisted upon a verbal
message being taken to the Governor (Domingo Sabalburco) to announce
his arrival. In Manila these circumstances were much debated, and
at length the Governor instructed the custodian of Cavite Fort to
accompany the stranger to the City of Manila. On his approach a salute
was fired from the city battlements, and he took up his residence in
the house of the Maestre de Campo. There the Governor went to visit him
as the Pope's legate, and was received with great arrogance. However,
the Governor showed no resentment; he seemed to be quite dumfounded by
the Patriarch's dignified airs, and consulted with the Supreme Court
about the irregularity of a legate arriving without exhibiting the
_regium exequatur_. The Court decided that the stranger must be called
upon to present his Papal credentials and the royal confirmation of
his powers with respect to Spanish dominions, and with this object a
magistrate was commissioned to wait upon him. The Patriarch treated
the commissioner with undisguised contempt, expressing his indignation
and surprise at his position being doubted; he absolutely refused to
show any credentials, and turned out the commissioner, raving at him
and causing an uproarious scandal. At each stage of the negotiations
with him the Patriarch put forward the great authority of the Pope,
and his unquestionable right to dispose of realms and peoples at his
will, and somehow this ruse seemed to subdue everybody; the Governor,
the Archbishop, and all the authorities, civil and ecclesiastical, were
overawed. The Archbishop, in fact, made an unconditional surrender to
the Patriarch, who now declared that all State and religious authority
must be subordinate to his will. The Archbishop was ordered by him
to set aside his Archiepiscopal Cross, whilst the Patriarch used his
own particular cross in the religious ceremonies, and left it in the
Cathedral of Manila on his departure. He went so far as to cause
his master of the ceremonies to publicly divest the Archbishop of
a part of his official robes and insignia, to all which the prelate
meekly consented. All the chief authorities visited the Patriarch,
who, however, was too dignified to return their calls. Here was,
in fact, an extraordinary case of a man unknown to everybody, and
refusing to prove his identity, having absolutely brought all the
authority of a colony under his sway! He was, as a matter of fact,
the legate of Clement XI.
The only person to whom he appears to have extended his friendship was
the Maestre de Campo, at the time under ecclesiastical arrest. The
Maestre de Campo was visited by the Patriarch, who so ingeniously
blinded him with his patronage, that this official squandered
about P20,000 in entertaining his strange visitor and making him
presents. The Patriarch in return insisted upon the Governor and
Archbishop pardoning the Maestre de Campo of all his alleged misdeeds,
and when this was conceded he caused the pardon to be proclaimed in
a public Act. All the Manila officials were treated by the Patriarch
with open disdain, but he created the Armenian captain of the vessel
which brought him to Manila a knight of the "Golden Spur," in a public
ceremony in the Maestre de Campo's house in which the Gov.-General
was ignored.
From Manila the Patriarch went to China, where his meddling with
the Catholic missions met with fierce opposition. He so dogmatically
asserted his unproved authority, that he caused European missionaries
to be cited in the Chinese Courts and sentenced for their disobedience;
but he was playing with fire, for at last the Emperor of China, wearied
of his importunities, banished him from the country. Thence he went
to Macao, where, much to the bewilderment of the Chinese population,
he maintained constant disputes with the Catholic missionaries until he
died there in 1710 in the Inquisition prison, where he was incarcerated
at the instance of the Jesuits.
When King Philip V. became aware of what had occurred in Manila,
he was highly incensed, and immediately ordered the Gov.-General
to Mexico, declaring him disqualified for life to serve under the
Crown. The senior magistrates of the Supreme Court were removed from
office. Each priest who had yielded to the legate's authority without
previously taking cognisance of the _regium exequatur_ was ordered
to pay P1,000 fine. The Archbishop was degraded and transferred
from the Archbishopric of Manila to the Bishopric of Guadalajara in
Mexico. In spite of this punishment, it came to the knowledge of the
King that the ex-Archbishop of Manila, as Bishop of Guadalajara, was
still conspiring with the Patriarch to subvert civil and religious
authority in his dominions, with which object he had sent him P1,000
from Mexico, and had promised a fixed sum of P1,000 per annum, with
whatever further support he could afford to give him. Therefore the
King issued an edict to the effect that any legate who should arrive
in his domains without royal confirmation of his Papal credentials
should thenceforth be treated simply with the charity and courtesy
due to any traveller; and in order that this edict should not be
forgotten, or evaded, under pretext of its having become obsolete,
it was further enacted that it should be read in full on certain days
in every year before all the civil and ecclesiastical functionaries.
CHAPTER VII
British Occupation of Manila
In 1761 King George III. had just succeeded to the throne of England,
and the protracted contentions with France had been suspended for
a while. It was soon evident, however, that efforts were being made
to extinguish the power and prestige of Great Britain, and with this
object a convention had been entered into between France and Spain
known as the "Family Compact." It was so called because it was an
alliance made by the three branches of the House of Bourbon, namely,
Louis XV. of France, Charles III. of Spain, and his son Ferdinand, who,
in accordance with the Treaty of Vienna, had ascended the throne of
Naples. Spain engaged to unite her forces with those of France against
England on May 1, 1762, if the war still lasted, in which case France
would restore Minorca to Spain. Pitt was convinced of the necessity of
meeting the coalition by force of arms, but he was unable to secure
the support of his Ministry to declare war, and he therefore retired
from the premiership. The succeeding Cabinet were, nevertheless,
compelled to adopt his policy, and after having lost many advantages
by delaying their decision, war was declared against France and Spain.
The British were successful everywhere. In the West Indies the
Caribbean Islands and Havana were captured with great booty by Rodney
and Monckton, whilst a British Fleet was despatched to the Philippine
Islands with orders to take Manila.
On September 14, 1762, a British vessel arrived in the Bay of Manila,
refused to admit Spanish officers on board, and after taking soundings
she sailed again out of the harbour.
In the evening of September 22 the British squadron, composed of 13
ships, under the command of Admiral Cornish, entered the bay, and the
next day two British officers were deputed to demand the surrender
of the Citadel, which was refused. Brigadier-General Draper thereupon
disembarked his troops, and again called upon the city to yield. This
citation being defied, the bombardment commenced the next day. The
fleet anchored in front of a powder-magazine, took possession of the
churches of Malate, Ermita, San Juan de Bagumbayan, and Santiago. Two
picket-guards made an unsuccessful sortie against them. The whole force
in Manila, at the time, was the King's regiment, which mustered about
600 men and 80 pieces of artillery. The British forces consisted of
1,500 European troops (one regiment of infantry and two companies
of artillery), 3,000 seamen, 800 Sepoy fusileers, and 1,400 Sepoy
prisoners, making a total of 6,830 men, including officers. [38]
There was no Gov.-General in the Philippines at the time, and the
only person with whom the British Commander could treat was the
acting-Governor, the Archbishop Manuel Antonio Rojo, who was willing to
yield. His authority was, however, set aside by a rebellious war party,
who placed themselves under the leadership of a magistrate of the
Supreme Court, named Simon de Anda y Salazar. This individual, instead
of leading them to battle, fled to the Province of Bulacan the day
before the capture of Manila in a prahu with a few natives, carrying
with him some money and half a ream of official stamped paper. [39]
He knew perfectly well that he was defying the legal authority of
the acting-Governor, and was, in fact, in open rebellion against his
mandate. It was necessary, therefore, to give an official colour to
his acts by issuing his orders and proclamations on Government-stamped
paper, so that their validity might be recognized if he subsequently
succeeded in justifying his action at Court.
On September 24 the Spanish batteries of San Diego and San Andres
opened fire, but with little effect. A richly laden galleon--the
_Philipino_--was known to be on her way from Mexico to Manila, but the
British ships which were sent in quest of her fell in with another
galleon--the _Trinidad_--and brought their prize to Manila. Her
treasure amounted to about P2,500,000. [40]
A Frenchman resident in Manila, Monsieur Faller, made an attack on
the British, who forced him to retire, and he was then accused by the
Spaniards of treason. Artillery fire was kept up on both sides. The
Archbishop's nephew was taken prisoner, and an officer was sent with
him to hand him over to his uncle. However, a party of natives fell
upon them and murdered them. The officer's head having been cut off,
it was demanded by General Draper. Excuses were made for not giving
it up, and the General determined thenceforth to continue the warfare
with vigour and punish this atrocity. The artillery was increased by
another battery of three mortars, placed behind the church of Santiago,
and the bombardment continued.
Five thousand native recruits arrived from the provinces, and out of
this number 2,000 Pampangos were selected. They were divided into
three columns, in order to advance by different routes and attack
respectively the churches of Santiago, Malate, and Ermita, and the
troops on the beach. At each place they were driven back. The leader of
the attack on Malate and Ermita--Don Santiago Orendain--was declared
a traitor. The two first columns were dispersed with great confusion
and loss. The third column retreated before they had sustained or
inflicted any loss. The natives fled to their villages in dismay,
and on October 5 the British entered the walled city. After a couple
of hours' bombardment, the forts of San Andrés and San Eugenio were
demolished, the artillery overturned, and the defenders' fusileers
and sappers were killed.
A council of war was now held by the Spaniards. General Draper
sustained the authority of the Archbishop against the war party,
composed chiefly of civilians determined to continue the defence
in spite of the opinion of the military men, who argued that a
capitulation was inevitable. But matters were brought to a crisis
by the natives, who refused to repair the fortifications, and the
Europeans were unable to perform such hard labour. Great confusion
reigned in the city--the clergy fled through the Puerta del Parian,
where there was still a native guard. According to Zúñiga, the British
spent 20,000 cannon balls and 5,000 shells in the bombardment of
the city.
Major Fell entered Manila (Oct. 6) at the head of his troops, and
General Draper followed, leading his column unopposed, with two
field-pieces in the van, whilst a constant musketry fire cleared the
Calle Real (the central thoroughfare) as they advanced. The people
fled before the enemy. The gates being closed, they scrambled up the
walls and got into boats or swam off.
Colonel Monson was sent by Draper to the Archbishop-Governor to
say that he expected immediate surrender. This requisition was
disputed by the Archbishop, who presented a paper purporting to be
terms of capitulation. The Colonel refused to take it, and demanded
an unconditional surrender. Then the Archbishop, a Colonel of the
Spanish troops, and Colonel Monson went to interview the General,
whose quarters were in the Palace. The Archbishop, offering himself
as a prisoner, presented the terms of capitulation, which provided
for the free exercise of their religion; security of private
property; free trade to all the inhabitants of the Islands, and the
continuation of the powers of the Supreme Court to keep order amongst
the ill-disposed. These terms were granted, but General Draper, on his
part, stipulated for an indemnity of four millions of pesos, and it
was agreed to pay one half of this sum in specie and valuables and the
other half in Treasury bills on Madrid. The capitulation, with these
modifications, was signed by Draper and the Archbishop-Governor. The
Spanish Colonel took the document to the Fort to have it countersigned
by the magistrates, which was at once done; the Fort was delivered
up to the British, and the magistrates repaired to the Palace to pay
their respects to the conquerors.
When the British flag was seen floating over the Fort of Santiago
there was great cheering from the British Fleet. The Archbishop
stated that when Draper reviewed the troops, more than 1,000 men
were missing, including sixteen officers. Among these officers were
a Major fatally wounded by an arrow on the first day of the assault,
and the Vice-Admiral, who was drowned whilst coming ashore in a boat.
The natives who had been brought from the provinces to Manila were
plundering and committing excesses in the city, so Draper had them
all driven out. Guards were placed at the doors of the nunneries and
convents to prevent outrages on the women, and then the city was given
up to the victorious troops for pillage during three hours. Zúñiga,
however, remarks that the European troops were moderate, but that the
Indian contingents were insatiable. They are said to have committed
many atrocities, and, revelling in bloodshed, even murdered the
inhabitants. They ransacked the suburbs of Santa Cruz and Binondo, and,
acting like savage victorious tribes, they ravished women, and even
went into the highways to murder and rob those who fled. The three
hours having expired, the troops were called in, but the following
day a similar scene was permitted. The Archbishop thereupon besought
the General to put a stop to it, and have compassion on the city. The
General complied with this request, and immediately restored order
under pain of death for disobedience. Some Chinese were in consequence
hanged. General Draper himself killed one whom he found in the act of
stealing, and he ordered that all Church property should be restored,
but only some priests' vestments were recovered.
Draper demanded the surrender of Cavite, which was agreed to by the
Archbishop and magistrates, but the Commanding Officer refused to
comply. The Major of that garrison was sent with a message to the
Commander, but on the way he talked with such freedom about the
surrender to the British, that the natives quitted their posts and
plundered the Arsenal. The Commander, rather than face humiliation,
retired to a ship, and left all further responsibility to the Major.
Measures were now taken to pay the agreed indemnity. However,
the consequent heavy contributions levied upon the inhabitants,
together with the silver from the pious establishments, church
ornaments, plate, the Archbishop's rings and breast-cross, only
amounted to P546,000. The British then proposed to accept one
million at once and draw the rest from the cargo of the galleon
_Philipino_, should it result that she had not been seized by the
British previous to the day the capitulation was signed--but the one
million was not forthcoming. The day before the capture of Manila a
royal messenger had been sent off with P111,000, with orders to hide
them in some place in the Laguna de Bay. The Archbishop now ordered
their return to Manila, and issued a requisition to that effect,
but the Franciscan friars were insubordinate, and armed the natives,
whom they virtually ruled, and the treasure was secreted in Majayjay
Convent (Tayabas Province). Thence, on receipt of the Archbishop's
message, it was carried across country to a place in North Pampanga,
bordering on Cagayán and Pangasinán. The British, convinced that
they were being duped, insisted on their claim. Thomas Backhouse,
commanding the troops stationed at Pasig, went up to the Laguna de
Bay with 80 mixed troops, to intercept the bringing of the _Philipino_
treasure. He attacked Tunasan, Vinan and Santa Rosa, and embarked for
Pagsanján, which was then the capital of the Laguna Province. The
inhabitants, after firing the convent and church, fled. Backhouse
returned to Calamba, entered the Province of Batangas, overran it,
and made several Austin friars prisoners. In Lipa he seized P3,000,
and established his quarters there, expecting that the _Philipino_
treasure would be carried that way; but on learning that it had been
transported by sea to a Pampanga coast town, Backhouse returned to
his post at Pasig.
In the capitulation, the whole of the Archipelago was surrendered to
the British, but the magistrate Simon de Anda determined to appeal to
arms. Draper used stratagem, and issued a proclamation commiserating
the fate of the natives who paid tribute to Spaniards, and assuring
them that the King of England would not exact it. The Archbishop, as
Governor, became Draper's tool, sent messages to the Spanish families,
persuading them to return, and appointed an Englishman, married in the
country, to be Alderman of Tondo. Despite the strenuous opposition
of the Supreme Court, the Archbishop, at the instance of Draper,
convened a council of native headmen and representative families,
and proposed to them the cession of all the Islands to the King of
England. Draper clearly saw that the ruling powers in the Colony,
judging from their energy and effective measures, were the friars,
so he treated them with great respect. The Frenchman Faller, who
unsuccessfully opposed the British assault, was offered troops to
go and take possession of Zamboanga and assume the government there,
but he refused, as did also a Spaniard named Sandoval.
Draper returned to Europe; Major Fell was left in command of the
troops, whilst Drake assumed the military government of the city, with
Smith and Brock as council, and Brereton in charge of Cavite. Draper,
on leaving, gave orders for two frigates to go in search of the
_Philipino_ treasure. The ships got as far as Capul Island and put into
harbour. They were detained there by a ruse on the part of a half-caste
pilot, and in the meantime the treasure was stealthily carried away.
Simon de Anda, from his provincial retreat, proclaimed himself
Gov.-General. He declared that the Archbishop and the magistrates,
as prisoners of war, were dead in the eye of the law; and that
his assumption of authority was based upon old laws. None of his
countrymen disputed his authority, and he established himself in
Bacolor. The British Council then convened a meeting of the chief
inhabitants, at which Anda was declared a seditious person and
deserving of capital punishment, together with the Marquis of Monte
Castro, who had violated his _parole d'honneur_, and the Provincial
of the Austin Friars, who had joined the rebel party. All the Austin
friars were declared traitors for having broken their allegiance to
the Archbishop's authority. The British still pressed for the payment
of the one million, whilst the Spaniards declared they possessed no
more. The Austin friars were ordered to keep the natives peaceable
if they did not wish to provoke hostilities against themselves. At
length, the British, convinced of the futility of decrees, determined
to sally out with their forces, and 500 men under Thomas Backhouse
went up the Pasig River to secure a free passage for supplies to the
camp. Whilst opposite to Maybonga, a Spaniard, named Bustos, and his
Cagayán troops fired on them. The British returned the fire, and Bustos
fled to Mariquina. The British passed the river, and sent an officer
with a white flag of truce to demand surrender. Bustos was insolent,
and threatened to hang the officer if he returned. Backhouse's troops
then opened fire and placed two field-pieces, which completely scared
the natives, who fled in such great confusion that many were drowned
in the river. Thence the British drove their enemy before them like a
flock of goats, and reached the Bamban River, where the Sultan of Sulu
[41] resided with his family. The Sultan, after a feigned resistance,
surrendered to the British, who fortified his dwelling, and occupied it
during the whole of the operations. There were subsequent skirmishes
on the Pasig River banks with the armed insurgents, who were driven
as far as the Antipolo Mountains.
Meanwhile, Anda collected troops; and Bustos, as his
Lieutenant-General, vaunted the power of his chief through the Bulacan
and Pampanga Provinces. A Franciscan and an Austin friar, having led
troops to Masilo, about seven miles from Manila, the British went out
to dislodge them, but on their approach most of the natives feigned
they were dead, and the British returned without any loss in arms
or men.
The British, believing that the Austin friars were conspiring against
them in connivance with those inside the city, placed these friars
in confinement, and subsequently shipped away eleven of them to
Europe. For the same reason they at last determined to enter the
Saint Augustine Convent, and on ransacking it, they found that the
priests had been lying to them all the time. Six thousand pesos
in coin were found hidden in the garden, and large quantities of
wrought silver elsewhere. The whole premises were then searched,
and all the valuables were seized. A British expedition went
out to Bulacan, sailing across the Bay and up the Hagonoy River,
where they disembarked at Malolos on January 19, 1763. The troops,
under Captain Eslay, of the Grenadiers, numbered 600 men, many of
whom were Chinese volunteers. As they advanced from Malolos, the
natives and Spaniards fled. On the way to Bulacan, Bustos came out
to meet them, but retreated into ambush on seeing they were superior
in numbers. Bulacan Convent was defended by three small cannons. As
soon as the troops came in sight of the convent, a desultory fire
of case-shot made great havoc in the ranks of the resident Chinese
volunteers forming the British vanguard. At length the British brought
their field-pieces into action, and pointing at the enemy's cannon, the
first discharge carried off the head of their artilleryman Ybarra. The
panic-stricken natives decamped; the convent was taken by assault;
there was an indiscriminate fight and general slaughter. The _Alcalde_
and a Franciscan friar fell in action; one Austin friar escaped,
and another was seized and killed to avenge the death of the British
soldiers. The invading forces occupied the convent, and some of the
troops were shortly sent back to Manila. Bustos reappeared near the
Bulacan Convent with 8,000 native troops, of whom 600 were cavalry,
but they dared not attack the British. Bustos then manoeuvred in the
neighbourhood and made occasional alarms. Small parties were sent
out against him, with so little effect that the British Commander
headed a body in person, and put the whole of Bustos' troops to
flight like mosquitoes before a gust of wind, for Bustos feared they
would be pursued into Pampanga. After clearing away the underwood,
which served as a covert for the natives, the British reoccupied the
convent; but Bustos returned to his position, and was a second time
as disgracefully routed by the British, who then withdrew to Manila.
At this time it was alleged that a conspiracy was being organized
amongst the Chinese resident in the Province of Pampanga with the
object of assassinating Anda and his Spanish followers. The Chinese
cut trenches and raised fortifications, avowing that their bellicose
preparations were only to defend themselves against the possible attack
of the British; whilst the Spaniards saw in all this a connivance
with the invaders. The latter no doubt conjectured rightly. Anda,
acting upon the views of his party, precipitated matters by appearing
with 14 Spanish soldiers and a crowd of native bowmen to commence the
slaughter in the town of Guagua. The Chinese assembled there in great
numbers, and Anda endeavoured in vain to induce them to surrender to
him. He then sent a Spaniard, named Miguel Garcés, with a message,
offering them pardon in the name of the King of Spain if they would
lay down their arms; but they killed the emissary, and Anda therefore
commenced the attack. The result was favourable for Anda's party,
and great numbers of the Chinese were slain. Many fled to the fields,
where they were pursued by the troops, whilst those who were captured
were hanged. Such was the inveterate hatred which Anda entertained
for the Chinese, that he issued a general decree declaring all the
Chinese traitors to the Spanish flag, and ordered them to be hanged
wherever they might be found in the provinces. Thus thousands of
Chinese were executed who had taken no part whatever in the events
of this little war.
Admiral Cornish having decided to return to Europe, again urged for the
payment of the two millions of pesos instalment of the indemnity. The
Archbishop was in great straits; he was willing to do anything,
but his colleagues opposed him, and Cornish was at length obliged to
content himself with a bill on the Madrid Treasury. Anda appointed
Bustos _Alcalde_ of Bulacan, and ordered him to recruit and train
troops, as he still nurtured the hope of confining the British to
Manila--perhaps even of driving them out of the Colony.
The British in the city were compelled to adopt the most rigorous
precautions against the rising of the population within the walls,
and several Spanish residents were arrested for intriguing against
them in concert with those outside.
Several French prisoners from Pondicherry deserted from the British;
and some Spanish regular troops, who had been taken prisoners, effected
their escape. The Fiscal of the Supreme Court and a Señor Villa Corta
were found conspiring. The latter was caught in the act of sending
a letter to Anda, and was sentenced to be hanged and quartered--the
quarters to be exhibited in public places. The Archbishop, however,
obtained pardon for Villa Corta on the condition that Anda should
evacuate the Pampanga Province: Villa Corta wrote to Anda, begging him
to accede to this, but Anda absolutely refused to make any sacrifice
to save his friend's life, and at the same time he wrote a disgraceful
letter to the Archbishop, couched in such insulting terms that the
British Commander burnt it without letting the Archbishop see it. Villa
Corta's life was saved by the payment of P3,000.
The treasure brought by the _Philipino_ served Anda to organize
a respectable force of recruits. Spaniards who were living in the
provinces in misery, and a crowd of natives always ready for pay,
enlisted. These forces, under Lieut.-General Bustos, encamped at
Malinta, about five miles from Manila. The officers lodged in a house
belonging to the Austin friars, around which the troops pitched their
tents--the whole being defended by redoubts and palisades raised
under the direction of a French deserter, who led a company. From
this place Bustos constantly caused alarm to the British troops, who
once had to retreat before a picket-guard sent to carry off the church
bells of Quiapo. The British, in fact, were much molested by Bustos'
Malinta troops, who forced the invaders to withdraw to Manila and
reduce the extension of their outposts. This measure was followed
up by a proclamation, dated January 23, 1763, in which the British
Commander alluded to Bustos' troops as "canaille and robbers," and
offered a reward of P5,000 for Anda's head, declaring him and his
party rebels and traitors to their Majesties the Kings of Spain and
England. Anda, chafing at his impotence to combat the invading party
by force of arms, gave vent to his feelings of rage and disappointment
by issuing a decree, dated from Bacolor (Pampanga), May 19, 1763,
of which the translated text reads as follows, viz.:--
"Royal Government Tribunal of these Islands for His Catholic
Majesty:--Whereas the Royal Government Tribunal, Supreme Government
and Captain-Generalship of His Catholic Majesty in these Islands
are gravely offended at the audacity and blindness of those men,
who, forgetting all humanity, have condemned as rebellious and
disobedient to both their Majesties, him, who as a faithful
vassal of His Catholic Majesty, and in conformity with the law,
holds the Royal Tribunal, Government and Captain-Generalship; and
having suffered by a reward being offered by order of the British
Governor in council to whomsoever shall deliver me alive or dead;
and by their having placed the arms captured in Bulacan at the
foot of the gallows--seeing that instead of their punishing and
censuring such execrable proceedings, the spirit of haughtiness
and pride is increasing, as shown in the proclamation published
in Manila on the 17th instant, in which the troops of His Majesty
are infamously calumniated--treating them as blackguards and
disaffected to their service--charging them with plotting to
assassinate the English officers and soldiers, and with having
fled when attacked--the whole of these accusations being false:
Now therefore by these presents, be it known to all Spaniards and
true Englishmen, that Messrs. Drake, Smith and Brock who signed the
proclamation referred to, must not be considered as vassals of His
Britannic Majesty, but as tyrants and common enemies unworthy of
human society, and therefore, I order that they be apprehended as
such, and I offer ten thousand pesos for each one of them alive or
dead. At the same time, I withdraw the order to treat the vassals
of His Britannic Majesty with all the humanity which the rights
of war will permit, as has been practised hitherto with respect
to the prisoners and deserters."
Anda had by this time received the consent of his King to occupy the
position which he had usurped, and the British Commander was thus
enabled to communicate officially with him, if occasion required it:
Drake therefore replied to this proclamation, recommending Anda to
carry on the war with greater moderation and humanity.
On June 27, 1763, the British made a sortie from the city to dislodge
Bustos, who still occupied Malinta. The attacking party consisted of
350 fusileers, 50 horsemen, a mob of Chinese, and a number of guns and
ammunition. The British took up quarters on one side of the river,
whilst Bustos remained on the other. The opposing parties exchanged
fire, but neither cared nor dared to cross the water-way. The British
forces retired in good order to Masilo, and remained there until they
heard that Bustos had burnt Malinta House, belonging to the Austin
friars, and removed his camp to Meycauayan. Then the British withdrew
to Manila in the evening. On the Spanish side there were two killed,
five mortally wounded, and two slightly wounded. The British losses
were six mortally wounded and seven disabled. This was the last
encounter in open warfare. Chinamen occasionally lost their lives
through their love of plunder in the vicinity occupied by the British.
During these operations the priesthood taught the ignorant natives
to believe that the invaders were infidels--and a holy war was
preached. The friars, especially those of the Augustine Order,
[42] abandoned their mission of peace for that of the sword, and
the British met with a slight reverse at Masilo, where a religious
fanatic of the Austin friars had put himself at the head of a small
band lying in ambush.
On July 23, 1763, a British frigate brought news from Europe of an
armistice, and the preliminaries of peace, by virtue of which Manila
was to be evacuated (Peace of Paris, February 10, 1763), were received
by the British Commander on August 27 following, and communicated
by him to the Archbishop-Governor for the "Commander-in-Chief" of
the Spanish arms. Anda stood on his dignity, and protested that he
should be addressed directly, and be styled Captain-General. On this
plea he declined to receive the communication. Drake replied by a
manifesto, dated September 19, to the effect that the responsibility
of the blood which might be spilt in consequence of Anda's refusal
to accept his notification would rest with him. Anda published
a counter-manifesto, dated September 28, in Bacolor (Pampanga),
protesting that he had not been treated with proper courtesy, and
claiming the governor-generalship.
Greater latitude was allowed to the prisoners, and Villa Corta effected
his escape disguised as a woman. He fled to Anda,--the co-conspirator
who had refused to save his life,--and their superficial friendship
was renewed. Villa Corta was left in charge of business in Bacolor
during Anda's temporary absence. Meanwhile the Archbishop became ill;
and it was discussed who should be his successor in the government
in the event of his death. Villa Corta argued that it fell to him
as senior magistrate. The discussion came to the knowledge of Anda,
and seriously aroused his jealousy. Fearing conspiracy against
his ambitious projects, he left his camp at Polo, and hastened to
interrogate Villa Corta, who explained that he had only made casual
remarks in the course of conversation. Anda, however, was restless on
the subject of the succession, and sought the opinion of all the chief
priests and the bishops. Various opinions existed. Some urged that the
decision be left to the Supreme Court; others were in favour of Anda,
whilst many prudently abstained from expressing their views. Anda was
so nervously anxious about the matter that he even begged the opinion
of the British Commander, and wrote him on the subject from Bacolor
(Pampanga) on November 2, 1763.
Major Fell seriously quarrelled with Drake about the Frenchman
Faller, whom Admiral Cornish had left under sentence of death for
having written a letter to Java accusing him of being a pirate and a
robber. Drake protected Faller, whilst Fell demanded his execution,
and the dispute became so heated that Fell was about to slay Drake
with a bayonet, but was prevented by some soldiers. Fell then went
to London to complain of Drake, hence Anda's letter was addressed
to Backhouse, who took Fell's place. Anda, who months since had
refused to negotiate or treat with Drake, still claimed to be
styled Captain-General. Backhouse replied that he was ignorant of
the Spaniards' statutes or laws, but that he knew the Governor was
the Archbishop. Anda thereupon spread the report that the British
Commander had forged the Preliminaries of Peace because he could no
longer hold out in warfare. The British necessarily had to send to the
provinces to purchase provisions, and Anda caused their forage parties
to be attacked, so that the war really continued, in spite of the news
of peace, until January 30, 1764. On this day the Archbishop died,
sorely grieved at the situation, and weighed down with cares. He had
engaged to pay four millions of pesos and surrender the Islands, but
could he indeed have refused any terms? The British were in possession;
and these conditions were dictated at the point of the bayonet.
Immediately after the funeral of the Archbishop, Anda received
despatches from the King of Spain, by way of China, confirming the news
of peace to his Governor at Manila. Then the British acknowledged
Anda as Governor, and proceeded to evacuate the city. But rival
factions were not so easily set aside, and fierce quarrels ensued
between the respective parties of Anda, Villa Corta, and Ustariz
as to who should be Governor and receive the city officially from
the British. Anda, being actually in command of the troops, held
the strongest position. The conflict was happily terminated by the
arrival at Marinduque Island of the newly-appointed Gov.-General,
from Spain, Don Francisco de La Torre. A galley was sent there by
Anda to bring His Excellency to Luzon, and he proceeded to Bacolor,
where Anda resigned the Government to him on March 17, 1764.
La Torre sent a message to Backhouse and Brereton--the commanding
officers at Manila and Cavite,--stating that he was ready to take
over the city in due form, and he thereupon took up his residence
in Santa Cruz, placed a Spanish guard with sentinels from that
ward as far as the Pontoon Bridge (Puente de Barcas, which then
occupied the site of the present Puente de España), where the British
advance-guard was, and friendly communication took place. Governor
Drake was indignant at being ignored in all these proceedings, and
ordered the Spanish Governor to withdraw his guards, under threat of
appealing to force. Backhouse and Brereton resented this rudeness and
ordered the troops under arms to arrest Drake, whose hostile action,
due to jealousy, they declared unwarrantable. Drake, being apprised
of their intentions, escaped from the city with his suite, embarked
on board a frigate, and sailed off.
La Torre was said to be indisposed on the day appointed for receiving
the city. Some assert that he feigned indisposition as he did not wish
to arouse Anda's animosity, and desired to afford him an opportunity
of displaying himself as a delegate, at least, of the highest local
authority by receiving the city from the British, whilst he pampered
his pride by allowing him to enter triumphantly into it. As the city
exchanged masters, the Spanish flag was hoisted once more on the Fort
of Santiago amidst the hurrahs of the populace, artillery salutes,
and the ringing of the church bells.
Before embarking, Brereton offered to do justice to any claims
which might legitimately be established against the British
authorities. Hence a sloop lent to Drake, valued at P4,000,
was paid for to the Jesuits, and the P3,000 paid to ransom Villa
Corta's life was returned, Brereton remarking, that if the sentence
against him were valid, it should have been executed at the time,
but it could not be commuted by money payment. At the instance of the
British authorities, a free pardon was granted and published to the
Chinese, few of whom, however, confided in it, and many left with
the retiring army. Brereton, with his forces, embarked for India,
after despatching a packet-boat to restore the Sultan of Sulu to
his throne. In connection with this expedition, 150 British troops
temporarily remained on the Island of Balambangan, near Balabac Island,
and Anda sent a messenger to inquire about this. The reply came that
the Moros, in return for British friendliness, invited the hundred
and fifty to a feast and treacherously slew 144 of them.
During this convulsed period, great atrocities were
committed. Unfortunately the common felons were released by the British
from their prisons, and used their liberty to perpetrate murders and
robbery in alliance with those always naturally bent that way. So
great did this evil become, so bold were the marauders, that in time
they formed large parties, infested highways, attacked plantations,
and the poor peasantry had to flee, leaving their cattle and all
their belongings in their power. Several avenged themselves of the
friars for old scores--others settled accounts with those Europeans
who had tyrannized over them of old. The Chinese, whether so-called
Christians or pagans, declared for and aided the British.
The proceedings of the choleric Simon de Anda y Salazár were approved
by his Sovereign, but his impetuous disposition drove from him
his best counsellors, whilst those who were bold enough to uphold
their opinions against his, were accused of connivance with the
British. Communications with Europe were scant indeed in those days,
but Anda could not have been altogether ignorant of the causes of
the war, which terminated with the Treaty of Paris.
A few months afterwards Anda returned to Spain and was received
with favour by the King, who created him a Cavalier of the Order of
Charles III. with a pension of 4,000 reales (about £40), and awarded
him a pension of 3,000 pesos, and on November 6, 1767, appointed
him a Councillor of Castile. In the course of the next three years
Gov.-General José Raon, who superseded La Torre, had fallen into
disgrace, and in 1770 Anda was appointed to the governor-generalship
of the Islands, specially charged to carry out the royal will with
respect to the expulsion of the Jesuits and the defence of Crown
rights in ecclesiastical matters.
Anda at once found himself in conflict with the Jesuits, the friars,
and the out-going Gov.-General Raon. As soon as Raon vacated his
post, Anda, as Gov.-General, had his predecessor confined in the Fort
of Santiago, where he died. At the same time he sent back to Spain
two magistrates who had sided with Raon, imprisoned other judges,
and banished military officers from the capital. Anda's position
was a very peculiar one. A partisan of the friars at heart, he had
undertaken the defence of Crown interests against them, but, in a
measure, he was able to palliate the bitterness he thus created by
expelling the Jesuits, who were an eyesore to the friars. The Jesuits
might easily have promoted a native revolt against their departure,
but they meekly submitted to the decree of banishment and left the
Islands, taking away nothing but their clothing. Having rid himself of
his rivals and the Jesuits, Anda was constantly haunted by the fear
of fresh conflict with the British. He had the city walls repaired
and created a fleet of ships built in the provinces of Pangasinán,
Cavite, and Zambales, consisting of one frigate of war with 18 cannon,
another with 32 cannon, besides 14 vessels of different types,
carrying a total of 98 cannon and 12 swivel guns, all in readiness
for the British who never reappeared.
Born on October 28, 1709, in the Province of Alava, Spain, Simon
de Anda's irascible temper, his vanity, and his extravagant love
of power created enmities and brought trouble upon himself at every
step. Exhausted by six years of continual strife in his private and
official capacities, he retired to the Austin Friars' Hospital of
San Juan de Dios, in Cavite, where, on October 30, 1776, he expired,
much to the relief of his numerous adversaries. The last resting-place
of his mortal remains is behind the altar of the Cathedral, marked by
a tablet; and a monument erected to his memory--107 years after his
death--stands on the quayside at the end of the Paseo de Santa Lucia,
near the Fort of Santiago, Manila.
Consequent on the troubled state of the Colony, a serious rebellion
arose in Ylogan (Cagayán Province) amongst the Timava natives, who
flogged the Commandant, and declared they would no longer pay tribute
to the Spaniards. The revolt spread to Ilocos and Pangasinán; in the
latter province Don Fernando Araya raised a troop of 30 Spaniards
with firearms, and 400 friendly natives with bows and arrows, and
after great slaughter of the rebels the ringleaders were caught,
and tranquillity was restored by the gallows.
A rising far more important occurred in Ilocos Sur. The _Alcalde_
was deposed, and escaped after he had been forced to give up his
staff of office. The leader of this revolt was a cunning and wily
Manila native, named Diego de Silan, who persuaded the people to cease
paying tribute and declare against the Spaniards, who, he pointed out,
were unable to resist the English. The City of Vigan was in great
commotion. The Vicar-General parleyed in vain with the natives; then,
at the head of his troops, he dispersed the rebels, some of whom were
taken prisoners. But the bulk of the rioters rallied and attacked,
and burnt down part of the city. The loyal natives fled before the
flames. The Vicar-General's house was taken, and the arms in it were
seized. All the Austin friars within a large surrounding neighbourhood
had to ransom themselves by money payments. Silan was then acknowledged
as chief over a large territory north and south of Vigan. He appointed
his lieutenants, and issued a manifesto declaring Jesus of Nazareth
to be Captain-General of the place, and that he was His _Alcalde_
for the promotion of the Catholic religion and dominion of the King
of Spain. His manifesto was wholly that of a religious fanatic. He
obliged the natives to attend Mass, to confess, and to see that their
children went to school. In the midst of all this pretended piety,
he stole cattle and exacted ransoms for the lives of all those who
could pay them; he levied a tax of P100 on each friar. Under the
pretence of keeping out the British, he placed sentinels in all
directions to prevent news reaching the terrible Simon de Anda. But
Anda, though fully informed by an Austin friar of what was happening,
had not sufficient troops to march north. He sent a requisition to
Silan to present himself within nine days, under penalty of arrest
as a traitor. Whilst this order was published, vague reports were
intentionally spread that the Spaniards were coming to Ilocos in
great force. Many deserted Silan, but he contrived to deceive even
the clergy and others by his feigned piety. Silan sent presents to
Manila for the British, acknowledging the King of England to be his
legitimate Sovereign. The British Governor sent, in return, a vessel
bearing despatches to Silan, appointing him _Alcalde_. Elated with
pride, Silan at once made this public. The natives were undeceived,
for they had counted on him to deliver them from the British; now, to
their dismay, they saw him the authorized magistrate of the invader. He
gave orders to make all the Austin friars prisoners, saying that the
British would send other clergy in their stead. The friars surrendered
themselves without resistance and joined their Bishop near Vigan,
awaiting the pleasure of Silan. The Bishop excommunicated Silan, and
then he released some of the priests. The christian natives having
refused to slay the friars, a secret compact was being made, with
this object, with the mountain tribes, when a Spanish half-caste
named Vicos obtained the Bishop's benediction and killed Silan;
and the Ilocos rebellion, which had lasted from December 14, 1762,
to May 28, 1763, ended.
Not until a score of little battles had been fought were the numerous
riots in the provinces quelled. The loyal troops were divided into
sections, and marched north in several directions, until peace was
restored by March, 1765. Zúñiga says that the Spaniards lost in these
riots about 70 Europeans and 140 natives, whilst they cost the rebels
quite 10,000 men.
The submission made to the Spaniards, in the time of Legaspi, of the
Manila and Tondo chiefs, was but of local importance, and by no means
implied a total pacific surrender of the whole Archipelago; for each
district had yet to be separately conquered. In many places a bold
stand was made for independence, but the superior organization and
science of the European forces invariably brought them final victory.
The numerous revolutionary protests registered in history against
the Spanish dominion show that the natives, from the days of
Legaspi onwards, only yielded to a force which they repeatedly, in
each generation, essayed to overthrow. But it does not necessarily
follow that either the motives which inspired the leaders of these
social disturbances, or the acts themselves, were, in every case,
laudable ones.
The Pampanga natives were among the first to submit, but a few years
afterwards they were in open mutiny against their masters, who, they
alleged, took their young men from their homes to form army corps,
and busily employed the able-bodied men remaining in the district to
cut timber for Government requirements and furnish provisions to the
camp and to the Arsenal at Cavite.
In 1622 the natives of Bojol Island erected an oratory in the mountain
in honour of an imaginary deity, and revolted against the tyranny of
the Jesuit missionaries. They proclaimed their intention to regain
their liberty, and freedom from the payment of tribute to foreigners,
and taxes to a Church they did not believe in. Several towns and
churches were burnt, and Catholic images were desecrated, but the
rebels were dispersed by the Governor of Cebú, who, with a considerable
number of troops, pursued them into the interior. In the same island
a more serious rising was caused in 1744 by the despotism of a Jesuit
priest named Morales, who arrogated to himself governmental rights,
ordering the apprehension of natives who did not attend Mass, and
exercising his sacerdotal functions according to his own caprice. The
natives resisted these abuses, and a certain Dagóhoy, whose brother's
body had been left uninterred to decompose by the priest's orders,
organized a revenge party, and swore to pay the priest in his own
coin. The Jesuit was captured and executed, and his corpse was left
four days in the sun to corrupt. Great numbers of disaffected natives
flocked to Dagóhoy's standard. Their complaint was, that whilst
they risked their lives in foreign service for the sole benefit of
their European masters, their homes were wrecked and their wives and
families maltreated to recover the tribute. Dagóhoy, with his people,
maintained his independence for the space of 35 years, during which
period it was necessary to employ constantly detachments of troops
to check the rebels' raids on private property. On the expulsion of
the Jesuits from the Colony, Recoleto friars went to Bojol, and then
Dagóhoy and his partisans submitted to the Government on the condition
of all receiving a full pardon.
In 1622 an insurrection was set on foot in Leyte Island against Spanish
rule, and the Governor of Cebú went there with 40 vessels, carrying
troops and war material, to co-operate with the local Governor against
the rebels. The native leader was made prisoner, and his head placed
on a high pole to strike terror into the populace. Another prisoner
was garrotted, four more were publicly executed by being shot with
arrows, and another was burnt.
In 1629 an attempt was made in the Province of Surigao (then called
Caraga), in the east of Mindanao Island, to throw off the Spanish
yoke. Several churches were burnt and four priests were killed
by the rebels, and the rising was only quelled after three years'
guerilla warfare.
In 1649 the Gov.-General decided to supply the want of men in the
Arsenal at Cavite and the increasing necessity for troops, by pressing
the natives of Sámar Island into the King's service. Thereupon a native
headman named Sumoroy killed the priest of Ybabao, on the east coast
of Sámar, and led the mob who sacked and burnt the churches along
the coast. The Governor at Catbalogan got together a few men, and
sent them into the mountains with orders to send him back the head
of Sumoroy, but instead of obeying they joined the rebels and sent
him a pig's head. The revolt increased, and General Andrés Lopez
Azáldegui was despatched to the island with full powers from the
Gov.-General, whilst he was supported on the coast by armed vessels
from Zamboanga. Sumoroy fled to the hills, but his mother was found
in a hut; and the invading party wreaked their vengeance on her by
literally pulling her to pieces. Sumoroy was at length betrayed by
his own people, who carried his head to the Spanish Captain, and
this officer had it exhibited on a pole in the village. Some years
afterwards another rebel chief surrendered, under a pardon obtained
for him by the priests, but the military authorities imprisoned and
then hanged him.
The riots of 1649 extended to other provinces for the same cause. In
Albay, the parish priest of Sorsogón had to flee for his life; in
Masbate Island, a sub-lieutenant was killed; in Zamboanga, a priest
was murdered; in Cebú, a Spaniard was assassinated; and in Surigao
(then called Caraga) and Butuan, many Europeans fell victims to the
fury of the populace. To quell these disturbances, Captain Gregorio de
Castillo, stationed at Butuan, was ordered to march against the rebels
with a body of infantry, but bloodshed was avoided by the Captain
publishing a general pardon in the name of the King, and crowds of
insurgents came to the camp in consequence. The King's name, however,
was sullied, for very few of those who surrendered ever regained their
liberty. They were sent prisoners to Manila, where a few were pardoned,
others were executed, and the majority became galley-slaves.
In 1660 there was again a serious rising in Pampanga, the natives
objecting to cut timber for the Cavite Arsenal without payment. The
revolt spread to Pangasinán Province, where a certain Andrés Málong
was declared king, and he in turn gave to another--Pedro Gumapos--the
title of "Count." Messages were sent to Zambales and other adjacent
provinces ordering the natives to kill the Spaniards, under pain of
incurring "King" Málong's displeasure.
Three army-corps were formed by the rebels: one of 6,000 men, under
Melchor de Veras, for the conquest of Pampanga; another of 3,000
men, led by the titular count Gumapos, to annex Ilocos and Cagayán,
whilst the so-called King Málong took the field against the Pangasinán
people at the head of 2,000 followers. Ilocos Province declared in his
favour, and furnished a body of insurgents under a chief named Juan
Manzano, whilst everywhere on the march the titular king's troops
increased until they numbered about 40,000 men. On the way many
Spaniards--priests and laymen--were killed. The Gov.-General sent by
land to Pampanga 200 Spanish troops, 400 Pampangos and half-breeds,
well armed and provisioned, and Mount Arayat was fortified and
garrisoned by 500 men. By sea: two galleys, six small vessels, and
four cargo launches--carrying 700 Spaniards and half-breeds, and 30
Pampangos--went to Bolinao, in Zambales Province. The rebels were
everywhere routed, and their chiefs were hanged--some in Pampanga
and others in Manila.
Almost each generation has called forth the strong arm of the conqueror
to extinguish the flame of rebellion in one island or another, the
revolt being sometimes due to sacerdotal despotism, and at other
times to official rapacity.
In the last century, prior to 1896, several vain attempts to subvert
Spanish authority were made, notably in 1811 in Ilocos, where the
fanatics sought to establish a new religion and set up a new god. An
attempt was then made to enlist the wild tribes in a plot to murder
all the Spaniards, but it was opportunely discovered by the friars
and suppressed before it could be carried out.
In June, 1823, an order was received from Spain to the effect that
officers commissioned in the Peninsula should have precedence of all
those appointed in the Colony, so that, for instance, a lieutenant
from Spain would hold local rank above a Philippine major. The
Philippine officers protested against this anomaly, alleging that the
commissions granted to them in the name of the Sovereign were as good
as those granted in Spain. The Gov.-General refused to listen to the
objections put forward, and sent Captain Andrés Novales and others on
board a ship bound for Mindanao. Novales, however, escaped to shore,
and, in conspiracy with a certain Ruiz, attempted to overthrow the
Government. At midnight all Manila was aroused by the cry of "Long
live the Emperor Novales!" Disaffected troops promenaded the city;
the people sympathized with the movement; flags were waved as the
rebels passed through the streets; the barrack used by Novales'
regiment was seized; the Cathedral and Town Hall were occupied,
and at 6 o'clock in the morning Andrés Novales marched to Fort
Santiago, which was under the command of his brother Antonio. To his
great surprise, the brother Antonio stoutly refused to join in the
rising, and Andrés' expostulations and exhortations were finally
met with a threat to fire on him if he did not retire. Meanwhile,
the Gov.-General remained in hiding until he heard that the fort was
holding out against Andrés' assault, when he sent troops to assist
the defenders. Hemmed in between the fort and the troops outside,
Andrés Novales and Ruiz made their escape, but they were soon taken
prisoners. Andrés Novales was found hiding underneath the drawbridge
of the _Puerta Real_. The Gov.-General at once ordered Andrés Novales,
Ruiz, and Antonio Novales to be executed. The Town Council then went
in a body to the Gov.-General to protest against the loyal defender
of Fort Santiago being punished simply because he was Andrés Novales'
brother. The Gov.-General, however, threatened to have shot any one
who should say a word in favour of the condemned.
In a garden of the episcopal palace, near the ancient _Puerta del
Postigo_, the execution of the three condemned men was about to take
place, and crowds of people assembled to witness it. At the critical
moment an assessor of the Supreme Court shouted to the Gov.-General
that to take the life of the loyal defender of the fort, solely
on the ground of his relationship to the rebel leader, would be an
iniquity. His words found a sympathetic echo among the crowd, and the
Gov.-General, deadly pale with rage, yielded to this demonstration of
public opinion. Antonio Novales was pardoned, but the strain on his
nerves weakened his brain, and he lived for many years a semi-idiot
in receipt of a monthly pension of 14 pesos.
In 1827 the standard of sedition was raised in Cebú and a few towns
of that island, but these disturbances were speedily quelled through
the influence of the Spanish friars.
In 1828 a conspiracy of a separatist tendency was discovered, and
averted without bloodshed.
In 1835 Feliciano Páran took the field against the Spaniards in Cavite
Province, and held out so effectually that the Gov.-General came to
terms with him and afterwards deported him to the Ladrone Islands.
In 1836 there was much commotion of a revolutionary character, the
peculiar feature of it being the existence of pro-friar and anti-friar
native parties, the former seeking to subject absolutely the civil
government to ecclesiastical control. [43]
In 1841 a student for the priesthood, named Apolinario de la Cruz,
affected with religious mania, placed himself at the head of a
fanatical party in Tayabas, ostensibly for the purpose of establishing
a religious sect. Some thousands of natives joined the movement,
and troops had to be sent to suppress the rising. Having assumed the
title of King of the Tagálogs, he pretended to have direct heavenly
support, telling the ignorant masses that he was invulnerable and that
the soldiers' bullets would fly from them like chaff before the wind.
In 1844, during a rising at Jimamaylan, in Negros Island, the
Spanish Governor was killed. The revolt is said to have been due to
the Governor having compelled the State prisoners to labour for his
private account.
In 1854 a Spanish half-caste, named Cuesta, came back from Spain with
the rank of major, and at once broke out into open rebellion. The cry
was for independence, and four Luzon provinces rose in his support;
but the movement was crushed by the troops and Cuesta was hanged.
In 1870 a certain Camerino raised rebellion in Cavite province, and
after many unsuccessful attempts to capture him he came to terms with
the Gov.-General, who gave him a salaried employment for a couple
of years and then had him executed on the allegation that he was
concerned in the rising of Cavite Arsenal.
In 1871 there existed a Secret Society of reformers who used to
meet in Santa Cruz (Manila) at the house of the Philippine priest,
Father Mariano. [44] From the house proper a narrow staircase led
to a cistern about 25 feet square, in the side of which there was a
door which closed perfectly. The cistern was divided into two unequal
parts, the top compartment being full of water, whilst the lower part
served as the reformers' conference room, so that if search were made,
the cistern was, in fact, a cistern.
Among the members of this confraternity were Father Agustin Mendoza,
the parish priest of Santa Cruz; Dr. José Búrgos, also a native priest;
Máximo Paterno, the father of Pedro A. Paterno; Ambrosio Rianzares
Bautista; and others still living (some personally known to me), under
the presidency of José Maria Basa (now residing in Hong-Kong). This
Secret Society demanded reforms, and published in Madrid their organ,
_Eco de Filipinas_, copies of which reached the Islands. The copy for
the paper was the result of the society's deliberations. The monks,
incensed at its publication, were, for a long time, puzzled to find
out whence the information emanated. Many of the desired reforms
closely affected the position of the regular clergy, the Philippine
priests, led by Dr. Búrgos, urging the fulfilment of the Council of
Trent decisions, which forbade the friars to hold benefices unless
there were no secular priests available.
It appears that the friars, nevertheless, secured these ecclesiastical
preferments by virtue of Papal Bulls of Pius V. and subsequent Popes,
who authorized friars to act as parish priests, not in perpetuity,
but so long as secular clergymen were insufficient in number to attend
to the cure of souls. The native party consequently declared that
the friars retained their incumbencies illegally and by intrusion, in
view of the sufficiency of Philippine secular priests. Had the Council
of Trent enactments been carried out to the letter, undoubtedly the
religious communities in the Philippines would have been doomed to
comparative political impotence. The friars, therefore, sought to
embroil Dr. Búrgos and his party in overt acts of sedition, in order
to bring about their downfall and so quash the movement. To this end
they contrived to draw a number of Manila and Cavite natives into a
conspiracy to subvert the Spanish Government. The native soldiers of
the Cavite garrison were induced to co-operate in what they believed
to be a genuine endeavour to throw off the Spanish dominion. They
were told that rockets fired off in Manila would be the signal for
revolt. It happened, however, that they mistook the fireworks of a
suburban feast for the agreed signal and precipitated the outbreak
in Cavite without any support in the capital. The disaffected
soldiers seized the Arsenal, whilst others attacked the influential
Europeans. Colonel Sábas was sent over to Cavite to quell the riot,
and after a short, but stubborn resistance, the rebels were overcome,
disarmed, and then formed up in line. On Colonel Sábas asking if there
were any one who would not cry, "_Viva España!_" one man stepped
forward a few paces out of the ranks. The Colonel shot him dead,
and the remainder were marched to prison.
The ruse operated effectually on the lay authorities, who yielded to
the Spanish monks' demand that the extreme penalty of the law should
be inflicted upon their opponents. Thereupon, Dr. José Búrgos (aged
30 years), Father Jacinto Zamora (aged 35 years), and Father Mariano
Gomez [45] (a dotard, 85 years of age) were executed (February 28,
1872) on the _Luneta_, the fashionable esplanade outside the walled
city, facing the sea.
The friars then caused a bill of indictment to be put forward
by the Public Prosecutor, in which it was alleged that a
Revolutionary Government had been projected. The native clergy were
terror-stricken. It was decreed that whilst the Filipinos already
acting as parish priests would not be deposed, no further appointments
would be made, and the most the Philippine novice could aspire to
would be the position of coadjutor--practically servant--to the friar
incumbent. Moreover, the opportunity was taken to banish to the Ladrone
(Marianas) Islands many members of wealthy and influential families
whose passive resistance was an eyesore to the friars. Among these
was the late Máximo Paterno (q.v.), the father of Pedro A. Paterno;
also Dr. Antonio M. Regidor y Jurado and José Maria Basa, who are
still living. [46]
In 1889 I visited a penal settlement--La Colonia Agrícola de San
Ramón--in Mindanao Island, and during my stay at the director's house
I was every day served at table by a native convict who was said to
have been nominated by the Cavite rebels to the Civil Governorship of
Manila. There was, however, no open trial from which the public could
form an opinion of the merits of the case, and the idea of subverting
the Spanish Government would appear to have been a fantastic concoction
for the purposes stated. But from that date there never ceased to
exist a secret revolutionary agitation which culminated in the events
of 1898.
CHAPTER VIII
The Chinese
Long before the foundation of Manila by Legaspi in 1571 the
Chinese traded with these Islands. Their _locus standi_, however,
was invariably a critical one, and their commercial transactions
with the semi-barbarous Philippine Islanders were always conducted
afloat. Often their junks were boarded and pillaged by the natives,
but, in spite of the immense risk incurred, the Chinese lacked nothing
in their active pursuit. Their chief home port was Canton.
Legaspi soon perceived the advantages which would accrue to his
conquest by fostering the development of commerce with these Islands;
and, as an inducement to the Chinese to continue their traffic,
he severely punished all acts of violence committed against them.
In the course of time the Chinese had gained sufficient confidence
under European protection, to come ashore with their wares. In 1588,
Chinese were already paying rent for the land they occupied. Some
writers assert that they propagated their religious doctrines as well
as their customs, but nothing can be found to confirm this statement,
and a knowledge of Chinese habits inclines one to think it most
improbable. In their trading junks they frequently carried their
idols, as a Romish priest carries his missal when he travels. The
natives may have imitated the Chinese religious rites years before the
Spaniards came. There is no evidence adduced to prove that they made
any endeavour to proselytize the natives as the Spaniards did. On the
other hand, there is reason to believe that some idols, lost by the
Chinese in shipwreck and piratical attacks, have been, and still are,
revered by the natives as authenticated miraculous images of Christian
Saints (_vide_ "Holy Child of Cebú" and "Our Lady of Cagsaysay").
The Chinese contributed, in a large measure, to bring about a state of
order and prosperity in the new Colony, by the introduction of their
small trades and industries; and their traffic in the interior, and
with China, was really beneficial, in those times, to the object which
the conquerors had in view. So numerous, however, did they become,
that it was found necessary to regulate the growing commerce and the
_modus vivendi_ of the foreign traders.
In the bad weather they were unable to go to and from their junks,
and, fearing lest under such circumstances the trade would fall off,
the Government determined to provide them with a large building called
the _Alcayceria_. The contract for its construction was offered to any
private person or corporation willing to take it up on the following
terms, viz.:--The original cost, the annual expense of maintenance,
and the annual rents received from the Chinese tenants were to be
equally shared by the Government and the contractor. The contract was
accepted by a certain Fernando de Mier y Noriega, who was appointed
bailiff of the _Alcayceria_ for life, and the employment was to be
hereditary in his family, at a salary of 50 pesos per month. However,
when the plan was submitted to the Government, it was considered
too extensive, and was consequently greatly reduced, the Government
defraying the total cost (P 48,000). The bailiff's salary was likewise
reduced to P 25 per month, and only the condition of sharing rent
and expense of preservation was maintained. The _Alcayceria_, was
a square of shops, with a back store, and one apartment above each
tenement. It was inaugurated in 1580, in the Calle de San Fernando,
in Binondo, opposite to where is now the Harbour-Master's Office,
and within firing range of the forts. In the course of years this
became a ruin, and on the same site Government Stores were built in
1856. These, too, were wrecked in their turn by the great earthquake
of 1863. In the meantime, the Chinese had long ago spread far beyond
the limits of the _Alcayceria_, and another centre had been provided
for them within the City of Manila. This was called the _Parian_,
which is the Mexican word for market-place. It was demolished by
Government order in 1860, but the entrance to the city at that part
(constructed in 1782) still retains the name of _Puerta del Parian_.
Hence it will be seen that from the time of the conquest, and for
generations following, the Spanish authorities offered encouragement
and protection to the Chinese.
Dr. Antonio Morga, in his work on the Philippines, p. 349, writes
(at the close of the 16th century): "It is true the town cannot exist
without the Chinese, as they are workers in all trades and business,
and very industrious and work for small wages."
Juan de la Concepcion writes [47] (referring to the beginning of
the 17th century); "Without the trade and commerce of the Chinese,
these dominions could not have subsisted." The same writer estimates
the number of Chinese in the Colony in 1638 at 33,000. [48]
In 1686 the policy of fixing the statutory maximum number of Chinese
at 6,000 was discussed, but commercial conveniences outweighed its
adoption. Had the measure been carried out, it was proposed to lodge
them all in one place within easy cannon range, in view of a possible
rising.
In 1755 it was resolved to expel all non-Christian Chinese, but a term
was allowed for the liquidation of their affairs and withdrawal. By
June 30, 1755, the day fixed for their departure from Manila, 515
Chinamen had been sharp enough to obtain baptism as Christians,
in order to evade the edict, besides 1,108 who were permitted to
remain because they were studying the mysteries and intricacies of
Christianity. 2,070 were banished from Manila, the expulsion being
rigidly enforced on those newly arriving in junks.
Except a few Europeans and a score of Western Asiatics, the Chinese who
remained were the only merchants in the Archipelago. The natives had
neither knowledge, tact, energy, nor desire to compete with them. The
Chinese were a boon to the Colony, for, without them, living would
have been far dearer--commodities and labour of all kinds more scarce,
and the export and import trade much embarrassed. The Chinese and
the Japanese are really the people who gave to the natives the first
notions of trade, industry, and fruitful work. The Chinese taught them,
amongst many other useful things, the extraction of saccharine juice
from the sugar-cane, the manufacture of sugar, and the working of
wrought iron. They introduced into the Colony the first sugar-mills
with vertical stone crushers, and iron boiling-pans.
The history of the last 150 years shows that the Chinese, although
tolerated, were always regarded by the Spanish colonists as an
unwelcome race, and the natives have learnt, from example, to despise
them. From time to time, especially since the year 1763, the feeling
against them has run very high.
The public clamoured for restrictions on their arrival, impediments
to the traffic of those already established there, intervention of
the authorities with respect to their dwellings and mode of living,
and not a few urged their total expulsion. Indeed, such influence
was brought to bear on the Indian Council at Madrid during the
temporary Governorship of Juan Arechedera, Bishop of Nueva Segovia
(1745-50), that the Archbishop received orders to expel the Chinese
from the Islands; but, on the ground that to have done so would have
_prejudiced public interests_, he simply archived the decree. Even up
to the close of Spanish rule, the authorities and the national trading
class considered the question from very distinct points of view;
for the fact is, that only the mildest action was taken--just enough
to appease the wild demands of the people. Still, the Chinaman was
always subject to the ebb and flow of the tide of official goodwill,
and only since 1843 were Chinese shops allowed to be opened on the
same terms as other foreigners. There are now streets of Chinese shops.
The Chinaman is always ready to sell at any price which will leave him
a trifling nett gain, whereas the native, having earned sufficient
for his immediate wants, would stubbornly refuse to sell his wares
except at an enormous profit.
Again, but for Chinese coolie competition, [49] constant labour
from the natives would have been almost unprocurable. The native
day-labourer would work two or three days, and then suddenly
disappear. The active Chinaman goes day after day to his task
(excepting only at the time of the Chinese New Year, in January or
February), and can be depended upon; thus the needy native was pushed,
by alien competition, to bestir himself. In my time, in the port
of Yloilo, four foreign commercial houses had to incur the expense
and risk of bringing Chinese coolies for loading and discharging
vessels, whilst the natives coolly lounged about and absolutely
refused to work. Moreover, the exactions of the native create a
serious impediment to the development of the Colony. Only a very
small minority of the labouring class will put their hands to work
without an advance on their wages, and will often demand it without any
guarantee whatsoever. If a native is commissioned to perform any kind
of service, he will refuse to stir without a sum of money beforehand,
whilst the Chinese very rarely expect payment until they have given
value for it. Only the direst necessity will make an unskilled native
work steadily for several weeks for a wage which is only to be paid
when due. There is scarcely a single agriculturist who is not compelled
to sink a share of his capital in making advances to his labourers,
who, nevertheless, are in no way legally bound thereby to serve the
capitalist; or, whether they are or not, the fact is, that a large
proportion of this capital so employed must be considered lost. There
are certain lines of business quite impossible without the co-operation
of Chinese, and their exclusion will be a loss to the Colony.
Taxes were first levied on the Mongol traders in 1828. In
1852 a general reform of the fiscal laws was introduced, and the
classification of Chinese dealers was modified. They were then divided
into four grades or classes, each paying contributions according to
the new tariff.
In 1886 the universal depression, which was first manifest in this
Colony in 1884, still continued. Remedies of most original character
were suggested in the public organs and private circles, and a renewed
spasmodic tirade was directed against the Chinese. A petition, made
and signed by numbers of the retail trading class, was addressed to
the Sovereign; but it appears to have found its last resting-place
in the Colonial Secretary's waste-paper basket. The Americans in the
United States and Mexico were in open riot against the Celestials--the
Governments of Australia had imposed a capitation tax on their entry
[50]--in British Columbia there was a party disposed to throw off
its allegiance to Great Britain rather than forego its agitation
against the Chinese. Why should not the Chinese be expelled from the
Philippines, it was asked, or at least be permitted only to pursue
agriculture in the Islands? In 1638, around Calamba and along the
Laguna shore, they tilled the land; but the selfishness and jealousy
of the natives made their permanence impossible. In 1850 the Chinese
were invited to take up agriculture, but the rancorous feeling of the
natives forced them to abandon the idea, and to seek greater security
in the towns.
The chief accusation levelled against the Chinaman is, that he comes as
an adventurer and makes money, which he carries away, without leaving
any trace of civilization behind him. The Chinese immigrant is of the
lowest social class. Is not the dream of the European adventurer, of
the same or better class, to make his pile of dollars and be off to
the land of his birth? If he spends more money in the Colony than the
Chinaman does, it is because he lacks the Chinaman's self-abnegation
and thriftiness. Is the kind of civilization taught in the colonies
by low-class European settlers superior?
The Chinaman settled in the Philippines under Spanish rule was quite
a different being to the obstinate, self-willed, riotous coolie in
Hong-Kong or Singapore. In Manila he was drilled past docility--in six
months he became even fawning, cringing, and servile, until goaded
into open rebellion. Whatever position he might attain to, he was
never addressed (as in the British Colonies) as "Mr." or "Esqre," or
the equivalent, "Señor D.," but always "Chinaman ----" ("Chino ----").
The total expulsion of the Chinese in Spanish times would have been
highly prejudicial to trade. Had it suited the State policy to
check the ingress of the Chinese, nothing would have been easier
than the imposition of a P50 poll tax. To compel them to take up
agriculture was out of the question in a Colony where there was so
little guarantee for their personal safety. The frugality, constant
activity, and commendable ambition of the Celestial clashes with the
dissipation, indolence and want of aim in life of the native. There
is absolutely no harmony of thought, purpose, or habit between the
Philippine Malay native and the Mongol race, and the consequence of
Chinese coolies working on plantations without ample protection would
be frequent assassinations and open affray. Moreover, a native planter
could never manage, to his own satisfaction or interest, an estate
worked with Chinese labour, but the European might. The Chinese is
essentially of a commercial bent, and, in the Philippines at least,
he prefers taking his chance as to the profits, in the bubble and risk
of independent speculation, rather than calmly labour at a fixed wage
which affords no stimulus to his efforts.
Plantations worked by Chinese owners with Chinese labour might nave
succeeded, but those who arrived in the Colony brought no capital, and
the Government never offered them gratuitous allotment of property. A
law relating to the concession of State lands existed ("_Terrenos
baldíos_" and "_Colonias agrícolas_"), but it was enveloped in so
many entanglements and so encompassed by tardy process and intricate
conditions, that few Orientals or Europeans took advantage of it.
History records that in the year 1603 two Chinese Mandarins came to
Manila as Ambassadors from their Emperor to the Gov.-General of the
Philippines. They represented that a countryman of theirs had informed
His Celestial Majesty of the existence of a mountain of gold in the
environs of Cavite, and they desired to see it. The Gov.-General
welcomed them, and they were carried ashore by their own people
in ivory and gilded sedan-chairs. They wore the insignia of High
Mandarins, and the Governor accorded them the reception due to their
exalted station. He assured them that they were entirely misinformed
respecting the mountain of gold, which could only be imaginary, but,
to further convince them, he accompanied them to Cavite. The Mandarins
shortly afterwards returned to their country. The greatest anxiety
prevailed in Manila. Rumours circulated that a Chinese invasion was
in preparation. The authorities held frequent councils, in which
the opinions were very divided. A feverish consternation overcame
the natives, who were armed, and ordered to carry their weapons
constantly. The armoury was overhauled. A war plan was discussed and
adopted, and places were singled out for each division of troops. The
natives openly avowed to the Chinese that whenever they saw the
first signs of the hostile fleet arriving they would murder them
all. The Chinese were accused of having arms secreted; they were
publicly insulted and maltreated; the cry was falsely raised that
the Spaniards had fixed the day for their extermination; they daily
saw weapons being cleaned and put in order, and they knew that there
could be no immediate enemy but themselves. There was, in short,
every circumstantial evidence that the fight for their existence
would ere long be forced upon them.
In this terrible position they were constrained to act on
the offensive, simply to ensure their own safety. They raised
fortifications in several places outside the city, and many an
unhappy Chinaman had to shoulder a weapon reluctantly with tears in
his eyes. They were traders. War and revolution were quite foreign to
their wishes. The Christian rulers compelled them to abandon their
adopted homes and their chattels, regardless of the future. What a
strange conception the Chinese must have formed of His Most Catholic
Majesty! In their despair many of them committed suicide. Finally,
on the eve of Saint Francis' Day, the Chinese openly declared
hostilities--beat their war-gongs, hoisted their flags, assaulted
the armed natives, and threatened the city. Houses were burnt, and
Binondo was besieged. They fortified Tondo; and the next morning
Luis Perez Dasmariñas, an ex-Gov.-General, led the troops against
them. He was joined by 100 picked Spanish soldiers under Tomás de
Acuña. The nephew of the Governor and the nephew of the Archbishop
rallied to the Spanish standard nearly all the flower of Castilian
soldiery--and hardly one was left to tell the tale! The bloodshed was
appalling. The Chinese, encouraged by this first victory, besieged
the city, but after a prolonged struggle they were obliged to yield,
as they could not provision themselves.
The retreating Chinese were pursued far from Manila along the Laguna
de Bay shore, thousands of them being overtaken and slaughtered or
disabled. Reinforcements met them on the way, and drove them as far
as Batangas Province and into the Mórong district (now included in
Rizal Province). The natives were in high glee at this licence to shed
blood unresisted--so in harmony with their natural instincts. It is
calculated that 24,000 Chinese were slain or captured in this revolt.
The priests affirm positively that during the defence of the city
Saint Francis appeared in person on the walls to stimulate the
Christians--thus the victory was ascribed to him.
This ruthless treatment of a harmless and necessary people--for up
to this event they had proved themselves to be both--threatened to
bring its own reward. They were the only industrious, thriving,
skilful, wealth-producing portion of the population. There were
no other artificers or tradespeople in the Colony. Moreover, the
Spaniards were fearful lest their supplies from China of food for
consumption in Manila, [51] and manufactured articles for export to
Mexico, should in future be discontinued. Consequently they hastened
to despatch an envoy to China to explain matters, and to reassure
the Chinese traders. Much to their surprise, they found the Viceroy
of Canton little concerned about what had happened, and the junks of
merchandise again arrived as heretofore.
Notwithstanding the memorable event of 1603, another struggle was
made by the Chinese 36 years afterwards. In 1639, exasperated at the
official robbery and oppression of a certain doctor, Luis Arias do
Mora, and the Governor of the Laguna Province, they rose in open
rebellion and killed these officials in the town of Calamba. So
serious was the revolt that the Gov.-General went out against them in
person. The rebels numbered about 30,000, and sustained, for nearly
a year, a petty warfare all around. The images of the Saints were
promenaded in the streets of Manila; it was a happy thought, for 6,000
Chinese coincidentally surrendered. During this conflict an edict
was published ordering all the Chinese in the provinces to be slain.
In 1660 there was another rising of these people, which terminated
in a great massacre.
The Spaniards now began to reflect that they had made rather a
bad bargain with the Mongol traders in the beginning, and that the
Government would have done better had they encouraged commerce with
the Peninsula. Up to this time the Spaniards had vainly reposed on
their laurels as conquerors. They squandered lives and treasure on
innumerable fruitless expeditions to Gamboge, Cochin China, Siam,
Pegu, Japan, and the Moluccas, in quest of fresh glories, instead of
concentrating their efforts in opening up this Colony and fostering
a Philippine export trade, as yet almost unknown, if we exclude
merchandise from China, etc., in transit to Mexico. From this period
restrictions were, little by little, placed on the introduction
of Chinese; they were treated with arrogance by the Europeans and
Mexicans, and the jealous hatred which the native to this day feels for
the Chinaman now began to be more openly manifested. The Chinaman had,
for a long time past, been regarded by the European as a necessity--and
henceforth an unfortunate one.
Nevertheless, the lofty Spaniard who by favour of the King had
arrived in Manila to occupy an official post without an escudo too
much in his pocket, did not disdain to accept the hospitality of
the Chinese. It was formerly their custom to secure the goodwill and
personal protection of the Spanish officials by voluntarily keeping
lodging-houses ready for their reception. It is chronicled that these
gratuitous residences were well furnished and provided with all the
requisites procurable on the spot. For a whole century the Spaniards
were lulled with this easy-going and felicitous state of things, whilst
the insidious Mongol, whose clear-sighted sagacity was sufficient to
pierce the thin veil of friendship proffered by his guest, was ever
prepared for another opportunity of rising against the dominion of
Castile, of which he had had so many sorry experiences since 1603. The
occasion at last arrived during the British occupation of Manila in
1763. The Chinese voluntarily joined the invaders, but were unable
to sustain the struggle, and it is estimated that some 6,000 of them
were murdered in the provinces by order of the notorious Simon de Anda
(_vide_ p. 93). They menaced the town of Pasig--near Manila--and Fray
Juan de Torres, the parish priest, put himself at the head of 300
natives, by order of his Prior, Fray Andrés Fuentes, to oppose them,
and the Chinese were forced to retire.
On October 9, 1820, a general massacre of Chinese, British,
and other foreigners took place in Manila and Cavite. Epidemic
cholera had affected the capital and surrounding districts; great
numbers of natives succumbed to its malignant effects, and they
accused the foreigners of having poisoned the drinking-water in
the streams. Foreign property was attacked and pillaged--even ships
lying in the bay had to sail off and anchor out afar for safety. The
outbreak attained such grave proportions that the clergy intervened
to dissuade the populace from their hallucination. The High Host was
carried through the streets, but the rioters were only pacified when
they could find no more victims.
Amongst other reforms concerning the Chinese which the Spanish
colonists and Manila natives called for in 1886, through the public
organs, was that they should be forced to comply with the law
promulgated in 1867, which provided that the Chinese, like all other
merchants, should keep their trade-books in the Spanish language. The
demand had the appearance of being based on certain justifiable
grounds, but in reality it was a mere ebullition of spite intended
to augment the difficulties of the Chinese.
The British merchants and bankers are, by far, those who give most
credit to the Chinese. The Spanish and native creditors of the Chinese
are but a small minority, taking the aggregate of their credits, and
instead of seeking malevolently to impose new hardships on the Chinese,
they could have abstained from entering into risky transactions with
them. All merchants are aware of the Chinese trading system, and none
are obliged to deal with them. A foreign house would give a Chinaman
credit for, say, £300 to £400 worth of European manufactured goods,
knowing full well, from personal experience, or from that of others,
that the whole value would probably never be recovered. It remained
a standing debt on the books of the firm. The Chinaman retailed
these goods, and brought a small sum of cash to the firm, on the
understanding that he would get another parcel of goods, and so he
went on for years. [52] Thus the foreign merchants practically sunk
an amount of capital to start their Chinese constituents. Sometimes
the acknowledged owner and responsible man in one Chinese retail
establishment would have a share in, or own, several others. If matters
went wrong, he absconded abroad, and only the one shop which he openly
represented could be embargoed, whilst his goods were distributed
over several shops under any name but his. It was always difficult
to bring legal proof of this; the books were in Chinese, and the
whole business was in a state of confusion incomprehensible to any
European. But these risks were well known beforehand. It was only then
that the original credit had to be written off by the foreigner as a
nett loss--often small when set against several years of accumulated
profits made in successive operations.
The Chinese have guilds or secret societies for their mutual
protection, and it is a well-ascertained fact that they had to
pay the Spanish authorities very dearly for the liberty of living
at peace with their fellow-men. If the wind blew against them from
official quarters the affair brought on the _tapis_ was hushed up by
a gift. These peace-offerings, at times of considerable value, were
procured by a tax privately levied on each Chinaman by the headmen of
their guilds. In 1880-83 the Gov.-General and other high functionaries
used to accept Chinese hospitality, etc.
In December, 1887, the Medal of Civil Merit was awarded to a Chinaman
named Sio-Sion-Tay, resident in Binondo, whilst the Government for
several years had made contracts with the Chinese for the public
service. Another Chinaman, christened in the name of Cárlos Palanca,
was later on awarded the Grand Cross of Isabella the Catholic, with
the title of Excellency.
Many Chinese have adopted Christianity, either to improve their
social standing, or to be enabled thereby to contract marriage with
natives. Their intercessor and patron is _Saint Nicholas_, since the
time, it is said, that a Chinaman, having fallen into the Pasig River,
was in danger of being eaten by an alligator, and saved himself by
praying to that saint, who caused the monster to turn into stone. The
legendary stone is still to be seen near the left bank of the river.
There appears to be no perfectly reliable data respecting the number of
Chinese residents in the Archipelago. In 1886 the statistics differed
largely. One statistician published that there was a total of 66,740
men and 194 women, of whom 51,348 men and 191 women lived in Manila
and suburbs, 1,154 men and 3 women in Yloilo, and 983 men in Cebú,
the rest being dispersed over the coast villages and the interior. The
most competent local authorities in two provinces proved to me that
the figures relating to their districts were inexact, and all other
information on the subject which I have been able to procure tends to
show that the number of resident Chinese was underrated. I estimate
that just before the Rebellion of 1896 there were 100,000 Chinese
in the whole Colony, including upwards of 40,000 in and around the
capital.
Crowds of Chinese passed to these Islands _via_ Sulu (Joló), which,
as a free port, they could enter without need of papers. Pretending
to be resident colonists there, they managed to obtain passports to
travel on business for a limited period in the Philippines, but they
were never seen again in Sulu.
In Spanish times the Chinaman was often referred to as a _Macao_ or
a _Sangley_. The former term applied to those who came from Southern
China (Canton, Macao, Amoy, etc.). They were usually cooks and domestic
servants. The latter signified the Northern Chinaman of the trading
class. The popular term for a Chinaman in general was a _Suya_.
In Manila and in several provincial towns where the Chinese residents
were numerous, they had their own separate "Tribunals" or local
courts, wherein minor affairs were managed by petty governors of
their own nationality, elected bi-annually, in the same manner as
the natives. In 1888 the question of admitting a Chinese Consulate
in the Philippines was talked of in official circles, which proves
that the Government was far from seeing the "Chinese question" in the
same light as the Spanish or native merchant class. In the course
of time they acquired a certain consideration in the body politic,
and deputations of Chinese were present in all popular ceremonies
during the last few years of Spanish rule.
Wherever the Chinese settle they exhibit a disposition to hold their
footing, if not to strengthen it, at all hazards, by force if need
be. In Sarawak their Secret Societies threatened to undermine the
prosperity of that little State, and had to be suppressed by capital
punishment. Since the British occupation of Hong-Kong in 1841, there
have been two serious movements against the Europeans. In 1848 the
Chinese murdered Governor Amiral of Macao, and the colonists had to
fight for their lives. In Singapore the attempts of the Chinese to defy
the Government called for coercive measures, but the danger is small,
because the immigrant Chinaman has only the courage to act in mobs.
In Australia and the United States it was found necessary to
enact special laws regulating the ingress of Mongols. Under the
Spanish-Philippine Government the most that could be said against
them, as a class, was that, through their thrift and perseverance,
they outran the shopkeeping class in the race of life.
The Insular Government "Chinese Exclusion Act," at present in
operation, permits those Chinese who are already in the Islands
to remain conditionally, but rigidly debars fresh immigration. The
corollary is that, in the course of a few years, there will be no
Chinese in the Philippines. The working of the above Act is alluded
to in Chapter xxxi.
Under a native Government their lot is not likely to be a happy
one. One of the aims of the Tagálog Revolutionists was to exclude
the Chinese entirely from the Islands.
CHAPTER IX
Wild Tribes and Pagans
The population of the Philippines does not consist of one homogeneous
race; there are Mahometans, Pagans, and Christians, the last being in
the majority. The one tribe is just as much "Filipino" as the other,
and, from the point of view of nationality, they are all equally
fellow-countrymen. [53] So far as tradition serves to elucidate the
problem of their origin, it would appear that the Filipinos are a
mixed people, descendants of Papuan, Arabian, Hindoo, Malay, Japanese,
Chinese, and European forefathers. [54]
According to the last census (1903), the uncivilized population
amounted to 8 1/2 per cent. of the whole.
The chief of these tribes are the _Aetas_, or _Negritos_, the
_Gaddanes_, _Itavis, Igorrotes, Igorrote-Chinese, Tinguianes,
Tagbunuas, Batacs, Manobos_, etc. Also among the southern races of
Mindanao Island, referred to in Chapters x. and xxix., there are
several pagan tribes interspersed between the Mahometan clans.
I have used only the generic denominations, for whilst these tribes
are sub-divided (for instance, the _Buquils_ of Zambales, a section
of the _Negritos_; the _Guinaanes_, a sanguinary people inhabiting
the mountains of the Igorrote district, etc.), the fractions denote
no material physical or moral difference, and the local names adopted
by the different clans of the same race are of no interest to the
general reader. The expression _Bukidnon_, so commonly heard, does
not signify any particular caste, but, in a general sense, the people
of the mountain (_bukid_).
_Aetas_, or _Negritos_, numbering 22,000 to 24,000, inhabit
the mountain regions of Luzon, Panay, Negros, and some smaller
islands. They are dark, some of them being as black as African
negroes. Their general appearance resembles that of the Alfoor Papuan
of New Guinea. They have curly matted hair, like Astrakhan fur. The
men cover only their loins, and the women dress from the waist
to the knees. They are a spiritless and cowardly race. They would
not deliberately face white men in anything like equal numbers with
warlike intentions, although they would perhaps spend a quiverful of
arrows from behind a tree at a retreating foe.
The _Aeta_ carries a bamboo lance, a palm-wood bow, and poisoned
arrows when out on an expedition. He is wonderfully light-footed,
and runs with great speed after the deer, or climbs a tree like
a monkey. Groups of fifty to sixty souls live in community. Their
religion seems to be a kind of cosmolatry and spirit-worship. Anything
which for the time being, in their imagination, has a supernatural
appearance is deified. They have a profound respect for old age and
for their dead. They are of extremely low intellect, and, although
some of them have been brought up by civilized families living
in the vicinity of the _Negrito_ mountainous country, they offer
little encouragement to those who would desire to train them. Even
when more or less domesticated, the _Negrito_ cannot be trusted to
do anything which requires an effort of judgement. At times his mind
seems to wander from all social order, and an apparently overwhelming
eagerness to return to his native haunts disconcerts all one's plans
for his civilization.
For a long time they were the sole masters of Luzon Island, where
they exercised seignorial rights over the Malay immigrants, until
these arrived in such numbers, that the _Negritos_ were forced to
retire to the highlands. The taxes imposed upon primitive Malay
settlers by the _Negritos_ were levied in kind, and when payment was
refused, they swooped down in a posse, and carried off the head of
the defaulter. Since the arrival of the Spaniards, the terror of the
white man has made them take definitely to the mountains, where they
appear to be very gradually decreasing.
The Spanish Government, in vain, made strenuous efforts to implant
civilized habits among this weak-brained race.
In 1881 I visited the Cápas Missions in Upper Pampanga. The
authorities had established there what is called a _real_,--a kind
of model village of bamboo and palm-leaf huts,--to each of which a
family was assigned. They were supplied with food, clothing and all
necessaries of life for one year, which would give them an opportunity
of tilling the land and providing for themselves in future. But they
followed their old habits when the year had expired and the subsidy
ceased. On my second visit they had returned to their mountain homes,
and I could see no possible inducement for them to do otherwise. The
only attraction for them during the year was the fostering of their
inbred indolence; and it ought to have been evident that as soon as
they had to depend on their own resources they would adopt their
own way of living--free of taxes, military service, and social
restraint--as being more congenial to their tastes.
Being in the Bataan Province some years ago, I rode across the
mountain range to the opposite coast with a military friend. On our
way we approached a Negrito _real_, and hearing strange noises and
extraordinary calls, we stopped to consult as to the prudence of riding
up to the settlement. We decided to go there, and were fortunate enough
to be present at a wedding. The young bride, who might have been about
thirteen years of age, was being pursued by her future spouse as she
pretended to run away, and it need hardly be said that he succeeded in
bringing her in by feigned force. She struggled, and again got away,
and a second time she was caught. Then an old man with grey hair came
forward and dragged the young man up a bamboo ladder. An old woman
grasped the bride, and both followed the bridegroom. The aged sire
then gave them a douche with a cocoa-nut shell full of water, and
they all descended. The happy pair knelt down, and the elder having
placed their heads together, they were man and wife. We endeavoured
to find out which hut was allotted to the newly-married couple,
but we were given to understand that until the sun had reappeared
five times they would spend their honeymoon in the mountains. After
the ceremony was concluded, several present began to make their usual
mountain-call. In the lowlands, the same peculiar cry serves to bring
home straggling domestic animals to their nocturnal resting-place.
There is something picturesque about a well-formed, healthy Negrita
damsel, with jet-black piercing eyes, and her hair in one perfect
ball of close curls. The men are not of a handsome type; some of them
have a hale, swarthy appearance, but many of them present a sickly,
emaciated aspect. A Negrita matron past thirty is perhaps one of the
least attractive objects in humanity.
They live principally on fish, roots, and mountain rice, but they
occasionally make a raid on the neighbouring valleys and carry off
the herds. So great was their cattle-stealing propensity in Spanish
times, that several semi-official expeditions were sent to punish
the marauders, particularly on the Cordillera de Zambales, on the
west side of Luzon Island.
The husbandry of the Negritos is the most primitive imaginable. It
consists of scraping the surface of the earth--without clearance of
forest--and throwing the seed. They never "take up" a piece of land,
but sow in the manner described wherever they may happen temporarily
to settle.
The _Gaddanes_ occupy the extreme N.W. corner of Luzon Island, and
are entirely out of the pale of civilization. I have never heard that
any attempt has been made to subdue them. They have a fine physical
bearing; wear the hair down to the shoulders; are of a very dark
colour, and feed chiefly on roots, mountain rice, game, fruits, and
fish. They are considered the only really warlike and aggressively
savage tribe of the north, and it is the custom of the young men about
to marry to vie with each other in presenting to the sires of their
future brides all the scalps they are able to take from their enemies,
as proof of their manly courage. This practice prevails at the season
of the year when the tree, commonly called by the Spaniards "the
fire-tree," is in bloom. The flowers of this tree are of a fire-red
hue, and their appearance is the signal for this race to collect their
trophies of war and celebrate certain religious rites. When I was in
the extreme north, in the country of the _Ibanacs_, [55] preparing
my expedition to the _Gaddanes_ tribe, I was cautioned not to remain
in the Gaddanes country until the fire-tree blossomed. The arms used
by the _Gaddanes_ are frightful weapons--long lances with tridented
tips, and arrows pointed with two rows of teeth, made out of flint
or sea-shells. These weapons are used to kill both fish and foe.
The _Itavis_ inhabit the district to the south of that territory
occupied by the _Gaddanes_, and their mode of living and food are
very similar. They are, however, not so fierce as the _Gaddanes_,
and if assaults are occasionally made on other tribes, it may
be rather attributed to a desire to retaliate than to a love of
bloodshed. Their skin is not so dark as that of their northern
neighbours--the _Gaddanes_ or the partially civilized _Ibanacs_--and
their hair is shorter.
The _Igorrotes_ are spread over a considerable portion of Luzon,
principally from N. lat. 16° 30' to 18°. They are, in general, a fine
race of people, physically considered, but semi-barbarous and living
in squalor. They wear their hair long. At the back it hangs down to
the shoulders, whilst in front it is cut shorter and allowed to cover
the forehead half-way like a long fringe. Some of them, settled in the
districts of Lepanto and El Abra, have a little hair on the chin and
upper lip. Their skin is of a dark copper tinge. They have flat noses,
thick lips, high cheek-bones, and their broad shoulders and limbs
seem to denote great strength, but their form is not at all graceful.
Like all the wild races of the Philippines, the _Igorrotes_ are
indolent to the greatest degree. Their huts are built bee-hive fashion,
and they creep into them like quadrupeds. Fields of sweet potatoes
and sugar-cane are under cultivation by them. They cannot be forced or
persuaded to embrace the Western system of civilization. Adultery is
little known, but if it occurs, the dowry is returned and the divorce
settled. Polygamy seems to be permitted, but little practised. Murders
are common, and if a member of one hut or family group is killed,
that family avenges itself on one of the murderer's kinsmen, hence
those who might have to "pay the piper" are interested in maintaining
order. In the Province of La Isabela, the Negrito and Igorrote tribes
keep a regular _Dr._ and _Cr._ account of heads. In 1896 there were
about 100,000 head-hunting _Igorrotes_ in the Benguet district. This
tribe paid to the Spaniards a recognition of vassalage of one-quarter
of a peso _per capita_ in Benguet, Abra, Bontoc, and Lepanto.
Their aggressions on the coast settlers have been frequent for
centuries past. From time to time they came down from their mountain
retreat to steal cattle and effects belonging to the domesticated
population. The first regular attempt to chastise them for these
inroads, and afterwards gain their submission, was in the time of
Governor Pedro de Arandia (1754-59), when a plan was concerted to
attack them simultaneously from all sides with 1,080 men. Their ranches
and crops were laid waste, and many _Igorrotes_ were taken prisoners,
but the ultimate idea of securing their allegiance was abandoned as
an impossibility.
In 1881 General Primo de Rivera, at the head of a large armed force,
invaded their district with the view of reducing them to obedience,
but the apparent result of the expedition was more detrimental than
advantageous to the project of bringing this tribe under Spanish
dominion and of opening up their country to trade and enlightened
intercourse. Whilst the expeditionary forces were not sufficiently
large or in a condition to carry on a war _à outrance_ successfully,
to be immediately followed up by a military system of government, on
the other hand, the feeble efforts displayed to conquer them served
only to demonstrate the impotence of the Europeans. This gave the
tribes courage to defend their liberty, whilst the licence indulged
in by the white men at the expense of the mountaineers--and boasted
of to me personally by many Spanish officers--had merely the effect
of raising the veil from their protestations of goodwill towards
the race they sought to subdue. The enterprise ignominiously failed;
the costly undertaking was an inglorious and fruitless one, except
to the General, who--being under royal favour since, at Sagunta,
in 1875, he "pronounced" for King Alfonso--secured for himself the
title of Count of La Union.
The _Igorrotes_ have, since then, been less approachable by Europeans,
whom they naturally regard with every feeling of distrust. Rightly
or wrongly (if it can be a matter of opinion), they fail to see any
manifestation of ultimate advantage to themselves in the arrival of a
troop of armed strangers who demand from them food (even though it be
on payment) and perturbate their most intimate family ties. They do not
appreciate being "civilized" to exchange their usages, independence,
and comfort for even the highest post obtainable by a native in the
provinces, which then was practically that of local head servant
to the district authority, under the name of Municipal Captain. To
roam at large in their mountain home is far more enjoyable to them
than having to wear clothes; to present themselves often, if not to
habitually reside, in villages; to pay taxes, for which they would
get little return--not even the boon of good highroads--and to act
as unsalaried tax-collectors with the chance of fine, punishment, and
ruin if they did not succeed in bringing funds to the Public Treasury.
As to Christianity, it would be as hard a task to convince them of what
Roman Catholicism deems indispensable for the salvation of the soul, as
it would be to convert all England to the teachings of Buddha--although
Buddhism is as logical a religion as Christianity. Just a few of
them, inhabiting the lowlands in the neighbourhood of Vigan and other
christian towns, received baptism and paid an annual tribute of half
a peso from the year 1893 to 1896.
Being in Tuguegarao, the capital of Cagayán Province, about 60
miles up the Rio Grande, I went to visit the prisons, where I saw
many of the worst types of _Igorrotes_. I was told that a priest
who had endeavoured to teach them the precepts of Christianity,
and had explained to them the marvellous life of Saint Augustine,
was dismayed to hear an _Igorrote_ exclaim that no coloured man
ever became a white man's saint. Nothing could convince him that
an exception to the rule might be possible. Could experience have
revealed to him the established fact--the remarkable anomaly--that
the grossest forms of immorality were only to be found in the trail
of the highest order of white man's civilization?
The _Igorrotes_ have worked the copper mines of their region for
generations past, in their own primitive way, with astonishing
results. They not only annually barter several tons of copper
ingots, but they possess the art of manufacturing pots, cauldrons,
tobacco-pipes, and other utensils made of that metal. They also
understand the extraction of gold, which they obtain in very small
quantities by crushing the quartz between heavy stones.
Specimens of the different tribes and races of these Islands were on
view at the Philippine Exhibition held in Madrid in 1887. Some of
them consented to receive Christian baptism before returning home,
but it was publicly stated that the _Igorrotes_ were among those who
positively refused to abandon their own belief.
A selection of this tribe was included in the Filipinos on show at
the San Louis Exhibition (U.S.A.) in 1904, and attracted particular
attention. Some of them liked the United States so much that they
tried hard to break away from their keepers in order to remain there.
The _Calingas_ are a branch of the _Igorrotes_, found along the Cagayán
River around Ilagán. They are not only head-hunters, but cannibals. A
friend of mine, an American colonel, was up there some time during
the war, and explained to me the difficulty he had in convincing a
Calinga chief that a man's head is his personal property, and that
to steal it is a crime.
The _Igorrote-Chinese_ are supposed to be the descendants of the
Chinese who fled to the hills on the departure of the corsair
Li-ma-hong from Pangasinán Province in 1754 (_vide_ p. 50). Their
intermarriage with the _Igorrote_ tribe has generated a caste of
people quite unique in their character. Their habits are much the
same as those of the pure _Igorrotes_, but with their fierce nature is
blended the cunning and astuteness of the Mongol; and although their
intelligence may be often misapplied, yet it is superior to that of
the pure _Igorrote_. In the Province of Pangasinán there are numbers
of natives of Chinese descent included in the domesticated population,
and their origin is evidently due to the circumstances mentioned.
The _Tingulanes_ inhabit principally the district of El Abra
(N.W. coast, Luzon Is.). They were nominally under the control
of the Spanish Government, who appointed their headmen petty
governors of villages or ranches on the system adopted in the subdued
districts. According to Father Ferrando (63 years ago), the form of
oath taken in his presence by the newly-elected headman on receiving
the staff of office was the following, viz.:--"May a pernicious wind
touch me; may a flash of lightning kill me, and may the alligator
catch me asleep if I fail to fulfil my duty." The headman presented
himself almost when he chose to the nearest Spanish Governor, who gave
him his orders, which were only fulfilled according to the traditional
custom of the tribe. Thus, the headman, on his return to the ranche,
delegated his powers to the council of elders, and according to their
decision he acted as the executive only. Whenever it was possible,
they applied their own _lex non scripta_ in preference to acting upon
the Spanish Code.
According to their law, the crime of adultery is punished by a fine
of 30 pesos value and divorce, but if the adultery has been mutual,
the divorce is pronounced absolute, without the payment of a fine.
When a man is brought to justice on an accusation which he denies,
a handful of straw is burnt in his presence. He is made to hold up an
earthenware pot and say as follows:--"May my belly be converted into
a pot like this, if I have committed the deed attributed to me." If
the transformation does not take place at once, he is declared to
be innocent.
The _Tinguianes_ are pagans, but have no temples. Their gods are
hidden in the mountain cavities. Like many other religionists, they
believe in the efficacy of prayer for the supply of their material
wants. Hence if there be too great an abundance of rain, or too little
of it, or an epidemic disease raging, or any calamity affecting the
community in general, the _Anitos_ (images representing the gods or
saints) are carried round and exhorted, whilst Nature continues her
uninterrupted course. The minister of _Anito_ is also appealed to
when a child is to be named. The infant is carried into the woods, and
the pagan priest pronounces the name, whilst he raises a bowie-knife
over the newborn creature's head. On lowering the knife, he strikes
at a tree. If the tree emits sap, the first name uttered stands good;
if not, the ceremony is repeated, and each time the name is changed
until the oozing sap denotes the will of the deity.
The _Tinguianes_ are monogamists, and generally are forced by the
parents to marry before the age of puberty, but the bridegroom, or
his father or elder, has to purchase the bride at a price mutually
agreed upon by the relations. These people live in cabins on posts
or trees 60 to 70 feet from the ground, and defend themselves from
the attacks of their traditional enemies, the _Guinaanes_, by heaving
stones upon them. Nevertheless, in the more secure vicinities of the
christian villages, these people build their huts similar to those of
the domesticated natives. From the doors and window-openings skulls
of buffaloes and horses are hung as talismans.
Physically they are of fine form, and the nose is aquiline. They wear
the hair in a tuft on the crown, like the Japanese, but their features
are similar to the ordinary lowland native. They are fond of music and
personal ornaments. They tattoo themselves and black their teeth; and
for these, and many other reasons, it is conjectured that they descend
from the Japanese shipwrecked crews who, being without means at hand
with which to return to their country, took to the mountains inland
from the west coast of Luzon. I spent several months with this tribe,
but I have never seen a _Tinguian_ with a bow and arrow; they carry
the lance as the common weapon, and for hunting and spearing fish.
Their conversion to Christianity has proved to be an impossible
task. A Royal Decree of Ferdinand VI.. dated in Aranjuez, June 18,
1758, sets forth that the infidels called _Tinguianes, Igorrotes_,
and by other names who should accept Christian baptism, should
be exempt all their lives from the payment of tribute and forced
labour. Their offspring, however, born to them after receiving baptism,
would lose these privileges as well as the independence enjoyed by
their forefathers. This penalty to future generations for becoming
Christians was afterwards extended to all the undomesticated races.
Many of these tribes did a little barter traffic with the Chinese,
but--with the hope that necessity would bring them down to
the christian villages to procure commodities, and thus become
socialized--the Government prohibited this trade in 1886.
The _Tinguianes_ appear to be as intelligent as the ordinary subdued
natives. They are by no means savages, and they are not entirely
strangers to domestic life. A great many Christian families of El Abra
and Ilocos Sur are of _Tinguian_ origin, and I may mention here that
the Ilocano dominated natives have the just reputation of being the
most industrious Philippine people. For this reason, Ilocano servants
and workmen are sought for in preference to most others.
The _Basanes_ are a very timid people who inhabit the mountains of
Mindoro Island. They have long, lank hair and whitish faces, and do
not appear to be of one of the original races. They are occasionally
met with (when they do not hide themselves) in the cordillera which
runs north-west to south-east and then ends off in two spurs, between
which, after passing Mount Halcon, there is a large valley leading
to the southern shore. The _Manguianes_, another Mindoro wild tribe,
come to the coast villages sometimes to barter, and bring pieces of
gold for the purpose. They also wear gold jewellery made of the metal
extracted by themselves.
There is another race of people whose source is not distinctly
known, but, according to tradition, they descend from the Sepoys who
formed part of the troops under British command during the military
occupation of Manila in 1763 (_vide_ p. 88). The legend is, that these
_Hindoos_, having deserted from the British army, migrated up the
Pasig River. However that may be, the sharp-featured, black-skinned
settlers in the Barrio de Dayap, of Cainta Town (Mórong district),
are decidedly of a different stock to the ordinary native. The notable
physical differences are the fine aquiline nose, bright expression,
and regular features. They are Christians--far more laborious than the
Philippine natives, and are a law-abiding people. I have known many of
them personally for years. They were the only class who voluntarily
presented themselves to pay the taxes to the Spaniards, and yet,
on the ground that generations ago they were intruders on the soil,
they were more heavily laden with imposts than their fellow-neighbours
until the abolition of tribute in 1884.
There are also to be seen in these Islands a few types of that class
of tropical inhabitant, preternaturally possessed of a white skin
and extremely fair hair--sometimes red--known as _Albinos_. I leave
it to physiologists to elucidate the peculiarity of vital phenomena
in these unfortunate abnormities of Nature. Amongst others, I once
saw in Negros Island a hapless young Albino girl, with marble-white
skin and very light pink-white hair, who was totally blind in the
sunny hours of the day.
The _Mahometan_ and other tribes, inhabiting the Sulu Sultanate,
Mindanao, Palaúan (Parágua) and the adjacent islands of the South
constituting "Moroland," are described in Chapters x. and xxix.
CHAPTER X
Mahometans and Southern Tribes
Simultaneously with the Spanish conquest of the Philippines, two
Borneo chiefs, who were brothers, quarrelled about their respective
possessions, and one of them had to flee. His partisans joined him,
and they emigrated to the Island of Basílan, [56] situated to the
south of Zamboanga (Mindanao Is.). The _Moros_, as they are called in
the Islands, are therefore supposed to be descended from the Mahometan
Dyaks of Borneo. They were a valiant, warlike, piratical people, who
admired bravery in others--had a deep-rooted contempt for poltroons,
and lavished no mercy on the weak.
In the suite of this emigrant chief, called Paguian Tindig, catoe his
cousin Adasaolan, who was so captivated by the fertility of Basílan
Island that he wished to remain there; so Tindig left him in possession
and withdrew to Sulu Island, where he easily reduced the natives
to vassalage, for they had never yet had to encounter so powerful
a foe. So famous did Paguian Tindig become that, for generations
afterwards, the Sultans of Sulu were proud of their descent from such
a celebrated hero. After the Spaniards had pacified the great Butuan
chief on the north coast of Mindanao, Tindig consented to acknowledge
the suzerainty of their king, in exchange for undisturbed possession
of the realm which he had just founded.
Adasaolan espoused the Princess Paguian Goan, daughter of Dimasangcay,
King of Mindanao, by his wife Imbog, a Sulu woman, and with this
relationship he embraced the Mahometan faith. His ambition increased
as good fortune came to him, and, stimulated by the promised support
of his father-in-law, he invaded Sulu, attacked his cousin Tindig,
and attempted to murder him in order to annex his kingdom. A short
but fierce contest ensued. Tindig's fortified dwelling was besieged
in vain. The posts which supported the upper storey were greased
with oil, and an entrance could not be effected. Wearied of his
failures, Adasaolan retired from the enterprise, and Tindig, in
turn, declared war on the Basílan king after he had been to Manila
to solicit assistance from his Spanish suzerain's representative,
who sent two armed boats to support him.
When Tindig, on his return from Manila, arrived within sight of Sulu,
his anxious subjects rallied round him, and prepared for battle. The
two armed boats furnished by the Spaniards were on the way, but, as
yet, too far off to render help, so Adasaolan immediately fell upon
Tindig's party and completely routed them. Tindig himself died bravely,
fighting to the last moment, and the Spaniards, having no one to
fight for when they arrived, returned to Manila with their armed boats.
Adasaolan, however, did not annex the territory of his defeated
cousin. Rajah Bongso succeeded Tindig in the Government of Sulu,
and when old age enfeebled him, he was wont to show with pride the
scars inflicted on him during the war of independence.
Adasaolan then made alliances with Mindanao and Borneo people,
and introduced the Mahometan religion into Sulu. Since then, Sulu
(called "Joló," by the Spaniards) has become the Mecca of the Southern
Archipelago. [57]
The earliest records relating to Mindanao Island, since the Spanish
annexation of the Philippines, show that about the year 1594 a
rich Portuguese cavalier of noble birth, named Estevan Rodriguez,
who had acquired a large fortune in the Philippines, and who had a
wealthy brother in Mexico, proposed to the Governor Perez Dasmariñas
the conquest of this island. For this purpose he offered his person
and all his means, but having long waited in vain to obtain the
royal sanction to his project, he prepared to leave for Mexico,
disgusted and disappointed. He was on the point of starting for
New Spain; he had his ship laden and his family on board, when the
royal confirmation arrived with the new Governor, Dr. Antonio Morga
(1595-96). Therefore he changed his plans, but despatched the laden
ship to Mexico with the cargo, intending to employ the profits of
the venture in the prosecution of his Mindanao enterprise. With the
title of General, he and his family, together with three chaplain
priests, started in another vessel for the south. They put in at
Otong (Panay Is.) on the way, and left there in April, 1596. Having
reached the great Mindanao River (Rio Grande), the ship went up it
as far as Buhayen, in the territory of the chief Silongan. A party
under Juan de la Jara, the _Maestre de Campo_, was sent ashore to
reconnoitre the environs. Their delay in returning caused alarm, so the
General buckled on his shield, and, with sword in hand, disembarked,
accompanied by a Cebuáno servant and two Spaniards, carrying lances. On
the way they met a native, who raised his _campilán_ to deal a blow,
which the General received on his shield, and cut down the foe to
the waist. Then they encountered another, who clove the General's
head almost in two, causing his death in six hours. The Cebuáno at
once ran the native through with a lance. This brave was discovered
to be the youngest brother of the chief Silongan, who had sworn to
Mahomet to sacrifice his life to take that of the Castilian invader.
The General's corpse was sent to Manila for interment. The expedition
led by the _Maestre de Campo_ fared badly, one of the party being
killed, another seriously wounded, and the rest fleeing on board. The
next day it was decided to construct trenches at the mouth of the
river, where the camp was established. The command was taken by the
_Maestre de Campo_, whose chief exploit seems to have been that he
made love to the deceased General's widow and proposed marriage to her,
which she indignantly rejected. Nothing was gained by the expedition,
and after the last priest died, the project was abandoned and the
vessel returned to Cebú.
In 1638 another expedition against the Moros was headed by the
Gov.-General Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera, who made the first landing
of troops in Sulu Island on April 17 of that year. He also established
some military posts on the coast of Mindanao Island, one of which
was Sampanilla (now called Malábang) on the Illana Bay shore. Four
years afterwards it was abandoned until 1891, when General Weyler
went there and had a fort built, which still exists.
It would appear that all over these Islands the strong preyed on
the weak, and the boldest warrior or oppressor assumed the title
of Sultan, _Datto_, etc., over all the territory he could dominate,
making the dignity hereditary. So far as can be ascertained, one of
the oldest titles was that of Prince of Sibuguey, whose territory
was situated on the bay of that name which washes the N.E. coast of
Zamboanga Province. The title fell into disuse, and the grandson of
the last prince, the present _Manguiguin_, or Sultan of Mindanao,
resides at Dinas. The sultanate dates from the year 1640, but, in
reality, there never was a sultan with effective jurisdiction over
the whole island, as the title would seem to imply. The Sultan's heir
is styled the _Rajahmudah_.
The alliances effected between the Sulu and Mindanao potentates gave
a great stimulus to piracy, which hitherto had been confined to the
waters in the locality of those islands. It now spread over the whole
of the Philippine Archipelago, and was prosecuted with great vigour
by regular organized fleets, carrying weapons almost equal to those
of the Spaniards. In meddling with the Mahometan territories the
Spaniards may be said to have unconsciously lighted on a hornets'
nest. Their eagerness for conquest stirred up the implacable hatred
of the Mahometan for the Christian, and they unwittingly brought
woe upon their own heads for many generations. Indeed, if half the
consequences could have been foreseen, they surely never would have
attempted to gain what, up to their last day, they failed to secure,
namely, the complete conquest of Mindanao and the Sulu Sultanate.
For over two and a half centuries Mahometan war-junks ravaged every
coast of the Colony. Not a single peopled island was spared. Thousands
of the inhabitants were murdered, whilst others were carried into
slavery for years. Villages were sacked; the churches were looted;
local trade was intercepted; the natives subject to Spain were driven
into the highlands, and many even dared not risk their lives and goods
near the coasts. The utmost desolation and havoc were perpetrated,
and militated vastly against the welfare and development of the
Colony. For four years the Government had to remit the payment of
tribute in Negros Island, and the others lying between it and Luzon, on
account of the abject poverty of the natives, due to these raids. From
the time the Spaniards first interfered with the Mahometans there was
continual warfare. Expeditions against the pirates were constantly
being fitted out by each succeeding Governor. Piracy was indeed an
incessant scourge and plague on the Colony, and it cost the Spaniards
rivers of blood and millions of dollars only to keep it in check.
In the last century the Mahometans appeared even in the Bay of
Manila. I was acquainted with several persons who had been in
Mahometan captivity. There were then hundreds who still remembered,
with anguish, the insecurity to which their lives and properties were
exposed. The Spaniards were quite unable to cope with such a prodigious
calamity. The coast villagers built forts for their own defence, and
many an old stone watch-tower is still to be seen on the islands south
of Luzon. On several occasions the Christian natives were urged, by
the inducement of spoil, to equip corsairs, with which to retaliate on
the indomitable marauders. The Sulu people made captive the Christian
natives and Spaniards alike, whilst a Spanish priest was a choice
prize. And whilst Spaniards in Philippine waters were straining every
nerve to extirpate slavery, their countrymen were diligently pursuing
a profitable trade in it between the West Coast of Africa and Cuba!
One must admit that, indirectly, the Mahometan attacks had the good
political effect of forcing hundreds of Christians up from the coast
to people and cultivate the interior of these Islands.
Due to the enterprise of a few Spanish and foreign merchants,
steamers at length began to navigate the waters of the Archipelago,
provided with arms for defence, and piracy by Mahometans beyond
their own locality was doomed. In the time of Gov.-General Norzagaray
(1857-60), 18 steam gunboats were ordered out, and arrived in 1860,
putting a close for ever to this epoch of misery, bloodshed, and
material loss. The end of piracy brought repose to the Colony, and
in no small degree facilitated its social advancement.
During the protracted struggle with the Mahometans, Zamboanga
(Mindanao Is.) was fortified, and became the headquarters of the
Spaniards in the south. After Cavite it was the chief naval station,
and a penitentiary was also established there. [58] Its maintenance
was a great burden to the Treasury--its existence a great eyesore
to the enemy, whose hostility was much inflamed thereby. About
the year 1635 its abandonment was proposed by the military party,
who described it as only a sepulchre for Spaniards. The Jesuits,
however, urged its continuance, as it suited their interests to have
material support close at hand, and their influence prevailed in
Manila bureaucratic centres.
In 1738 the fixed annual expenses of Zamboanga fort and equipment were
17,500 pesos, and the incidental disbursements were estimated at 7,500
pesos. These sums did not include the cost of scores of armed fleets
which, at enormous expense, were sent out against the Mahometans to
little purpose. Each new (Zamboanga) Governor of a martial spirit,
and desiring to do something to establish or confirm his fame for
prowess, seemed to regard it as a kind of duty to premise the quelling
of imaginary troubles in Sulu and Mindanao. Some, with less patriotism
than selfishness, found a ready excuse for filling their own pockets
by the proceeds of warfare, in making feigned efforts to rescue
captives. It may be observed, in extenuation, that, in those days,
the Spaniards believed from their birth that none but a Christian
had rights, whilst some were deluded by a conscientious impression
that they were executing a high mission; myth as it was, it at least
served to give them courage in their perilous undertakings. Peace
was made and broken over and over again. Spanish forts were at times
established in Sulu, and afterwards demolished. Every decade brought
new devices to control the desperate foe. Several Governors-General
headed the troops in person against the Mahometans with temporary
success, but without any lasting effect, and almost every new Governor
made a solemn treaty with one powerful chief or another, which was
respected only as long as it suited both parties. This continued
campaign, the details of which are too prolix for insertion here,
may be qualified as a religious war, for Roman Catholic priests took
an active part in the operations with the same ardent passion as the
Mahometans themselves. Among these tonsured warriors who acquired
great fame _out_ of their profession may be mentioned Father Ducos,
the son of a Colonel, José Villanueva, and Pedro de San Agustin, the
last being known, with dread, by the Mahometans in the beginning of
the 17th century under the title of the Captain-priest. One of the most
renowned kings in Mindanao was Cachil Corralat, an astute, far-seeing
chieftain, who ably defended the independence of his territory,
and kept the Spaniards at bay during the whole of his manhood.
An interesting event in the Spanish-Sulu history is the visit of the
Sultan Mahamad Alimudin to the Gov.-General in 1750, and his subsequent
vicissitudes of fortune. The first royal despatch addressed by the
King of Spain to the Sultan of Sulu was dated in Buen Retiro, July 12,
1744, and everything, for the time being, seemed to augur a period
of peace. In 1749, however, the Sultan was violently deposed by an
ambitious brother, Prince Bantilan, and the Sultan forthwith went to
Manila to seek the aid of his suzerain's delegate, the Gov.-General of
the Philippines, who chanced to be the Bishop of Nueva Segovia. In
Manila the Priest-Governor cajoled his guest with presents, and
accompanied him on horseback and on foot, with the design of persuading
him to renounce his religion in favour of Christianity. The Sultan
finally yielded, and avowed his intention to receive baptism. Among the
friars an animated discussion ensued as to the propriety of this act,
special opposition being raised by the Jesuits; but in the end the
Sultan, with a number of his suite, outwardly embraced the Christian
faith. The Sultan at his baptism received the name of Ferdinand I. of
Sulu; at the same time he was invested with the insignia and grade
of a Spanish Lieut.-General. Great ceremonies and magnificent feasts
followed this unprecedented incident. He was visited and congratulated
by all the _élite_ of the capital. By proclamation, the festivities
included four days' illumination, three days' procession of the
giants, [59] three days of bull-fighting, four nights of fireworks,
and three nights of comedy, to terminate with High Mass, a _Te Deum_,
and special sermon for the occasion.
In the meantime, the Sultan had requested the Governor to have the
Crown Prince, Princesses, and retainers escorted to Manila to learn
Spanish manners and customs, and on their arrival the Sultan and
his male and female suite numbered 60 persons. The Bishop-Governor
defrayed the cost of their maintenance out of his private purse
until after the baptism, and thenceforth the Government supported
them in Manila for two years. At length it was resolved, according to
appearances, to restore the Sultan Ferdinand I. to his throne. With
that idea, he and his retinue quitted Manila in the Spanish frigate
_San Fernando_, which was convoyed by another frigate and a galley,
until the _San Fernando_ fell in with bad weather off Mindoro Island,
and had to make the Port of Calapan. Thence he proceeded to Yloilo,
where he changed vessel and set sail for Zamboanga, but contrary winds
carried him to Dapítan (N.W. coast of Mindanao Is.), where he landed
and put off again in a small Visayan craft for Zamboanga, arriving
there on July 12, 1751. Thirteen days afterwards the _San Fernando_,
which had been repaired, reached Zamboanga also.
Before Ferdinand I. left Manila he had (at the instance of the Spanish
Gov.-General, José de Obando, 1750-54) addressed a letter to Sultan
Muhamad Amirubdin, of Mindanao. The original was written by Ferdinand
I. in Arabic; a version in Spanish was dictated by him, and both were
signed by him. These documents reached the Governor of Zamboanga by
the _San Fernando_, but he had the original in Arabic retranslated,
and found that it did not at all agree with the Sultan's Spanish
rendering. The translation of the Arabic runs thus:--
"I shall be glad to know that the Sultan Muhamad Amirubdin and all his
chiefs, male and female, are well. I do not write a lengthy letter,
as I intended, because I simply wish to give you to understand, in
case the Sultan or his chiefs and others should feel aggrieved at my
writing this letter in this manner, that I do so under pressure, being
under foreign dominion, and I am compelled to obey whatever they tell
me to do, and I have to say what they tell me to say. Thus the Governor
has ordered me to write to you in our style and language; therefore,
do not understand that I am writing you on my own behalf, but because
I am ordered to do so, and I have nothing more to add. Written in
the year 1164 on the ninth day of the Rabilajer Moon, Ferdinand I.,
King of Sulu, who seals with his own seal."
This letter was pronounced treasonable. Impressed with, or feigning,
this idea, the Spaniards saw real or imaginary indications of a design
on the part of the Sultan to throw off the foreign yoke at the first
opportunity. All his acts were thus interpreted, although no positive
proof was manifest, and the Governor communicated his suspicions to
Manila. There is no explanation why the Spaniards detained the Sultan
at Zamboanga, unless with the intention of trumping up accusations
against him. The Sultan arrived there on July 12, and nothing was known
of the discrepancy between the letters until after July 25. To suppose
that the Sultan could ever return to reign peacefully as a Christian
over Mahometan subjects was utterly absurd to any rational mind.
On August 3 the Sultan, his sons, vassals, and chiefs were all cast
into prison, without opposition, and a letter was despatched, dated
August 6, 1751, to the Governor in Manila, stating the cause. The
Sultan was the first individual arrested, and he made no difficulty
about going to the fort. Even the Prince Asin, the Sultan's brother,
who had voluntarily come from Sulu in apparent good faith with friendly
overtures to the Spaniards, was included among the prisoners. The
reason assigned was, that he had failed to surrender christian captives
as provided.
The prisoners, besides the Sultan, were the following, viz.:--
Four sons of the Sultan.
Prince Asin (brother).
Prince Mustafá (son-in-law).
Princess Panguian Banquiling (sister).
Four Princesses (daughters).
Datto Yamudin (a noble).
160 ordinary male and female retainers.
Five brothers-in-law.
One Mahometan Cherif.
Seven Mahometan priests.
Concubines with 32 female servants.
The political or other crime (if any) attributed to these last is
not stated, nor why they were imprisoned. The few weapons brought,
according to custom, by the followers of the Sultan who had come from
Sulu to receive their liege-lord and escort him back to his country,
were also seized.
A decree of Gov.-General José de Obando set forth the following
accusations against the prisoners, viz.:--
(1) That Prince Asin had not surrendered captives. (2) That whilst
the Sultan was in Manila, new captives were made by the party who
expelled him from the throne. (3) That the number of arms brought to
Zamboanga by Sulu chiefs was excessive. (4) That the letter to Sultan
Muhamad Amirubdin insinuated help wanted against the Spaniards. (5)
That several Mahometan, but no christian books were found in the
Sultan's baggage. (6) That during the journey to Zamboanga he had
refused to pray in christian form. (7) That he had only attended Mass
twice. (8) That he had celebrated Mahometan rites, sacrificing a goat;
and had given evidence in a hundred ways of being a Mahometan. (9)
That his conversation generally denoted a want of attachment to the
Spaniards, and a contempt for their treatment of him in Manila, [60]
and, (10) that he still cohabited with his concubines, contrary to
christian usage.
The greatest stress was laid on the recovery of the captive Christians,
and the Gov.-General admitted that although the mission of the fleet
was to restore the Sultan to the throne (which, by the way, does
not appear to have been attempted), the principal object was the
rescue of christian slaves. He therefore proposed that the liberty
of the imprisoned nobles and chiefs should be bartered at the rate
of 500 christian slaves for each one of the chiefs and nobles,
and the balance of the captives for Prince Asin and the clergy. One
may surmise, from this condition, that the number of Christians in
captivity was very considerable.
A subsequent decree, dated in Manila December 21, 1751, ordered the
extermination of the Mahometans with fire and sword; the fitting out of
Visayan corsairs, with authority to extinguish the foe, burn all that
was combustible, destroy the crops, desolate their cultivated land,
make captives, and recover christian slaves. One-fifth of the spoil
(the _Real quinto_) was to belong to the King, and the natives were
to be exempt from the payment of tribute whilst so engaged.
Before giving effect to such a terrible, but impracticable resolution,
it was thought expedient to publish a pamphlet styled a "Historical
Manifest," in which the Gov.-General professed to justify his acts
for public satisfaction. However, public opinion in Manila was averse
to the intended warfare, so to make it more popular, the Governor
abolished the payment of one-fifth of the booty to the King. An
appeal was made to the citizens of Manila for arms and provisions
to carry on the campaign; they therefore lent or gave the following,
viz.:--Twenty-six guns, 13 bayonets, 3 sporting guns, 15 carbines, 5
blunderbusses, 7 braces of pistols, 23 swords, 15 lances, 900 cannon
balls, and 150 pesos from Spaniards, and a few lances and 188 pesos
from natives.
Meanwhile, Prince Asin died of grief at his position.
Under the leadership of the _Maestre de Campo_ of Zamboanga,
hostilities commenced. With several ships he proceeded to Sulu,
carrying a large armament and 1,900 men. When the squadron anchored off
Sulu, a white and a red flag were hoisted from the principal fort, for
the Spaniards to elect either peace or war. Several Sulus approached
the fleet with white flags, to inquire for the Sultan. Evasive answers
were given, followed by a sudden cannonade.
No good resulted to the Spaniards from the attack, for the Sulus
defended themselves admirably. Tawi Tawi Island was next assaulted. A
captain landed there with troops, but their retreat was cut off and
they were all slain. The Commander of the expedition was so discouraged
that he returned to Zamboanga and resigned. Pedro Gastambide then
took command, but after having attacked Basílan Island fruitlessly,
he retired to Zamboanga. The whole campaign was an entire fiasco. It
was a great mistake to have declared a war of extermination without
having the means to carry it out. The result was that the irate
Sulus organized a guerilla warfare, by sea and by land, against all
Christians, to which the Spaniards but feebly responded. The "tables
were turned." In fact, they were in great straits, and, wearied at
the little success of their arms, endless councils and discussions
were held in the capital.
Meanwhile, almost every coast of the Archipelago was energetically
ravaged. Hitherto the Spaniards had only had the Sulus to contend
with, but the licence given by the Gov.-General to reprisal excited
the cupidity of unscrupulous officials, and, without apparent right
or reason, the _Maestre de Campo_ of Zamboanga caused a Chinese
junk from Amoy, carrying goods to a friendly Sultan of Mindanao, to
be seized. After tedious delay, vexation, and privation, the master
and his crew were released and a part of the cargo restored, but the
_Maestre de Campo_ insisted upon retaining what he chose for his own
use. This treachery to an amicable chief exasperated and undeceived the
Mindanao Sultan to such a degree that he forthwith took his revenge
by co-operating with the Sulus in making war on the Spaniards. Fresh
fleets of armed canoes replenished the Sulu armadillas, ravaged the
coasts, hunted down the Spanish priests, and made captives.
On the north coast of Mindanao several battles took place. There is a
legend that over 600 Mahometans advanced to the village of Lubungan,
but were repulsed by the villagers, who declared their patron, Saint
James, appeared on horseback to help them. Fray Roque de Santa Mónica
was chased from place to place, hiding in caves and rocks. Being again
met by four Mahometans, he threatened them with a blunderbuss, and
was left unmolested. Eventually he was found by friendly natives, and
taken by them to a wood, where he lived on roots. Thence he journeyed
to Linao, became raving mad, and was sent to Manila, where he died
quite frantic, in the convent of his Order.
The Sultan and his fellow-prisoners had been conveyed to Manila
and lodged in the Fortress of Santiago. In 1753 he petitioned the
Gov.-General to allow his daughter, the Princess Faatima, and two
slaves to go to Sulu about his private affairs. A permit was granted on
condition of her returning, or, in exchange for her liberty and that
of her two slaves, to remit 50 captives, and, failing to do either,
the Sultan and his suite were to be deprived of their dignities
and treated as common slaves, to work in the galleys, and to be
undistinguished among the ordinary prisoners. On these conditions,
the Princess left, and forwarded 50 slaves, and one more--a Spaniard,
José de Montesinos--as a present.
The Princess Faatima, nevertheless, did return to Manila, bringing
with her an Ambassador from Prince Bantilan, her uncle and Governor
of Sulu, who, in the meantime, had assumed the title of Sultan
Mahamad Miududin. The Ambassador was Prince Mahamad Ismael Datto
Marayalayla. After an audience with the Governor, he went to the fort
to consult with the captive Sultan, and they proposed a treaty with
the Governor, of which the chief terms were as follows, viz.:--
An offensive and defensive alliance.
All captives within the Sultanate of Sulu to be surrendered within
one year.
All articles looted from the churches to be restored within one year.
On the fulfilment of these conditions, the Sultan and his people were
to be set at liberty.
The treaty was dated in Manila March 3, 1754. The terms were quite
impossible of accomplishment, for the Sultan, being still in prison,
had no power to enforce commands on his subjects.
The war was continued at great sacrifice to the State and with little
benefit to the Spaniards, whilst their operations were greatly retarded
by discord between the officials of the expedition, the authorities
on shore, and the priests. At the same time, dilatory proceedings
were being taken against the _Maestre de Campo_ of Zamboanga, who was
charged with having appropriated to himself others' share of the war
booty. Siargao Island (off the N.E. point of Mindanao Is.) had been
completely overrun by the Mahometans; the villages and cultivated
land were laid waste, and the Spanish priest was killed.
When the Governor Pedro de Arandia arrived in 1754, the Sultan
took advantage of the occasion to put his case before him. He had,
indeed, experienced some of the strangest mutations of fortune, and
Arandia had compassion on him. By Arandia's persuasion, the Archbishop
visited and spiritually examined him, and then the Sultan confessed
and took the Communion. In the College of Santa Potenciana there was
a Mahometan woman who had been a concubine of the Sultan, but who now
professed Christianity, and had taken the name of Rita Calderon. The
Sultan's wife having died, he asked for this ex-concubine in marriage,
and the favour was conceded to him. The nuptials were celebrated
in the Governor's Palace on April 27, 1755, and the espoused couple
returned to their prison with an allowance of 50 pesos per month for
their maintenance.
In 1755 all the Sultan's relations and suite who had been incarcerated
in Manila, except his son Ismael and a few chiefs, were sent back
to Sulu. The Sultan and his chiefs were then allowed to live freely
within the city of Manila, after having sworn before the Governor, on
bended knees, to pay homage to him, and to remain peaceful during the
King's pleasure. Indeed, Governor Arandia was so favourably disposed
towards the Sultan Mahamad Alimudin (Ferdinand I.) that personally he
was willing to restore him to his throne, but his wish only brought
him in collision with the clergy, and he desisted.
The British, after the military occupation of Manila in 1763, took up
the cause of the Sultan, and reinstated him in Sulu. Then he avenged
himself on the Spaniards by fomenting incursions against them in
Mindanao, which the Gov.-General, José Raon, was unable to oppose
for want of resources. The Mahometans, however, soon proved their
untrustworthiness to friend and foe alike. Their friendship lasted
on the one side so long as danger could thereby be averted from the
other, and a certain Datto Teng-teng attacked the British garrison
one night at Balambangan and slaughtered all but six of the troops
(_vide_ pp. 92, 98).
In 1836 the sovereignty of the Sultan was distinctly recognized in a
treaty made between him and Spain, whereby the Sultan had the right
to collect dues on Spanish craft entering Joló, whilst Sulu vessels
paid dues to the Spaniards in their ports as foreign vessels.
In 1844 Gov.-General Narciso Claveria led an expedition against the
Moros and had a desperate, but victorious, struggle with them at
the fort of Balanguigui (an islet 14 miles due east of Sulu Is.),
for which he was rewarded with the title of Conde de Manila.
The town of Sulu (Joló) was formerly the residence of the Sultan's
Court. This Sovereign had arrogantly refused to check the piratical
cruisings made by his people against Spanish subjects in the locality
and about the Islands of Calamianes; therefore, on February 11, 1851,
General Antonio de Urbiztondo, Marquis de la Solana (an ex-Carlist
chief), who had been appointed Gov.-General of the Philippines in
the previous year, undertook to redress his nation's grievances by
force. The Spanish flag was hoisted in several places. Sulu town, which
was shelled by the gunboats, was captured and held by the invaders,
and the Sultan Muhamed Pulalon fled to Maybun on the south coast,
to which place the Court was permanently removed. At the close of
this expedition another treaty was signed (1851), which provided for
the annual payment of P1,500 to the Sultan and P600 each to three
_dattos_, on condition that they would suppress piracy and promote
mutual trade. Still the Mahometans paid the Spaniards an occasional
visit and massacred the garrison, which was as often replaced by
fresh levies.
In 1876 the incursions of the Mahometans and the temerity of the
chiefs had again attained such proportions that European dominion over
the Sulu Sultanate and Mindanao, even in the nominal form in which it
existed, was sorely menaced. Consequent on this, an expedition, headed
by Vice-Admiral Malcampo, arrived in the waters of the Sultanate,
carrying troops, with the design of enforcing submission. The chief of
the land forces appears to have had no topographical plan formed. The
expedition turned out to be one of discovery. The troops were marched
into the interior, without their officers knowing where they were
going, and they even had to depend on Sulu guides. Naturally, they
were often deceived, and led to precisely where the Mahometans were
awaiting them in ambush, the result being that great havoc was made in
the advance column by frequent surprises. Now and again would appear
a few _juramentados_, or sworn Mahometans, who sought their way to
Allah by the sacrifice of their own blood, but causing considerable
destruction to the invading party. With a kris at the waist, a javelin
in one hand, and a shield supported by the other, they would advance
before the enemy, dart forward and backwards, make zigzag movements,
and then, with a war-whoop, rush in three or four at a time upon a body
of Christians twenty times their number, giving no quarter, expecting
none--to die, or to conquer! The expedition was not a failure, but
it gained little. The Spanish flag was hoisted in several places,
including Sulu (Joló), where it remained from February 29, 1876,
until the Spanish evacuation of the Islands in 1898.
The Mahometans (called by the Spaniards _Moros_) now extend over
nine-tenths of Mindanao Island, and the whole of the Sultanate of
Sulu, which comprises Sulu Island (34 miles long from E. to W., and
12 miles in the broadest part from N. to S.) and about 140 others,
80 to 90 of which are uninhabited.
The native population of the Sulu Sultanate alone would be about
100,000, including free people, slaves, and some 20,000 men-at-arms
under orders of the _Dattos_. [61] The domains of His Highness reach
westward as far as Borneo, where, up to 25 years ago, the Sultanate of
Brunei [62] was actually tributary (and now nominally so) to that of
Sulu. The Sultan of Sulu is also feudal lord of two vassal Sultanates
in Mindanao Island. There is, moreover, a half-caste branch of these
people in the southern half of Palauan Island (Parágua) of a very
subdued and peaceful nature, compared with the Sulu, nominally under
the Sulu Sultan's rule.
In Mindanao Island only a small coast district here and there was
really under Spanish empire, although Spain (by virtue of an old
treaty, which never was respected to the letter) claimed suzerainty
over all the territory subject to the Sultan of Sulu. After the Sulu
war of 1876 the Sultan admitted the claim more formally, and on March
11, 1877, a protocol was signed by England and Germany recognizing
Spain's rights to the Tawi Tawi group and the chain of islands
stretching from Sulu to Borneo. At the same time it was understood
that Spain would give visible proof of annexation by establishing
military posts, or occupying these islands in some way, but nothing
was done until 1880, when Spain was stirred into action by a report
that the Germans projected a settlement there. A convict corps at
once took possession, military posts were established, and in 1882
the 6th Regiment of regular troops was quartered in the group at
Bongao and Siassi.
Meanwhile, in 1880, a foreign colonizing company was formed in
the Sultanate of Brunei, under the title of "British North Borneo
Co." (Royal Charter of November 7, 1881). The company recognized the
suzerain rights of the Sultan of Sulu, and agreed to pay to him an
annual sum as feudal lord. Spain protested that the territory was hers,
but could show nothing to confirm the possession. There was no flag,
or a detachment of troops, or anything whatsoever to indicate that the
coast was under European protection or dominion. Notes were exchanged
between the Cabinets of Madrid and London, and Spain relinquished
for ever her claim to the Borneo fief of Brunei.
The experience of the unfortunate Sultan Alimudin (Ferdinand I.) taught
the Sulu people such a sad lesson that subsequent sultans have not
cared to risk their persons in the hands of the Spaniards. There was,
moreover, a Nationalist Party which repudiated dependence on Spain, and
hoped to be able eventually to drive out the Spaniards. Therefore, in
1885, when the heir to the throne, Mohammad Jamalul Kiram (who was then
about 15 years old) was cited to Manila to receive his investiture at
the hands of the Gov.-General, he refused to comply, and the Government
at once offered the Sultanate to his uncle, Datto Harun Narrasid, who
accepted it, and presented himself to the Gov.-General in the capital.
The ceremony of investiture took place in the Government House at
Malacañan near Manila on September 24, 1886, when Datto Harun took
the oath of allegiance to the King of Spain as his sovereign lord,
and received from the Gov.-General, Emilio Terrero, the title of His
Excellency _Paduca Majasari Maulana Amiril Mauminin Sultan Muhamad
Harun Narrasid_, with the rank of a Spanish lieut.-general. The
Gov.-General was attended by his Secretary, the Official Interpreter,
and several high officers. In the suite of the Sultan-elect were his
Secretary, _Tuan Hadji Omar_, a priest, _Pandita Tuan Sik Mustafá_,
and several _dattos_. For the occasion, the Sultan-elect was dressed
in European costume, and wore a Turkish fez with a heavy tassel of
black silk. His Secretary and Chaplain appeared in long black tunics,
white trousers, light shoes, and turbans. Two of the remainder of his
suite adopted the European fashion, but the others wore rich typical
Moorish vestments.
The Sultan returned to his country, and in the course of three months
the Nationalist Party chiefs openly took up arms against the King of
Spain's nominee, the movement spreading to the adjacent islands of
Siassi and Bongao, which form part of the Sultanate. [63]
The Mahometans on the Great Mindanao River, from Cottabato [64]
upwards, openly defied Spanish authority; and in the spring of 1886
the Government were under the necessity of organizing an expedition
against them. The Spaniards had ordered that native craft should
carry the Spanish flag, otherwise they would be treated as pirates or
rebels. In March, 1887, the cacique of the Simonor ranche (Bongao Is.),
named Pandan, refused any longer to hoist the christian ensign, and he
was pursued and taken prisoner. He was conveyed on the gunboat _Panay_
to Sulu, and on being asked by the Governor why he had ceased to use
the Spanish flag, he haughtily replied that "he would only answer such
a question to the Captain-General," and refused to give any further
explanation. Within a month after his arrest the garrison of Sulu
(Joló) was strengthened by 377 men, in expectation of an immediate
general rising, which indeed took place. The Spanish forces were led by
Majors Mattos and Villa Abrille, under the command of Brig.-General
Seriná. They were stoutly opposed by a cruel and despotic chief,
named Utto, who advanced at the head of his subjects and slaves. With
the co-operation of the gunboats up the river, the Mahometans were
repulsed with great loss.
Scores of expeditions had been led against the Mindanao natives,
and their temporary submission had usually been obtained by the
Spaniards--on whose retirement, however, the natives always reverted to
their old customs, and took their revenge on the settlers. Moreover,
the petty jealousies existing between the highest officers in the
south rendered every peaceful effort fruitless.
Datto Utto having defiantly proclaimed that no Spaniard should ever
enter his territory, an armed expedition was fitted out; and from the
example of his predecessor in 1881 (_vide_ p. 124) the Gov.-General,
Emilio Terrero, perchance foresaw in a little war the vision of titles
and more material reward, besides counterbalancing his increasing
unpopularity in Manila, due to the influence of my late friend,
the Government Secretary Felipe Canga-Argüelles. Following in the
wake of those who had successfully checked the Mahometans in the
previous spring, he took the chief command in person in the beginning
of January, 1887, to force a recantation of Datto Utto's utterances.
The petty Sultans of Bacat, Buhayen and Kudarangan in vain united
their fortunes with those of Utto. The stockades of cocoanut trunks,
_palma-bravas_ (q.v.) and earth (_cottas_) were easily destroyed by
the Spanish artillery, and their defenders fled under a desultory
fire. There were very few casualties on either side. Some of the
Christian native infantry soldiers suffered from the bamboo spikes
(Spanish, _puas_) set in the ground around the stockades, but the
enemy had not had time to cover with brushwood the pits dug for the
attacking party to fall into. In about two months the operations ended
by the submission of some chiefs of minor importance and influence;
and after spending so much powder and shot and Christian blood, the
General had not even the satisfaction of seeing either the man he was
fighting against or his enemy's ally, the Sultan of Kudarangan. This
latter sent a priest, Pandita Kalibaudang, and Datto Andig to sue for
peace and cajole the General with the fairest promises. Afterwards
the son and heir of this chief, Rajahmudah Tambilanang, presented
himself, and he and his suite of 30 followers were conducted to
the camp in the steam launch _Carriedo_. Utto, whose residence had
been demolished, had not deigned to submit in person, but sent, as
emissaries, Dattos Sirungang, Buat and Dalandung, who excused only
the absence of Utto's prime minister. Capitulations of peace were
handed to Utto's subordinates, who were told to bring them back signed
without delay, for despatches from the Home Government, received four
or five weeks previously, were urging the General to conclude this
affair as speedily as possible. They were returned signed by Utto--or
by somebody else--and the same signature and another, supposed to be
that of his wife, the Ranee Pudtli (a woman of great sway amongst her
people) were also attached to a letter, offering complete submission.
The Spaniards destroyed a large quantity of rice-paddy, and stipulated
for the subsequent payment of a war indemnity in the form of cannons
(_lantacas_), buffaloes, and horses.
The General gave the emissaries some trifling presents, and they went
their way and he his,--to Manila, which he entered in state on March
21, with flags flying, music playing, and the streets decorated with
bunting of the national colours, to give welcome to the conqueror
of the Mahometan chief--whom he had never seen--the bearer of peace
capitulations signed--by whom? As usual, a _Te Deum_ was celebrated
in the Cathedral for the victories gained over the infidels; the
officers and troops who had returned were invited by the Municipality
to a theatrical performance, and the Gov.-General held a reception in
the Palace of Malacañan. Some of the troops were left in Mindanao,
it having been resolved to establish armed outposts still farther
up the river for the better protection of the port and settlement
of Cottabato.
Whilst the Gov.-General headed this military parade in the Cottabato
district, the ill-feeling of the Sulu natives towards the Spaniards
was gradually maturing. An impending struggle was evident, and
Colonel Juan Arolas, the Governor of Sulu, concentrated his forces in
expectation. The Sulus, always armed, prepared for events in their
_cottas_; Arolas demanded their surrender, which was refused, and
they were attacked. Two _cottas_, well defended, were ultimately
taken, not without serious loss to the Spaniards. In the report
of the slain a captain was mentioned. Arolas then twice asked for
authority to attack the Mahometans at Maybun, and was each time
refused. At length, acting on his own responsibility, on April 15,
1887, he ordered a gunboat to steam round to Maybun and open fire at
daybreak on the Sultan's capital, which was in possession of the party
opposed to the Spanish nominee (Harun Narrasid). At 11 o'clock the
same night he started across country with his troops towards Maybun,
and the next morning, whilst the enemy was engaged with the gunboat,
he led the attack on the land side. The Mahometans, quite surprised,
fought like lions, but were completely routed, and the seat of the
Sultanate was razed to the ground. It was the most crushing defeat
ever inflicted on the Sulu Nationalist Party. The news reached Manila
on April 29, and great praise was justly accorded to Colonel Arolas,
whose energetic operations contrasted so favourably with the Cottabato
expedition. All manner of festivities in his honour were projected
in Manila, but Arolas elected to continue the work of subduing the
Moro country. Notwithstanding his well-known republican tendencies,
on September 20, 1887, the Queen-Regent cabled through her Ministry her
acknowledgment of Colonel Arolas' valuable services, and the pleasure
it gave her to reward him with a Brig.-General's commission. [65]
In 1895 an expedition against the Mahometans was organized under the
supreme command of Gov.-General Ramon Blanco. It was known as the
Marahui (or Marauit) Campaign. The tribes around Lake Lanao (ancient
name Malanao) and the Marahui district had, for some time past, made
serious raids on the Spanish settlement at Ylígan, which is connected
with Lake Lanao by a river navigable only by canoes. Indeed, the lives
and property of Christians in all the territory adjoining Yligan were
in great jeopardy, and the Spanish authorities were set at defiance. It
was therefore resolved, for the first time, to attack the tribes and
destroy their _cottas_ around the lake for the permanent tranquillity
of Yligan. The Spanish and native troops alike suffered great hardships
and privations. Steam launches in sections (constructed in Hong-Kong),
small guns, and war material were carried up from Yligan to the lake by
natives over very rugged ground. On the lake shore the launches were
fitted up and operated on the lake, to the immense surprise of the
tribes. From the land side their _cottas_ were attacked and destroyed,
under the command of my old friend Brig.-General Gonzalez Parrado. The
operations, which lasted about three months, were a complete success,
and General Gonzalez Parrado was rewarded with promotion to General
of Division. Lake Lanao, with the surrounding district and the route
down to Yligan, was in possession of the Spaniards, and in order to
retain that possession without the expense of maintaining a large
military establishment, it was determined to people the conquered
territory with Christian families from Luzon and the other islands
situated north of Mindanao. It was the attempt to carry out this
colonizing scheme which gave significance to the Marahui Expedition
and contributed to that movement which, in 1896, led to the downfall
of Spanish rule in the Archipelago.
The last Spanish punitive expedition against the Mindanao Mahometans
was sent in February, 1898, under the command of General Buille. The
operations lasted only a few days. The enemy was driven into the
interior with great loss, and one chief was slain. The small gunboats
built in Hong-Kong for the Marahui Campaign--the _General Blanco,
Corcuera_, and _Lanao_--again did good service.
There are three branches or tribes of the _Malanao_ Moros around the
Lake Lanao:
(1) _Bayabos_, at the north of the Lake, their centre being Marahui.
(2) _Onayans_, at the south of the Lake, their centre being Bayan.
(3) _Macui_ tribe includes the remaining Lake Lanao people, except a
few independent ranches to the east of the Macui, belonging to the
Bayabos. The Macui claim to be the most ancient, although no tribe
can trace descent farther back than the 13th century. Intermarriage
has destroyed traces, but there are over a hundred sultans who claim
to be of royal blood.
The other principal Mindanao tribes are as follows, viz.:--_Aetas_,
in the regions near Mount Apo (_vide_ p. 121).
_Bagobos_, on the foothills of Mount Apo. A peaceful people, disposed
to work, and reputed to be human sacrificers.
_Manobos_, in the valley of the Agusan River. There are also some on
the Gulf of Davao and in the Cottabato district.
_Samales_ inhabit the small islands in the Gulf of Davao, but there
is quite a large colony of them at Magay, a suburb of Zamboanga,
(from the neighbouring islets) under Rajahmudah Datto Mandi.
_Subuanos_ occupy the peninsula of the Zamboanga Province. They
are docile and lazy, and much prone to stealing. They are far
less courageous than the _Samales_, by whom they are overawed. Some
physiognomists consider them to be of the same caste as the _Manobos_,
the _Guimbanos_ of Sulu, and the _Samecas_ of Basilan.
_Tagubans_ live on the north shore of the Gulf of Davao.
_Tirurayas_ inhabit the mountains to the west of the Rio Grande.
There is a large number of smaller tribes.
A few years ago we were all alarmed on Corpus Christi Day, during the
solemn procession of that feast in Cottabato, by the sudden attack of
a few Mahometans on the crowd of Christians assembled. Of course the
former were overwhelmed and killed, as they quite expected to be. They
were of that class known as _juramentados_, or sworn Mahometans, who
believe that if they make a solemn vow, in a form binding on their
consciences, to die taking the blood of a Christian, their souls will
immediately migrate to the happy hunting-ground, where they will ever
live in bliss, in the presence of the Great Prophet. This is the most
dangerous sect of Mahometans, for no exhibition of force can suffice
to stay their ravages, and they can only be treated like mad dogs,
or like a Malay who has run _ámok_.
The face of a Mindanao south coast Moro is generally pleasant, but
a smile spoils his appearance; the parting lips disclose a filthy
aperture with dyed teeth in a mahogany coloured foam of masticated
betel-nut. Holes as large as sixpences are in the ears of the women,
who, when they have no ear-rings, wear a piece of reed with a vermilion
tip. The dress is artistically fantastic, with the _sárong_ and
the _jábul_ and no trousers visible. Apparently the large majority
(perhaps 70 per cent.) of the Párang-Párang Moros have a loathsome
skin disease. Those who live on shore crop their hair, but the swamp,
river, and sea people who live afloat let it grow long.
The Sulu Islanders, male and female, dress with far greater taste and
ascetic originality than the christian natives. The women are fond
of gay colours, the predominant ones being scarlet and green. Their
nether bifurcated garment is very baggy, the bodice is extremely tight,
and, with equally close-fitting sleeves, exhibits every contour of
the bust and arms. They use also a strip of stuff sewn together at
the ends called the _jábul_, which serves to protect the head from
the sun-rays. The end of the _jábul_ would reach nearly down to
the feet, but is usually held _retroussé_ under the arm. They have
a passion for jewellery, and wear many finger-rings of metal and
sometimes of sea-shells, whilst their ear-rings are gaudy and of
large dimensions. The hair is gracefully tied in a coil on the top
of the head, and their features are at least as attractive as those
of the generality of Philippine christian women.
The men wear breeches of bright colours, as tight as gymnasts'
pantaloons, with a large number of buttons up the sides; a kind of
waistcoat buttoning up to the throat; a jacket reaching to the hips,
with close sleeves, and a turban. A chief's dress has many adornments
of trinkets, and is quite elegant, a necessary part of his outfit
being the _bárong_ (sword), which apparently he carries constantly.
They are robust, of medium height, often of superb physical
development; of a dusky bronze colour, piercing eyes, low forehead,
lank hair, which is dressed as a chignon and hangs down the back of
the neck. The body is agile, the whole movement is rapid, and they
have a wonderful power of holding the breath under water. They are
of quick perception, audacious, haughty, resolute, zealous about
their genealogies; extremely sober, ready to promise everything
and do nothing, vindictive and highly suspicious of a stranger's
intentions. Their bearing towards the Christian, whom they call
the infidel, is full of contempt. They know no gratitude, and they
would not cringe to the greatest Christian potentate. They are very
long-suffering in adversity, hesitating in attack, and the bravest
of the brave in defence. They disdain work as degrading and only
a fit occupation for slaves, whilst warfare is, to their minds, an
honourable calling. Every male over 16 years of age has to carry at
least one fighting-weapon at all times, and consider himself enrolled
in military service.
They have a certain knowledge of the Arts. They manufacture on the
anvil very fine kris daggers, knives, lance-heads, etc. Many of their
fighting-weapons are inlaid with silver and set in polished hardwood
or ivory handles artistically carved.
In warfare they carry shields, and their usual arms on land are
the _campilán_, a kind of short two-handed sword, wide at the tip
and narrowing down to the hilt, the _bárong_ for close combat, the
straight _kris_ for thrusting and cutting, and the waved, serpent-like
_kris_ for thrusting only. They are dexterous in the use of arms,
and can most skilfully decapitate a foe at a single stroke. At sea
they use a sort of assegai, called _bagsacay_ or _simbilin_, about
half an inch in diameter, with a sharp point. Some can throw as many
as four at a time, and make them spread in the flight; they use these
for boarding vessels. They make many of their own domestic utensils of
metal, also coats of mail of metal wire and buffalo horn, which resist
hand-weapons, but not bullets. The wire probably comes from Singapore.
The local trade is chiefly in pearls, mother-of-pearl, shells,
shark fins, etc. [66] The Sultan, in Spanish times, had a sovereign
right to all pearls found which exceeded a certain size fixed by
Sulu law--hence it was very difficult to secure an extraordinary
specimen. The Mahometans trade at great distances in their small craft,
called _vintas_, for they are wonderfully expert navigators. Their
largest vessels do not exceed seven tons, and they go as far as Borneo,
and even down to Singapore on rare occasions.
I found that almost any coinage was useful for purchasing in the
market-places. I need hardly add that the Chinese small traders have
found their way to these regions; and it would be an unfavourable
sign if a Chinaman were not to be seen there, for where the frugal
Celestial cannot earn a living one may well assume there is little
prosperity. Small Chinese coins (known as _cash_ in the China Treaty
Ports) are current money there, and I think, the most convenient
of all copper coins, for, having a hole in the centre, they can be
strung together. Chinese began to trade with this island in 1751.
The root of the Sulu language is Sanscrit, mixed with Arabic. Each
Friday is dedicated to public worship, and the faithful are called
to the temple by the beating of a box or hollow piece of wood. All
recite the Iman with a plaintive voice in honour of the Great Prophet;
a slight gesticulation is then made whilst the _Pandita_ reads a
passage from the Mustah. I observed that no young women put in an
appearance at the temple on the occasion of my visit.
At the beginning of each year there is a very solemn ceremonial, and,
in the event of the birth or death of a child, or the safe return
from some expedition, it is repeated. It is a sort of _Te Deum_ in
conformity with Mahometan rites. During a number of days in a certain
month of the year they abstain from eating, drinking, and pleasure
of all kinds, and suffer many forms of voluntary penance. Strangers
are never allowed, I was told, inside the Mosque of the Sultan. The
higher clergy are represented by the hereditary _Cherif_, who has
temporal power also. The title of _Pandita_ simply means priest, and
is the common word used in Mindanao as well as in Palaúan Island. He
seems to be almost the chief in his district--not in a warlike sense,
like the _Datto_; but his word has great influence. He performs all
the functions of a priest, receives the vow of the _juramentados_,
and expounds the mysteries and the glories of that better world whither
they will go without delay if they die taking the blood of a Christian.
In theory, the Moros accept the Koran and the teachings of Mahomet:
in practice, they omit the virtues of their religious system and
follow those precepts which can be construed into favouring vice;
hence they interpret guidance of the people by oppression, polygamy
by licentiousness, and maintenance of the faith by bloodshed. Relays
of Arabs come, from time to time, under the guise of Koran expounders,
to feed on the people and whet their animosity towards the Christian.
The _Panditas_ are doctors also. If a _Datto_ dies, they intone a
dolorous chant; the family bursts into lamentations, which are finally
drowned in the din of the clashing of cymbals and beating of gongs,
whilst sometimes a gun is fired. In rush the neighbours, and join in
the shouting, until all settle down quietly to a feast. The body is
then sprinkled with salt and camphor and dressed in white, with the
kris attached to the waist. There is little ceremony about placing
the body in the coffin and burying it. The mortuary is marked by a
wooden tablet--sometimes by a stone, on which is an inscription in
Arabic. A slip of board, or bamboo, is placed around the spot, and a
piece of wood, carved like the bows of a canoe, is stuck in the earth;
in front of this is placed a cocoanut shell full of water.
The old native town, or _cotta_ of Sulu (Joló) was a collection of
bamboo houses built upon piles extending a few hundred yards into the
sea. This was all demolished by the Spaniards when they permanently
occupied the place in 1876, excepting the Military Hospital, which
was re-constructed of light materials, native fashion. The sea-beach
was cleared, and the native village put back inland.
The site is an extremely pretty little bay on the north of the island,
formed by the points Dangapic and Candea, and exactly in front,
about four or five miles off, there are several low-lying islets,
well wooded, with a hill abruptly jutting out here and there, the
whole forming a picturesque miniature archipelago.
Looking from the sea, in the centre stands the modern Spanish town of
Sulu (Joló), built on the shore, rising about a couple of yards above
sea-level, around which there is a short stone and brick sea-wall, with
several bends pleasantly relieving the monotony of a straight line.
Forming a background to the European town, there are three thickly
wooded hillocks almost identical in appearance, and at each extremity
of the picture, lying farther back inland, there is a hill sloping
down gradually towards the coast. The slope on the eastern extremity
has been cleared of undergrowth to the extent of about 50 acres,
giving it the appearance of a vast lawn. At the eastern and western
extremities are the native suburbs, with huts of light material built a
few yards into the sea. On the east side there is a big Moro bungalow,
erected on small tree-trunks, quite a hundred yards from the beach
seawards. To the west, one sees a long shanty-built structure running
out to sea like a jetty; it is the shore market. The panorama could
not be more charming and curious. Still farther west, towering above
every other, stands the _Bad Tumantangas_ peak (Mount of Tears),
the last point discernible by the westward-journeying Joloano, who
is said to sigh with patriotic anguish at its loss to view, with all
the feeling of a Moorish Boabdil bidding adieu to his beloved Granada.
The town is uniformly planned, with well-drained streets, running
parallel, crossed at rectangles by lovely avenues of shading
trees. Here and there are squares, pretty gardens, and a clean and
orderly market-place. There is a simple edifice for a church, splendid
barracks equal to those in Manila when these were built, many houses of
brick and stone, others of wood, and all roofed with corrugated iron.
The neighbourhood is well provided with water from natural streams. The
town is supplied with drinking-water conducted in pipes, laid for the
purpose from a spring about a mile and a quarter distant, whilst other
piping carries water to the end of the pier for the requirements of
shipping. This improvement, the present salubrity of the town (once a
fever focus), and its latest Spanish embellishments, are mainly due to
the intelligent activity of its late Governors, Colonel (now General)
González Parrado, and the late General Juan Arolas.
The town is encircled on the land side by a brick loop-holed wall. The
outside (Spanish) defences consisted of two forts, viz:--The "_Princesa
de Asturias_" and "_Torre de la Reina_" and within the town those of
the "_Puerta Blockaus_", "_Puerta España_" and the redoubt "_Alfonso
XII._"--this last had a Nordenfeldt gun.
The Spanish Government of Sulu was entirely under martial law, and
the Europeans (mostly military men) were constantly on the alert for
the ever-recurring attacks of the natives.
The general aspect of Sulu (Joló) is cheerful and attractive. The day
scene, enlivened by the Moro, passing to and fro with his lithe gait,
in gay attire, with the _bárong_ in a huge sash, and every white man,
soldier or civilian, carrying arms in self-defence, may well inflame
the imaginative and romantic mind. One can hardly believe one is
still in the Philippines. At night, the shaded avenues, bordered by
stately trees, illuminated by a hundred lamps, present a beautiful,
picturesque scene which carries the memory far, far away from the
surrounding savage races. Yet all may change in a trice. There is
a hue and cry; a Moro has run _ámok_--his glistening weapon within
a foot of his escaping victim; the Christian native hiding away in
fear, and the European off in pursuit of the common foe; there is a
tramping of feet, a cracking of firearms; the Moro is biting the dust,
and the memory is brought abruptly back from imagination's flights
to full realization of one's Mahometan _entourage_.
By a decree dated September 24, 1877, all the natives, and other
races or nationalities settled there, were exempted from all kinds of
contributions or taxes for 10 years. In 1887 the term was extended for
another 10 years; hence, no imposts being levied, all the Spaniards
had to do was to maintain their prestige with peace.
In his relations with the Spaniards, the Sultan held the title
of Excellency, and he, as well as several chiefs, received annual
pensions from the Government at the following rates:--
Pesos.
Sultan of Sulu 2,400
Sultan of Mindanao 1,000
Datto Beraduren, heir to the Sulu Sultanate 700
Paduca Datto Alimudin, of Sulu 600
Datto Amiral, of Mindanao 800
Other minor pensions 600
=====
P6,100
and an allowance of 2 pesos for each captive rescued, and 3 pesos
for each pirate caught, whether in Sulu or Mindanao waters.
The Sultan is the _Majasari_ (the stainless, the spotless)--the
Pontiff-king--the chief of the State and the Church; but it is said
that he acknowledges the Sultan of Turkey as the _Padishah_. He is
the irresponsible lord and master of all life and property among his
subjects, although in his decrees he is advised by a Council of Elders.
Nevertheless, in spite of his absolute authority, he does not seem to
have perfect control over the acts of his nobles or chiefs, who are
a privileged class, and are constantly waging some petty war among
themselves, or organizing a marauding expedition along the coast. The
Sultan is compelled, to a certain extent, to tolerate their excesses,
as his own dignity, or at least his own tranquillity, is in a great
measure dependent on their common goodwill towards him. The chiefs
collect tribute in the name of the Sultan, but they probably furnish
their own wants first and pay differences into the Royal Treasury,
seeing that it all comes from their own feudal dependents.
The Sultan claims to be the nominal owner of all the product of Sulu
waters. In the valuable Pearl Fisheries he claims to have a prior
right to all pearls above a certain value, although the finder is
entitled to a relative bounty from the Sultan. "Ambal," a product found
floating on the waters and much esteemed by the Chinese as medicine,
is subject to royal dues. The great pearl-fishing centre is Siassi
Island (in the Tapul group), lying about 20 miles south of Sulu Island.
The Sultanate is hereditary under the Salic Law. The Sultan is
supported by three ministers, one of whom acts as Regent in his absence
(for he might choose to go to Singapore, or have to go to Mecca,
if he had not previously done so); the other is Minister of War,
and the third is Minister of Justice and Master of the Ceremonies.
Slavery exists in a most ample sense. There are slaves by birth and
others by conquest, such as prisoners of war, insolvent debtors, and
those seized by piratical expeditions to other islands. A creole friend
of mine was one of these last. He had commenced clearing an estate for
cane-growing on the Negros coast, when he was seized and carried off
to Sulu Island. In a few years he was ransomed and returned to Negros,
where be formed one of the finest sugar haciendas and factories in
the Colony.
In 1884 a Mahometan was found on a desolate isle lying off the Antique
coast (Panay Is.), and of course had no document of identity, so he
was arrested and confined in the jail of San José de Buenavista. From
prison he was eventually taken to the residence of the Spanish
Governor, Don Manuel Castellon, a very humane gentleman and a personal
friend of mine. In Don Manuel's study there was a collection of
native arms which took the stranger's fancy; one morning he seized
a kris and lance, and, bounding into the breakfast-room, capered
about, gesticulated, and brandished the lance in the air, much to the
amusement of the Governor and his guests. But in an instant the fellow
(hitherto a mystery, but undoubtedly a _juramentado_) hurled the lance
with great force towards the Public Prosecutor, and the missile, after
severing his watch-chain, lodged in the side of the table. The Governor
and the Public Prosecutor at once closed with the would-be assassin,
whilst the Governor's wife, with great presence of mind, thrust a
table-knife into the culprit's body between the shoulder-blade and
the collar-bone. The man fell, and, when all supposed he was dead,
he suddenly jumped up. No one had thought of taking the kris out of
his grasp, and he rushed around the apartment and severely cut two of
the servants, but was ultimately despatched by the bayonets of the
guards who arrived on hearing the scuffle. The Governor showed me
his wounds, which were slight, but his life was saved by the valour
of his wife--Doña Justa.
It has often been remarked by old residents, that if free licence were
granted to the domesticated natives, their barbarous instincts would
recur to them in all vigour. Here was an instance. The body of the
Moro was carried off by an excited populace, who tied a rope to it,
beat it, and dragged it through the town to a few miles up the coast,
where it was thrown on the sea-shore. The priests did not interfere;
like the Egyptian mummies cast on the Stygian shores, the culprit
was unworthy of sepulture--besides, who would pay the fees?
During my first visit to Sulu in 1881, I was dining with the Governor,
when the conversation ran on the details of an expedition about to be
sent to Maybun, to carry despatches received from the Gov.-General
for the Sultan, anent the Protectorate. The Governor seemed rather
surprised when I expressed my wish to join the party, for the journey
is not unattended with risk to one's life. [I may here mention that
only a few days before I arrived, a young officer was sent on some
mission a short distance outside the town of Joló, accompanied by a
patrol of two guards. He was met by armed Mahometans, and sent back
with one of his hands cut off. I remember, also, the news reaching
us that several military officers were sitting outside a café in
Joló Town, when a number of _juramentados_ came behind them and cut
their throats.] However, the Governor did not oppose my wish--on the
contrary, he jocosely replied that he could not extend my passport so
far, because the Sulus would not respect it, yet the more Europeans
the better.
Officials usually went by sea to Maybun, and a gunboat was now and
again sent round the coast with messages to the Sultan, but there
was no Government vessel in Joló at this time.
Our party, all told, including the native attendants, numbered about
30 Christians, and we started early in the morning on horseback. I
carried my usual weapon--a revolver--hoping there would be no need to
use it on the journey. And so it resulted; we arrived, without being
molested in any way, in about three hours, across a beautiful country.
We passed two low ranges of hills, which appeared to run from S.W. to
N.E., and several small streams, whilst here and there was a ranche
of the Sultan's subjects. Each ranche was formed of a group of
10 to 20 huts, controlled by the cacique. Agriculture seemed to
be pursued in a very pristine fashion, but, doubtless owing to the
exuberant fertility of the soil, we saw some very nice crops of Rice,
Indian Corn, Sugar Cane, and Indigo and Coffee plantations on a small
scale. In the forest which we traversed there were some of the largest
bamboos I have ever seen, and fine building timber, such as Teak,
Narra, Molave, Mangachapuy, and Camagon (_vide_ Woods). I was assured
that Cedars also flourished on the island. We saw a great number of
monkeys, wild pigeons, cranes, and parrots, whilst deer, buffaloes,
and wild goats are said to abound in these parts.
On our arrival at Maybun, we went first to the bungalow of a
Chinaman--the Sultan's brother-in-law--where we refreshed ourselves
with our own provisions, and learnt the gossip of the place. On
inquiry, we were told that the Sultan was sleeping, so we waited at
the Chinaman's. I understood this man was a trader, but there were no
visible signs of his doing any business. Most of our party slept the
_siesta_, and at about four o'clock we called at the Palace. It was
a very large building, well constructed, and appeared to be built
almost entirely of materials of the country. A deal of bamboo and
wood were used in it, and even the roof was made of split bamboo,
although I am told that this was replaced by sheet-iron when the
young Sultan came to the throne. The vestibule was very spacious,
and all around was pleasantly decorated with lovely shrubs and plants
peculiar to most mid-tropical regions. The entrance to the Palace was
always open, but well guarded, and we were received by three _Dattos_,
who saluted us in a formal way, and, without waiting to ask us any
question, invited us, with a wave of the hand, to follow them into
the throne-room. [67] The Sultan was seated on our entering, but when
the bearer of the despatches approached with the official interpreter
by his side, and we following, he rose in his place to greet us.
His Highness was dressed in very tight silk trousers, fastened partly
up the sides with showy chased gold or gilt buttons, a short Eton-cut
olive-green jacket with an infinity of buttons, white socks, ornamented
slippers, a red sash around his waist, a kind of turban, and a kris at
his side. His general appearance was that of a Spanish bull-fighter
with an Oriental finish off. We all bowed low, and the Sultan,
surrounded by his Sultanas, put his hands to his temples, and, on
lowering them, he bowed at the same time. We remained standing whilst
some papers were handed to him. He looked at them--a few words were
said in Spanish, to the effect that the bearer saluted His Highness
in the name of the Governor of Sulu. The Sultan passed the documents
to the official interpreter, who read or explained them in the Sulu
language; then a brief conversation ensued, through the interpreter,
and the business was really over. After a short pause, the Sultan
motioned to us to be seated on floor-cushions, and we complied. The
cushions, covered with rich silk, were very comfortable. Servants, in
fantastic costumes, were constantly in attendance, serving betel-nut
to those who cared to chew it.
One Sultana was fairly pretty, or had been so, but the others were
heavy, languid, and lazy in their movements; and their teeth,
dyed black, did not embellish their personal appearance. The
Sultan made various inquiries, and passed many compliments on us,
the Governor, Gov.-General, etc., which were conveyed to us through
the interpreter. Meanwhile, the Sultanas chatted among themselves,
and were apparently as much interested in looking at us as we were
in their style, features, and attire. They all wore light-coloured
"dual garments" of great width, and tight bodices. Their _coiffure_
was carefully finished, but a part of the forehead was hidden by an
ungraceful fringe of hair.
We had so little in common to converse on, and that little had to
be said through the interpreter, that we were rather glad when we
were asked to take refreshments. It at least served to relieve the
awkward feeling of glancing at each other in silence. Chocolate and
ornamental sweetmeats were brought to us, all very unpalatable. When we
were about to take our departure, the Sultan invited us to remain all
night in the Palace. The leader of our party caused to be explained
to him that we were thankful for his gracious offer, but that, being
so numerous, we feared to disturb His Highness by intruding so far
on his hospitality. Still the Sultan politely insisted, and whilst
the interpretation was being transmitted I found an opportunity to
acquaint our chief of my burning curiosity to stay at the Palace. In
any case, we were a large number to go anywhere, so our leader, in
reply to the Sultan, said that he and four Europeans of his suite
would take advantage of His Highness's kindness.
We withdrew from the Sultan's presence, and some of us Europeans
walked through the town accompanied by functionaries of the royal
household and the interpreter. There was nothing striking in the
place; it was like most others. There were some good bungalows of
bamboo and thatching. I noticed that men, women, and children were
smoking tobacco or chewing, and had no visible occupation. Many of
the smaller dwellings were built on piles out to the sea. We saw a
number of divers preparing to go off to get pearls, mother-of-pearl,
etc. They are very expert in this occupation, and dive as deep as 100
feet. Prior to the plunge they go through a grotesque performance of
waving their arms in the air and twisting their bodies, in order--as
they say--to frighten away the sharks; then with a whoop they leap
over the edge of the prahu, and continue to throw their arms and legs
about for the purpose mentioned. They often dive for the shark and
rip it up with a kris.
Five of us retired to the Palace that night, and were at once conducted
to our rooms. There was no door to my room; it was, strictly speaking,
an alcove. During the night, at intervals of about every hour, as it
seemed to me, a Palace servant or guard came to inquire how the Señor
was sleeping, and if I were comfortable. "Duerme el Señor?" ("Does
the gentleman sleep?") was apparently the limit of his knowledge of
Spanish. I did not clearly understand more than the fact that the man
was a nuisance, and I regretted there was no door with which to shut
him out. The next morning we paid our respects to His Highness, who
furnished us with an escort--more as a compliment than a necessity--and
we reached Joló Town again, after a very enjoyable ride through a
superb country.
The Sultan's subjects are spread so far from the centre of
government--Maybun--that in some places their allegiance is but
nominal. Many of them residing near the Spanish settlements are quick
at learning Castilian sufficiently well to be understood, but the
Spaniards tried in vain to subject them to a European order of things.
About 20 miles up the coast, going north from Zamboanga, the Jesuits
sent a missionary in 1885 to convert the _Subuanos_. He endeavoured
to persuade the people to form a village. They cleared a way through
the forest from the beach, and at the end of this opening, about
three-quarters of a mile long, I found a church half built of wood,
bamboo, and palm-leaves. I had ridden to the place on horseback along
the beach, and my food and baggage followed in a canoe. The opening
was so roughly cleared that I thought it better to dismount when
I got half way. As the church was only in course of construction,
and not consecrated, I took up my quarters there. I was followed
by a _Subuano_, who was curious to know the object of my visit. I
told him I wished to see the headman, so this personage arrived
with one of his wives and a young girl. They sat on the floor with
me, and as the cacique could make himself understood in Spanish,
we chatted about the affairs of the town _in posse_. The visiting
priest had gone to the useless trouble of baptizing a few of these
people. They appeared to be as much Christian as I was Mahometan. The
cacique had more than one wife--the word of the _Pandita_ of the
settlement was the local law, and the _Pandita_ himself of course had
his seraglio. I got the first man, who had followed me, to direct me
to the _Pandita's_ house. My guide was gaily attired in bright red
tight acrobat breeches, with buttons up the side, and a jacket like
a waistcoat, with sleeves so close-fitting that I suppose he seldom
took the trouble to undress himself. I left the cacique, promising to
visit his bungalow that day, and then my guide led me through winding
paths, in a wood, to the hut of the _Pandita_. On the way I met a
man of the tribe carrying spring-water in a bamboo, which he tilted
to give me a drink. To my inquiries if he were a Christian, and if
he knew the _Castilian Pandita_ (Spanish priest), he replied in the
affirmative; continuing the interrogation, I asked him how many gods
there were, and when he answered "four," I closed my investigation of
his Christianity. My guide was too cunning to take me by the direct
path to the _Pandita's_ bungalow. He led me into a half-cleared plot
of land facing it, whence the inmates could see us for at least ten
minutes making our approach. When we arrived, and after scrambling up
the staircase, which was simply a notched trunk of a tree about nine
inches diameter, I discovered that the _Pandita_, forewarned, had fled
to the mountain close by, leaving his wives to entertain the visitor. I
found them all lounging and chewing betel-nut, and when I squatted
on the floor amongst them they became remarkably chatty. Then I went
to the cacique's bungalow. In the rear of this dwelling there was a
small forge, and the most effective bellows of primitive make which I
have ever seen in any country. It was a double-action apparatus, made
entirely of bamboo, except the pistons, which were of feathers. These
pistons, working up and down alternately by a bamboo rod in each hand,
sustained perfectly a constant draught of air. One man was squatting
on a bamboo bench the height of the bellows' rods, whilst the smith
crouched on the ground to forge his kris on the anvil.
The headman's bungalow was built the same as the others, but with
greater care. It was rather high up, and had the usual notched
log-of-wood staircase, which is perhaps easy to ascend with naked
feet. The cacique and one of his wives were seated on mats on the
floor. After mutual salutations the wife threw me three cushions, on
which I reclined--doing the _dolce far niente_ whilst we talked about
the affairs of the settlement. The conversation was growing rather
wearisome anent the Spanish priest having ordered huts to be built
without giving materials, about the scarcity of palm-leaves in the
neighbourhood, and so forth, so I bade them farewell and went on to
another hut. Here the inmates were numerous--four women, three or four
men, and two rather pretty male children, with their heads shaven so
as to leave only a tuft of hair towards the forehead about the size of
a crown piece. To entertain me, six copper tom-toms were brought out,
and placed in a row on pillows, whilst another large one, for the bass
accompaniment, was suspended from a wooden frame. A man beat the bass
with a stick, whilst the women took it in turns to kneel on the floor,
with a stick in each hand, to play a tune on the series of six. A few
words were passed between the three men, when suddenly one of them
arose and performed a war-dance, quaintly twisting his arms and legs
in attitudes of advance, recoil, and exultation. The dance finished,
I mounted my horse and left the settlement in embryo, called by the
missionaries Reus, which is the name of a town in Catalonia.
The climate of Mindanao and Sulu Islands is healthy and delightful. The
heat of Zamboanga is moderated by daily breezes, and in Sulu, in the
month of June, it is not oppressive. A year's temperature readings
on the Illana Bay coast (Mindanao Is.) are as follows, viz.:--
Average of Inside the House, Outside in the Shade,
Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit.
6 a.m. Noon. 6 p.m. 6 a.m. Noon. 6 p.m.
Jan.-March 73° 84° 83° 72° 84° 80°
April-June 74 1/2° 83° 78 1/2° 74 1/2° 92 1/2° 78°
July-Sept. 74° 84° 80° 72 1/2° 88° 79°
Oct.-Dec. 73° 85° 80° 73° 83° 78°
The Island of Palaúan (Parágua) was anciently a dependency of the
Sultanate of Brunei (Borneo), hence the dominion over this island
of the Sultan of Sulu as suzerain lord of Brunei. At the beginning
of the 18th century Spaniards had already settled in the north of
it. It had a very sparse population, and a movement was set on foot
to subjugate the natives. In order to protect the Spanish settlers
from Mahometan attacks a fort was established at Labo. However, the
supplies were not kept up, and many of the garrison died of misery,
hunger, and nakedness, until 1720, when it was abandoned.
Some years afterwards the island was gratuitously ceded to the
Spaniards by the Sultan of Sulu, at their request. Captain Antonio
Fabeau was sent there with troops to take formal possession, being
awarded the handsome salary of P50 per month for this service. On
the arrival of the ships, an officer was sent ashore; the people
fled inland, and the formalities of annexation were proceeded with
unwitnessed. The only signs of possession left there were the corpses
of the troops and sailors who died from eating rotten food, or were
murdered by Mahometans who attacked the expedition. Subsequently a
fortress was established at Taytay, where a number of priests and
laymen in a few years succeeded in forming a small colony, which at
length shared the fate of Labo. The only Spanish settlement in the
island at the date of the evacuation was the colony of Puerta Princesa,
on the east coast. [68]
Before starting on my peregrination in Palaúan Island, I sought in vain
for information respecting the habits and nature of the _Tagbanúas_,
a half-caste Malay-Aeta tribe, disseminated over a little more than
the southern half of the island. [69] It was only on my arrival at
Puerta Princesa that I was able to procure a vague insight into the
peculiarities of the people whom I intended to visit. The Governor,
Don Felipe Canga-Argüelles, was highly pleased to find a traveller
who could sympathize with his efforts, and help to make known, if
only to the rest of the Archipelago, this island almost unexplored
in the interior. He constantly wrote articles to one of the leading
journals of Manila, under the title of "Echoes from Parágua" (Palaúan),
partly with the view of attracting the attention of the Government
to the requirements of the Colony, but also to stimulate a spirit of
enterprise in favour of this island, rich in hardwoods, etc.
Puerta Princesa is a good harbour, situated on a gulf. The soil
was levelled, trees were planted, and a slip for repairing vessels
was constructed. There was a fixed white light visible eleven miles
off. It was a naval station for two gunboats, the Commander of the
station being _ex-officio_ Governor of the Colony. It was also a
Penal Settlement for convicts, and those suspected by the civil or
religious authorities. To give employment to the convicts and suspects,
a model sugar-estate was established by the Government. The locality
supplied nearly all the raw material for working and preserving the
establishment, such as lime, stone, bricks, timber, sand, firewood,
straw for bags, rattans, etc.
The aspect of the town is agreeable, and the environs are pretty,
but there is a great drawback in the want of drinking-water, which,
in the dry season, has to be procured from a great distance.
The Governor showed me great attention, and personally took command of
a gunboat, which conducted me to the mouth of the Iguajit River. This
is the great river of the district, and is navigable for about three
miles. I put off in a boat manned by marines, and was rowed about
two miles up, as far as the mission station. The missionary received
me well, and I stayed there that night, with five men, whom I had
engaged to carry my luggage, for we had a journey before us of some
days on foot to the opposite coast.
My luggage, besides the ordinary travelling requisites and provisions,
included about 90 yards of printed stuffs of bright colours, six dozen
common handkerchiefs, and some 12 pounds' weight of beads on strings,
with a few odds and ends of trinkets; whilst my native bearers were
provided with rice, dried fish, betel-nut, tobacco, etc., for a week
or more. We set out on foot the next day, and in three days and a
half we reached the western shore.
The greatest height above the sea-level on our route was about 900
metres, according to my aneroid reading, and the maximum heat at
mid-day in the shade (month of January) was 82° Fahr. The nights were
cold, comparatively speaking, and at midnight the thermometer once
descended to 59° Fahr.
The natives proved to be a very pacific people. We found some engaged
in collecting gum from the trees in the forest, and others cutting
and making up bundles of rattans. They took these products down to
the Iguajit River mission station, where Chinese traders bartered
for them stuffs and other commodities. The value of coin was not
altogether unknown in the mission village, although the difference
in value between copper and silver coinage was not understood. In
the interior they lived in great misery, their cabins being wretched
hovels. They planted their rice without ploughing at all, and all
their agricultural implements were made of wood or bamboo.
The native dress is made of the bark of trees, smashed with stones,
to extract the ligneous parts. In the cool weather they make tunics of
bark, and the women wear drawers of the same material. They adorn their
waists with sea-shell and cocoanut shell ornaments, whilst the fibre
of the palm serves for a waistband. The women pierce very large holes
in their ears, in which they place shells, wood, etc. They never bathe
intentionally. Their arms are bows and arrows, and darts blown through
a kind of pea-shooter made of a reed resembling _bojo_ (q.v). They
are a very dirty people, and they eat their fish or flesh raw.
I had no difficulty whatever in procuring guides from one group of
huts to the next on payment in goods, and my instructions were always
to lead me towards the coast, the nearest point of which I knew was
due west or a few points to the north.
We passed through a most fertile country the whole way. There
were no rivers of any importance, but we were well supplied with
drinking-water from the numerous springs and rivulets. The forests
are very rich in good timber, chiefly _Ipil_ (_Eperma decandria)_,
a very useful hardwood (_vide_ Woods). I estimated that many of these
trees, if felled, would have given clean logs of 70 to 80 feet long. I
presume the felling of timber was not attempted by these natives
on account of the difficulties, or rather, total want of transport
means. From a plateau, within half a day's journey of the opposite
coast, the scenery was remarkably beautiful, with the sea to the west
and an interminable grandeur of forest to the east. There were a few
fishermen on the west coast, but further than that, there was not a
sign of anything beyond the gifts of Nature. About half a mile from the
coast, on the fringe of the forest, there was a group of native huts,
two of which were vacated for our accommodation in exchange for goods.
With an abundance of fish, we were able to economize our
provisions. One of my men fell ill with fever, so that we had to
wait two days on the west coast, whilst I dosed him with Eno's fruit
salt and quinine. In the meantime, I studied the habits of these
people. Among the many things which astonished them was the use of
matches, whilst our cooking highly amused them. Such a thing as a
horse I suppose had never been seen here, although I would gladly have
bought or hired one, for I was very weary of our delay. We all went
on the march again, on foot nearly all the way, by the same passes
to the Iguajit River, where we found a canoe, which carried us back
to Puerta Princesa.
The island produces many marketable articles, such as beeswax, edible
bird's nests, fine shells, dried shell-fish, a few pearls, bush-rope
or _palásan_ (q.v.) of enormous length, wild nutmegs, ebony, logwood,
etc., which the Chinese obtain in barter for knives and other small
manufactures.
The first survey of the Palaúan Island coast is said to have been
made by the British. A British map of Puerta Princesa, with a few
miles of adjoining coast, was shown to me in the Government House
of this place. It appears that the west coast is not navigable for
ships within at least two miles of the shore, although there are a
few channels leading to creeks. Vessels coming from the west usually
pass through the Straits of Balábac, between the island of that name
and the islets off the Borneo Island coast.
In the Island of Balábac there was absolutely nothing remarkable to
be seen, unless it were a little animal about the size of a big cat,
but in shape a perfect model of a doe. [70] I took one to Manila,
but it died the day we arrived. No part of the island (which is
very mountainous and fertile) appeared to be cultivated, and even
the officials at the station had to obtain supplies from Manila,
whilst cattle were brought from the Island of Cuyo, one of the
Calamianes group.
In the latter years, the Home Government made efforts to colonize
Palaúan Island by offering certain advantages to emigrants. By Royal
Order, dated February 25, 1885, the Islands of Palaúan and Mindanao
were to be occupied in an effectual manner, and outposts established,
wherever necessary, to guarantee the secure possession of these
islands. The points mentioned for such occupation in Palaúan Island
were Tagbusao and Malihut on the east coast, and Colasian and Malanut
on the west coast. It also confirmed the Royal Decree of July 30,
1860, granting to all families emigrating to these newly established
military posts, and all peaceful tribes of the Islands who might
choose to settle there, exemption from the payment of tribute for six
years. The families would be furnished with a free passage to these
places, and each group would be supplied with seed and implements.
A subsequent Royal Order, dated January 19, 1886, was issued, to the
effect:--That the Provincial Governors of the Provinces of North and
South Ilocos were to stimulate voluntary emigration of the natives
to Palaúan Island, to the extent of 25 families from each of the two
provinces per annum. That any payments due by them to the Public
Treasury were to be condoned. That such families and any persons
of good character who might establish themselves in Palaúan should
be exempt from the payment of taxes for ten years, and receive free
passage there for themselves and their cattle, and three hectares of
land gratis, to be under cultivation within a stated period. That two
chupas of rice (_vide_ Rice measure) and ten cents of a peso should
be given to each adult, and one chupa of rice to each minor each day
during the first six months from the date of their embarking. That
the Governor of Palaúan should be instructed respecting the highways
to be constructed, and the convenience of opening free ports in that
island. That the land and sea forces should be increased; and of
the latter, a third-rate man-o'-war should be stationed on the west
coast. That convicts should continue to be sent to Palaúan, and the
Governor should be authorized to employ all those of bad conduct in
public works. That schools of primary instruction should be established
in the island wherever such might be considered convenient, etc.,
etc. [71]
The Spaniards (in 1898) left nearly half the Philippine Archipelago
to be conquered, but only its Mahometan inhabitants ever persistently
took the aggressive against them in regular continuous warfare. The
attempts of the Jesuit missionaries to convert them to Christianity
were entirely futile, for the _Panditas_ and the Romish priests were
equally tenacious of their respective religious beliefs. The last
treaty made between Spain and Sulu especially stipulated that the
Mahometans should not be persecuted for their religion.
To overturn a dynasty, to suppress an organized system of feudal
laws, and to eradicate an ancient belief, the principles of which
had firmly established themselves among the populace in the course of
centuries, was a harder task than that of bringing under the Spanish
yoke detached groups of Malay immigrants. The pliant, credulous nature
of the Luzon settlers--the fact that they professed no deeply-rooted
religion, and--although advanced from the migratory to the settled
condition--were mere nominal lieges of their puppet kinglings, were
facilities for the achievement of conquest. True it is that the
dynasties of the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru yielded to
Spanish valour, but there was the incentive of untold wealth; here,
only of military glory, and the former outweighed the latter.
If the Spaniards failed to subjugate the Mahometans, or to incorporate
their territory in the general administrative system of the Colony,
after three centuries of intermittent endeavour, it is difficult to
conceive that the Philippine Republic (had it subsisted) would have
been more successful. It would have been useless to have resolved
to leave the Moros to themselves, practically ignoring their
existence. Any Philippine Government must needs hold them in check
for the public weal, for the fact is patent that the Moro hates the
native Christian not one iota less than he does the white man.
CHAPTER XI
Domesticated Natives--Origin--Character
The generally-accepted theory regarding the origin of the composite
race which may be termed "domesticated natives," is, that their
ancestors migrated to these Islands from Malesia, or the Malay
Peninsula. But so many learned dissertations have emanated from
distinguished men, propounding conflicting opinions on the descent
of the Malays themselves, that we are still left on the field of
conjecture.
There is good reason to surmise that, at some remote period,
these Islands and the Islands of Formosa and Borneo were united,
and possibly also they conjointly formed a part of the Asiatic
mainland. Many of the islets are mere coral reefs, and some of the
larger islands are so distinctly of coral formation that, regarded
together with the numerous volcanic evidences, one is induced to
believe that the Philippine Archipelago is the result of a stupendous
upheaval by volcanic action. [72] At least it seems apparent that
no autochthonous population existed on these lands in their island
form. The first settlers were probably the _Aetas,_ called also
_Negritos_ and _Balugas_, who may have drifted northwards from New
Guinea and have been carried by the strong currents through the
San Bernadino Straits and round Punta Santiago until they reached
the still waters in the neighbourhood of Corregidor Island, whilst
others were carried westwards to the tranquil Sulu Sea, and travelling
thence northwards would have settled on the Island of Negros. It is
a fact that for over a century after the Spanish conquest, Negros
Island had no other inhabitants but these mountaineers and escaped
criminals from other islands.
The sturdy races inhabiting the Central Luzon highlands, decidedly
superior in physique and mental capacity to the _Aetas,_ may be of
Japanese origin, for shortly after the conquest by Legaspi a Spanish
galley cruising off the north coast of Luzon fell in with Japanese,
who probably penetrated to the interior of that island up the Rio
Grande de Cagayán. Tradition tells us how the Japanese used to sail
down the east coast of Luzon as far as the neighbourhood of Lamon Bay,
where they landed and, descending the little rivers which flowed into
the Lake of Bay, settled in that region which was called by the first
Spanish conquerors Pagsanján Province, and which included the Laguna
Province of to-day, with a portion of the modern Tayabas Province.
Either the Japanese extended their sphere from the Lake of Bay shore,
or, as some assert (probably erroneously), shipwrecked Japanese went
up the Pansipít River to the Bómbon Lake: the fact remains that Taal,
with the Bómbon Lake shore, was a Japanese settlement, and even up to
now the Taaleños have characteristics differing from those of the pure
Malay immigrant descendants. The Philippine patriot, Dr. José Rizal,
was a good Japanese-Malay type.
The Tagálogs, who occupy a small portion of Luzon Island, chiefly
the provinces of Batangas, Laguna, Rizal, and Bulacan, are believed
to be the cross-breed descendants of these Japanese immigrants. At
the period of the Spanish conquest the _Tao ílog_, that is to say,
"the man who came by the river," afterwards corrupted into the
more euphonious name of _Tagálog_, occupied only the lands from the
south shore of Laguna de Bay southwards. Some traded with the Malay
settlers at Maynila (as the city on the Pasig River was then called)
and, little by little, radicated themselves in the Manila suburbs of
Quiapo, Sampáloc, and Santa Cruz. [73]
From the West, long before the Spanish conquest, there was a great
influx of Malays, who settled on the shores and the lowlands and drove
the first settlers (_Aetas_) to the mountains. Central Luzon and
the Lake environs being already occupied, they spread all over the
vacant lands and adjacent islands south of Luzon. These expeditions
from Malesia were probably accompanied by Mahometan propagandists,
who had imparted to the Malays some notions, more or less crude,
of their religion and culture, for at the time of Legaspi's arrival
in Manila we find he had to deal with two chiefs, or petty kings,
both assuming the Indian title of _Rajah_, whilst one of them had the
Mahometan Arabic name of Soliman. Hitherto the _Tao ílog,_ or Tagálog,
had not descended the Pasig River so far as Manila, and the religious
rites of the Tondo-Manila people must have appeared to Legaspi similar
to the Mahometan rites, [74] for in several of his despatches to his
royal master he speaks of these people as _Moros_. All the dialects
spoken by the Filipinos of Malay and Japanese descent have their root
in the pure Malay language. After the expulsion of all the adult
male Japanese Lake settlers in the 17th century, it is feasible to
suppose that the language of the males who took their place in the
Lake district and intermarried there, should prevail over the idiom
of the primitive settlers, and possibly this amalgamation of speech
accounts for the difference between the Tagálog dialect and others
of these islands peopled by Malays.
The Malay immigration must have taken place several generations
prior to the coming of the Spaniards, for at that period the lowland
occupants were already divided into peoples speaking different
dialects and distinguishing themselves by groups whose names seem to
be associated with the districts they inhabited, such as Pampanga,
Iloco, and Cagayán; these denominations are probably derived from
some natural condition, such as _Pámpang_, meaning a river embankment,
_Ilog_, a river, _Cauáyan_, a bamboo, etc.
In a separate chapter (x.) the reputed origin of the Mahometans of
the southern islands is alluded to. They are also believed to be
immigrants from the West, and at the time of the conquest recent
traditions which came to the knowledge of the Spaniards, and were
recorded by them, prove that commercial relations existed between
Borneo and Manila. There is a tradition [75] also of an attempted
conquest of Luzon by a Borneo chief named Lacasama, about 250 years
before the Spanish advent; but apparently the expedition came to
grief near Luzon, off an island supposed by some to be Masbate.
The descendants of the Japanese and Malay immigrants were the people
whom the Spanish invaders had to subdue to gain a footing. To the
present day they, and the correlative Chinese and Spanish half-castes,
are the only races, among the several in these Islands, subjected,
in fact, to civilized methods. The expression "Filipino" neither
denotes any autochthonous race, nor any nationality, but simply one
born in those islands named the Philippines: it is, therefore, open to
argument whether the child of a Filipino, born in a foreign country,
could be correctly called a Filipino.
The christianized Filipinos, enjoying to-day the benefits of European
training, are inclined to repudiate, as compatriots, the descendants
of the non-christian tribes, although their concurrent existence,
since the time of their immigrant forefathers, makes them all equally
Filipinos. Hence many of them who were sent to the St. Louis Exhibition
in 1904 were indignant because the United States Government had chosen
to exhibit some types of uncivilized natives, representing about
one-twelfth of the Philippine population. Without these exhibits,
and on seeing only the educated Filipinos who formed the Philippine
Commission, the American people at home might well have asked--Is
not American civilization a superfluity in those islands?
The inhabitants of these Islands were by no means savages, entirely
unreclaimed from barbarism before the Spanish advent in the 16th
century. They had a culture of their own, towards which the Malay
settlers themselves appear to have contributed very little. In the
nascent pre-Spanish civilization, Japanese immigrants were almost
the only agriculturists, mine-workers, manufacturers, gold-seekers,
goldsmiths, and masters of the industrial arts in general. Pagsanján
(Laguna) was their great industrial centre. Malolos (Bulacan) was
also an important Japanese trading base. Whilst working the mines of
Ilocos their exemplary industry must undoubtedly have influenced the
character of the Ilocanos. Away down in the Bicol country of Camarines,
the Japanese pushed their trade, and from their great settlement in
Taal their traffic must have extended over the whole province, first
called by the Spaniards Taal y Balayán, but since named Batangas. From
the Japanese, the Malays learnt the manufacture of arms, and the
Igorrotes the art of metal-working. Along the coasts of the large
inhabited islands the Chinese travelled as traders or middlemen, at
great personal risk of attack by individual robbers, bartering the
goods of manufacturers for native produce, which chiefly consisted
of sinamay cloth, shark-fin, balate (trepang), edible birds'-nests,
gold in grain, and siguey-shells, for which there was a demand in Siam
for use as money. Every north-east monsoon brought down the junks
to barter leisurely until the south-west monsoon should waft them
back, and neither Chinese nor Japanese made the least attempt, nor
apparently had the least desire, to govern the Islands or to overrule
the natives. Without coercion, the Malay settlers would appear to
have unconsciously submitted to the influence of the superior talent
or astuteness of the sedulous races with whom they became merged and
whose customs they adopted, proof of which can be traced to the present
day. [76] Presumably the busy, industrious immigrants had neither time
nor inclination for sanguinary conflicts, for those recorded appear
to be confined to the raids of the migratory mountaineers and an
occasional attack by some ambitious Borneo buccaneer. The reader who
would wish to verify these facts is recommended to make a comparative
study of native character in Vigan, Malolos, Taal, and Pagsanján.
In treating of the domesticated natives' character, I wish it to be
understood that my observations apply solely to the _large majority_
of the six or seven millions of them who inhabit these Islands.
In the capital and the ports open to foreign trade, where cosmopolitan
vices and virtues obtain, and in large towns, where there is a constant
number of domiciled Europeans and Americans, the native has become
a modified being. It is not in such places that a just estimate of
character can be arrived at, even during many years' sojourn. The
native must be studied by often-repeated casual residence in localities
where his, or her, domestication is only "by law established," imposing
little restraint upon natural inclinations, and where exotic notions
have gained no influence.
Several writers have essayed to depict the Philippine native character,
but with only partial success. Dealing with such an enigma, the most
eminent physiognomists would surely differ in their speculations
regarding the Philippine native of the present day. That Catonian
figure, with placid countenance and solemn gravity of feature, would
readily deceive any one as to the true mental organism within. The
late parish priest of Alaminos (Batangas)--a Franciscan friar, who
spent half his life in the Colony--left a brief manuscript essay
on the native character. I have read it. In his opinion, the native
is an incomprehensible phenomenon, the mainspring of whose line of
thought and the guiding motive of whose actions have never yet been,
and perhaps never will be, discovered.
The reasoning of a native and a European differs so largely that
the mental impulse of the two races is ever clashing. Sometimes a
native will serve a master satisfactorily for years, and then suddenly
abscond, or commit some such hideous crime as conniving with a brigand
band to murder the family and pillage the house.
When the hitherto faithful servant is remonstrated with for having
committed a crime, he not unfrequently accounts for the fact by saying,
"_Señor_, my head was hot." When caught in the act on his first start
on highway robbery or murder, his invariable excuse is that he is
not a scoundrel himself, but that he was "invited" by a relation or
_compadre_ to join the company.
He is fond of gambling, profligate, lavish in his promises, but _lâche_
in the extreme as to their fulfilment. He will never come frankly and
openly forward to make a clean breast of a fault committed, or even a
pardonable accident, but will hide it, until it is found out. In common
with many other non-European races, an act of generosity or a voluntary
concession of justice is regarded as a sign of weakness. Hence it
is that the experienced European is often compelled to be more harsh
than his real nature dictates.
If one pays a native 20 cents for a service performed, and that be
exactly the customary remuneration, he will say nothing, but if a
feeling of compassion impels one to pay 30 cents, the recipient will
loudly protest that he ought to be paid more. [77] In Luzon the native
is able to say "Thank you" (_salámat-pô_) in his mother-tongue, but
in Panay and Negros there is no way of expressing thanks in native
dialect to a donor (the nearest approach to it is _Dios macbáyat_);
and although this may, at first sight, appear to be an insignificant
fact, I think, nevertheless, a great deal may be deduced from it,
for the deficiency of the word in the Visaya vernacular denotes a
deficiency of the idea which that word should express.
If the native be in want of a trivial thing, which by plain asking he
could readily obtain, he will come with a long tale, often begin by
telling a lie, and whilst he invariably scratches his head, he will
beat about the bush until he comes to the point, with a supplicating
tone and a saintly countenance hiding a mass of falsity. But if
he has nothing to gain for himself, his reticence is astonishingly
inconvenient, for he may let one's horse die and tell one afterwards
it was for want of rice-paddy, or, just at the very moment one wants
to use something, he will tell one "_Uala-pô_"--there is not any.
I have known natives whose mothers, according to their statement,
have died several times, and each time they have tried to beg the loan
of the burial expenses. The mother of my first servant died twice,
according to his account.
Even the best class of natives do not appreciate, or feel grateful
for, or even seem to understand a spontaneous gift. Apparently,
they only comprehend the favour when one yields to their asking. The
lowest classes never give to each other, unsolicited, a cent's worth,
outside the customary reciprocal feast-offerings. If a European makes
_voluntary_ gratuities to the natives, he is considered a fool--they
entertain a contempt for him, which develops into intolerable
impertinence. If the native comes to borrow, lend him a little less
than he asks for, after a verbose preamble; if one at once lent, or
gave, the full value requested, he would continue to invent a host of
pressing necessities, until one's patience was exhausted. He seldom
restores the loan of anything voluntarily. On being remonstrated with
for his remissness, after the date of repayment or return of the
article has expired, he will coolly reply, "You did not ask me for
it." An amusing case of native reasoning came within my experience
just recently. I lent some articles to an educated Filipino, who had
frequently been my guest, and, at the end of three months, I requested
their return. Instead of thanking me for their use, he wrote a letter
expressing his indignation at my reminder, saying that I "ought to know
they were in very good hands!" A native considers it no degradation
to borrow money: it gives him no recurrent feeling of humiliation or
distress of mind. Thus, he will often give a costly feast to impress
his neighbours with his wealth and maintain his local prestige, whilst
on all sides he has debts innumerable. At most, with his looseness
of morality, he regards debt as an inconvenience, not as a calamity.
Before entering another (middle- or lower-class) native's house, he
is very complimentary, and sometimes three minutes' polite excusatory
dialogue is exchanged between the visitor and the native visited
before the former passes the threshold. When the same class of native
enters a European's house, he generally satisfies his curiosity by
looking all around, and often pokes his head into a private room,
asking permission to enter afterwards.
The lower-class native never comes at first call; among themselves it
is usual to call five or six times, raising the voice each time. If
a native is told to tell another to come, he seldom goes to him to
deliver the message, but calls him from a distance. When a native
steals (and I must say they are fairly honest), he steals only what he
wants. One of the rudest acts, according to their social code, is to
step over a person asleep on the floor. Sleeping is, with them, a very
solemn matter; they are very averse to waking any one, the idea being,
that during sleep the soul is absent from the body, and that if slumber
be suddenly arrested the soul might not have time to return. When a
person, knowing the habits of the native, calls upon him and is told
"He is asleep," he does not inquire further--the rest is understood:
that he may have to wait an indefinite time until the sleeper wakes
up--so he may as well depart. To urge a servant to rouse one, one has
to give him very imperative orders to that effect: then he stands
by one's side and calls "Señor, señor!" repeatedly, and each time
louder, until one is half awake; then he returns to the low note,
and gradually raises his voice again until one is quite conscious.
In Spanish times, wherever I went in the whole Archipelago--near the
capital, or 500 miles from it--I found mothers teaching their offspring
to regard the European as a demoniacal being, an evil spirit, or,
at least, as an enemy to be feared! If a child cried, it was hushed
by the exclamation, "Castila!" (European). If a white man approached
a poor hut or a fine native residence, the cry of caution, the
watchword for defence was always heard--"Castila!"--and the children
hastened their retreat from the dreaded object. But this is now a
thing of the past since the native crossed swords with the "Castila"
(q.v.) and the American on the battle-field, and, rightly or wrongly,
thoroughly believes himself to be a match for either in equal numbers.
The Filipino, like most Orientals, is a good imitator, but having no
initiative genius, he is not efficient in anything. He will copy a
model any number of times, but one cannot get him to make two copies
so much alike that the one is undistinguishable from the other. Yet
he has no attachment for any occupation in particular. To-day he will
be at the plough; to-morrow a coachman, a collector of accounts,
a valet, a sailor, and so on; or he will suddenly renounce social
trammels in pursuit of lawless vagabondage. I once travelled with a
Colonel Marqués, acting-Governor of Cebú, whose valet was an ex-law
student. Still, many are willing to learn, and really become very
expert artisans, especially machinists.
The native is indolent in the extreme, and never tires of sitting
still, gazing at nothing in particular. He will do no regular work
without an advance; his word cannot be depended upon; he is fertile
in exculpatory devices; he is momentarily obedient, but is averse
to subjection. He feigns friendship, but has no loyalty; he is calm
and silent, but can keep no secret; he is daring on the spur of
the moment, but fails in resolution if he reflects. He is wantonly
unfeeling towards animals; cruel to a fallen foe; tyrannical over
his own people when in power; rarely tempers his animosities with
compassion or pity, but is devotedly fond of his children. He is
shifty, erratic, void of chivalrous feeling; and if familiarity be
permitted with the common-class native, he is liable to presume upon
it. The Tagálog is docile and pliant, but keenly resents an injustice.
Native superstition and facile credulity are easily imposed upon. A
report emitted in jest, or in earnest, travels with alarming rapidity,
and the consequences have not unfrequently been serious. The native
rarely sees a joke, and still more rarely makes one. He never reveals
anger, but he will, with the most profound calmness, avenge himself,
awaiting patiently the opportunity to use his bowie-knife with
effect. Mutilation of a vanquished enemy is common among these
Islanders. If a native recognizes a fault by his own conscience,
he will receive a flogging without resentment or complaint; if he
is not so convinced of the misdeed, he will await his chance to give
vent to his rancour.
He has a profound respect only for the elders of his household, and
the lash justly administered. He rarely refers to past generations
in his lineage, and the lowest class do not know their own ages. The
Filipino, of any class, has no memory for dates. In 1904 not one in
a hundred remembered the month and year in which General Aguinaldo
surrendered. During the Independence war, an esteemed friend of mine,
a Philippine priest, died, presumably of old age. I went to his town
to inquire all about it from his son, but neither the son nor another
near relation could recollect, after two days' reflection, even the
year the old man passed away. Another friend of mine had his brains
blown out during the Revolution. His brother was anxious to relate
the tragedy to me and how he had lost 20,000 pesos in consequence,
but he could not tell me in which month it happened. Families are
very united, and claims for help and protection are admitted however
distant the relationship may be. Sometimes the connection of a
"hanger-on" with his host's family will be so remote and doubtful,
that he can only be recognized as "_un poco pariente nada mas_"
(a sort of kinsman). But the house is open to all.
The native is a good father and a good husband, unreasonably jealous of
his wife, careless of the honour of his daughter, and will take no heed
of the indiscretions of his spouse committed before marriage. Cases
have been known of natives having fled from their burning huts,
taking care to save their fighting-cocks, but leaving their wives
and children to look after themselves.
If a question be suddenly put to a native, he apparently loses his
presence of mind, and gives the reply most convenient to save himself
from trouble, punishment, or reproach. It is a matter of perfect
indifference to him whether the reply be true or not. Then, as the
investigation proceeds, he will amend one statement after another,
until, finally, he has practically admitted his first explanation
to be quite false. One who knows the native character, so far as its
mysteries are penetrable, would never attempt to get at the truth of
a question by a direct inquiry--he would "beat about the bush," and
extract the truth bit by bit. Nor do the natives, rich or poor, of any
class in life, and with very few exceptions in the whole population,
appear to regard lying as a sin, but rather as a legitimate, though
cunning, convenience, which should be resorted to whenever it will
serve a purpose. It is my frank opinion that they do not, in their
consciences, hold lying to be a fault in any degree. If the liar be
discovered and faced, he rarely appears disconcerted--his countenance
rather denotes surprise at the discovery, or disappointment at his
being foiled in the object for which he lied. As this is one of the
most remarkable characteristics of the Filipino of both sexes in all
spheres of life, I have repeatedly discussed it with the priests,
several of whom have assured me that the habit prevails even in the
confessional. [78] In the administration of justice this circumstance
is inconvenient, because a witness is always procurable for a few
pesos. In a law-case, in which one or both parties belong to the
lowest class, it is sometimes difficult to say whether the false or
the true witnesses are in majority.
Men and women alike find exaggerated enjoyment in litigation, which
many keep up for years. Among themselves they are tyrannical. They have
no real sentiment, nor do they practise virtue for virtue's sake, and,
apart from their hospitality, in which they (especially the Tagálogs)
far excel the European, all their actions appear to be only guided
by fear, or interest, or both.
The domesticated Tagálogs of Luzon have made greater progress
in civilization and good manners than the Visayos of Panay and
Negros. The Tagálog differs vastly from his southern brother in
his true nature, which is more pliant, whilst he is by instinct
cheerfully and disinterestedly hospitable. Invariably a European
wayfarer in a Tagálog village is invited by one or another of the
principal residents to lodge at his house as a free guest, for to
offer payment would give offence. A present of some European article
might be made, but it is not at all looked for. The Tagálog host
lends his guest horses or vehicles to go about the neighbourhood,
takes him round to the houses of his friends, accompanies him to any
feast which may be celebrated at the time of his visit, and lends
him his sporting-gun, if he has one. The whole time he treats him
with the deference due to the superiority which he recognizes. He is
remarkably inquisitive, and will ask all sorts of questions about
one's private affairs, but that is of no consequence--he is not
intrusive, and if he be invited to return the visit in the capital,
or wherever one may reside, he accepts the invitation reluctantly,
but seldom pays the visit. Speaking of the Tagálog as a host, pure
and simple, he is generally the most genial man one could hope to meet.
The Negros and Panay Visayo's cold hospitality is much tempered with
the prospect of personal gain--quite a contrast to the Tagálog. On
the first visit he might admit the white traveller into his house
out of mere curiosity to know all about him--whence he comes--why he
travels--how much he possesses--and where he is going. The basis of
his estimation of a visitor is his worldly means; or, if the visitor
be engaged in trade, his power to facilitate his host's schemes would
bring him a certain measure of civility and complaisance. He is fond
of, and seeks the patronage of Europeans of position. In manners, the
Negros and Panay Visayo is uncouth and brusque, and more conceited,
arrogant, self-reliant, ostentatious, and unpolished than his northern
neighbour. If remonstrated with for any fault, he is quite disposed
to assume a tone of impertinent retort or sullen defiance. The Cebuáno
is more congenial and hospitable.
The women, too, are less affable in Panay and Negros, and evince an
almost incredible avarice. They are excessively fond of ornament,
and at feasts they appear adorned with an amount of gaudy French
jewellery which, compared with their means, cost them a lot of money
to purchase from the swarm of Jew pedlars who, before the Revolution
of 1896, periodically invaded the villages.
If a European calls on a well-to-do Negros or Panay Visayo, the
women of the family saunter off in one direction or another, to
hide themselves in other rooms, unless the visitor be well known to
the family. If met by chance, perhaps they will return a salutation,
perhaps not. They seldom indulge in a smile before a stranger; have no
conversation; no tuition beyond music and the lives of the Saints, and
altogether impress the traveller with their insipidity of character,
which chimes badly with their manifest air of disdain.
The women of Luzon (and in a slightly less degree the Cebuánas)
are more frank, better educated, and decidedly more courteous and
sociable. Their manners are comparatively lively, void of arrogance,
cheerful, and buoyant in tone. However, all over the Islands the
women are more parsimonious than the men; but, as a rule, they
are more clever and discerning than the other sex, over whom they
exercise great influence. Many of them are very dexterous business
women and have made the fortunes of their families. A notable example
of this was the late Doña Cornelia Laochanco, of Manila, with whom
I was personally acquainted, and who, by her own talent in trading
transactions, accumulated considerable wealth. Doña Cornelia (who died
in 1899) was the foundress of the system of blending sugar to sample
for export, known in Manila as the _fardería._ In her establishment
at San Miguel she had a little tower erected, whence a watchman
kept his eye on the weather. When threatening clouds appeared a bell
was tolled and the mats were instantly picked up and carried off by
her Chinese coolie staff, which she managed with great skill, due,
perhaps, to the fact that her three husbands were Chinese.
The Philippine woman makes an excellent general servant in native
families; in the same capacity, in European service, she is, as a rule,
almost useless, but she is a good nursemaid.
The Filipino has many excellent qualities which go far to make
amends for his shortcomings. He is patient and forbearing in the
extreme, remarkably sober, plodding, anxious only about providing
for his immediate wants, and seldom feels "the canker of ambitious
thoughts." In his person and his dwelling he may serve as a pattern
of cleanliness to all other races in the tropical East. He has little
thought beyond the morrow, and therefore never racks his brains about
events of the far future in the political world, the world to come,
or any other sphere. He indifferently leaves everything to happen as
it may, with surprising resignation. The native, in general, will go
without food for many hours at a time without grumbling; and fish,
rice, betel-nut, and tobacco are his chief wants. Inebriety is almost
unknown, although strong drink (nipa wine) is plentiful.
In common with other races whose lives are almost exclusively passed
amid the ever-varying wonders of land and sea, Filipinos rarely express
any spontaneous admiration for the beauties of Nature, and seem little
sensible to any aspect thereof not directly associated with the human
interest of their calling. Few Asiatics, indeed, go into raptures
over lovely scenery as Europeans do, nor does "the gorgeous glamour
of the Orient" which we speak of so ecstatically strike them as such.
When a European is travelling, he never needs to trouble about where
or when his servant gets his food or where he sleeps--he looks after
that. When a native travels, he drops in amongst any group of his
fellow-countrymen whom he finds having their meal on the roadside,
and wherever he happens to be at nightfall, there he lies down to
sleep. He is never long in a great dilemma. If his hut is about to
fall, he makes it fast with bamboo and rattan-cane. If a vehicle breaks
down, a harness snaps, or his canoe leaks or upsets, he always has his
remedy at hand. He stoically bears misfortune of all kinds with the
greatest indifference, and without the least apparent emotion. Under
the eye of his master he is the most tractable of all beings. He never
(like the Chinese) insists upon doing things his own way, but tries to
do just as he is told, whether it be right or wrong. A native enters
one's service as a coachman, but if he be told to paddle a boat, cook a
meal, fix a lock, or do any other kind of labour possible to him, he is
quite agreeable. He knows the duties of no occupation with efficiency,
and he is perfectly willing to be a "jack-of-all-trades." Another good
feature is that he rarely, if ever, repudiates a debt, although he may
never pay it. So long as he gets his food and fair treatment, and his
stipulated wages in advance, he is content to act as a general-utility
man; lodging he will find for himself. If not pressed too hard, he will
follow his superior like a faithful dog. If treated with kindness,
according to _European_ notions, he is lost. The native never looks
ahead; if left to himself, he will do all sorts of imprudent things,
from sheer want of reflection on the consequences, when, as he puts it,
"his head is hot" from excitement due to any cause.
On March 15, 1886, I was coming round the coast of Zambales in a small
steamer, in which I was the only saloon passenger. The captain, whom
I had known for years, found that one of the cabin servants had been
systematically pilfering for some time past. He ordered the steward
to cane him, and then told him to go to the upper deck and remain
there. He at once walked up the ladder and threw himself into the sea;
but the vessel stopped, a boat was lowered, and he was soon picked
up. Had he been allowed to reach the shore, he would have become
what is known as a _remontado_ and perhaps eventually a brigand,
for such is the beginning of many of them.
The thorough-bred native has no idea of organization on a large
scale, hence a successful revolution is not possible if confined to
his own class unaided by others, such as Creoles and foreigners. He
is brave, and fears no consequences when with or against his equals,
or if led by his superiors; but a conviction of superiority--moral
or physical--in the adversary depresses him. An excess of audacity
calms and overawes him rather than irritates him.
His admiration for bravery and perilous boldness is only equalled
by his contempt for cowardice and puerility, and this is really
the secret of the native's disdain for the Chinese race. Under good
European officers he makes an excellent soldier, and would follow
a brave leader to death; however, if the leader fell, he would at
once become demoralized. There is nothing he delights in more than
pillage, destruction, and bloodshed, and when once he becomes master
of the situation in an affray, there is no limit to his greed and
savage cruelty.
Yet, detesting order of any kind, military discipline is repugnant
to him, and, as in other countries where conscription is the law,
all kinds of tricks are resorted to to avoid it. On looking over the
deeds of an estate which I had purchased, I saw that two brothers,
each named Catalino Raymundo, were the owners at one time of a portion
of the land. I thought there must have been some mistake, but, on
close inquiry, I found that they were so named to dodge the Spanish
recruiting officers, who would not readily suppose there were two
Catalino Raymundos born of the same parents. As one Catalino Raymundo
had served in the army and the other was dead, no further secret was
made in the matter, and I was assured that this practice was common
among the poorest natives.
In November, 1887, a deserter from the new recruits was pursued
to Langca, a ward of Meycauáyan, Bulacan Province, where nearly
all the inhabitants rose up in his defence, the result being that
the Lieutenant of Cuadrilleros was killed and two of his men were
wounded. When the Civil Guard appeared on the spot, the whole ward
was abandoned.
According to the Spanish army regulations, a soldier cannot
be on sentinel duty for more than two hours at a time under any
circumstances. Cases have been known of a native sentinel having been
left at his post for a little over that regulation time, and to have
become phrenetic, under the impression that the two hours had long
since expired, and that he had been forgotten. In one case the man
had to be disarmed by force, but in another instance the sentinel
simply refused to give up his rifle and bayonet, and defied all who
approached him. Finally, an officer went with the colours of the
regiment in hand to exhort him to surrender his arms, adding that
justice would attend his complaint. The sentinel, however, threatened
to kill any one who should draw near, and the officer had no other
recourse open to him but to order a European soldier to climb up
behind the sentry-box and blow out the insubordinate native's brains.
In the seventies, a contingent of Philippine troops was sent to
assist the French in Tonquin, where they rendered very valuable
service. Indeed, some officers are of opinion that they did more to
quell the Tuh Duc rising than the French troops themselves. When in
the fray, they throw off their boots, and, barefooted, they rarely
falter. Even over mud and swamp, a native is almost as sure-footed
as a goat on the brink of a quarry. I have frequently been carried
for miles in a hammock by four natives and relays, through morassy
districts too dangerous to travel on horseback. They are great adepts
at climbing wherever it is possible for a human being to scale a
height; like monkeys, they hold as much with their feet as with their
hands; they ride any horse barebacked without fear; they are utterly
careless about jumping into the sea among the sharks, which sometimes
they will intentionally attack with knives, and I never knew a native
who could not swim. There are natives who dare dive for the caiman and
rip it up. If they meet with an accident, they bear it with supreme
resignation, simply exclaiming "_desgracia pá_"--it was a misfortune.
I can record with pleasure my happy recollection of many a
light-hearted, genial, and patient native who accompanied me on
my journeys in these Islands. Comparatively very few thorough-bred
natives travel beyond their own islands, although there is a constant
flow of half-castes to and from the adjacent colonies, Europe, etc.
The native is very slowly tempted to abandon the habits and traditional
customs of his forefathers, and his ambitionless felicity may be
envied by any true philosopher.
No one who has lived in the Colony for years could sketch the
real moral portrait of such a remarkable combination of virtues
and vices. The domesticated native's character is a succession of
surprises. The experience of each year modifies one's conclusions,
and the most exact definition of such an inscrutable being is, after
all, hypothetical. However, to a certain degree, the characteristic
indolence of these Islanders is less dependent on themselves
than on natural law, for the physical conditions surrounding them
undoubtedly tend to arrest their vigour of motion, energy of life,
and intellectual power.
The organic elements of the European differ widely from those of the
Philippine native, and each, for his own durability, requires his own
special environment. The half-breed partakes of both organisms, but has
the natural environment of the one. Sometimes artificial means--the
mode of life into which he is forced by his European parent--will
counteract in a measure natural law, but, left to himself, the tendency
will ever be towards an assimilation to the native. Original national
characteristics disappear in an exotic climate, and, in the course
of time, conform to the new laws of nature to which they are exposed.
It is an ascertained fact that the increase of energy introduced into
the Philippine native by blood mixture from Europe lasts only to the
second generation, whilst the effect remains for several generations
when there is a similarity of natural surroundings in the two races
crossed. Moreover, the peculiar physique of a Chinese or Japanese
progenitor is preserved in succeeding generations, long after the
Spanish descendant has merged into the conditions of his environment.
The Spanish Government strove in vain against natural law to
counteract physical conditions by favouring mixed marriages, [79]
but Nature overcomes man's law, and climatic influence forces its
conditions on the half-breed. Indeed, were it not for new supplies of
extraneous blood infusion, European characteristics would, in time,
become indiscernible among the masses. Even on Europeans themselves,
in defiance of their own volition, the new physical conditions and
the influence of climate on their mental and physical organisms
are perceptible after two or three decades of years' residence in
the mid-tropics.
All the natives of the domesticated type have distinct Malay, or
Malay-Japanese, or Mongol features--prominent cheek-bones, large
and lively eyes, and flat noses with dilated nostrils. They are,
on the average, of rather low stature, very rarely bearded, and of a
copper colour more or less dark. Most of the women have no distinct
line of hair on the forehead. Some there are with a frontal hairy
down extending to within an inch of the eyes, possibly a reversion
to a progenitor (the _Macacus radiata_) in whom the forehead had
not become quite naked, leaving the limit between the scalp and the
forehead undefined. The hair of both males and females stands out from
the skin like bristles, and is very coarse. The coarseness of the
female's hair is, however, more than compensated by its luxuriance;
for, provided she be in a normal state of health, up to the prime of
life the hair commonly reaches down to the waist, and occasionally
to the ankles. The women are naturally proud of this mark of beauty,
which they preserved by frequent washings with _gogo_ (q.v.) and the
use of cocoanut oil (q.v.). Hare-lip is common. Children, from their
birth, have a spot at the base of the vertebrae, thereby supporting the
theory of Professor Huxley's _Anthropidae_ sub-order--or man (_vide_
Professor Huxley's "An Introduction to the Classification of Animals,"
p. 99. Published 1869).
Marriages between natives are usually arranged by the parents of
the respective families. The nubile age of females is from about
11 years. The parents of the young man visit those of the maiden, to
approach the subject delicately in an oratorical style of allegory. The
response is in like manner shrouded with mystery, and the veil is only
thrown off the negotiations when it becomes evident that both parties
agree. Among the poorer classes, if the young man has no goods to
offer, it is frequently stipulated that he shall serve on probation
for an indefinite period in the house of his future bride,--as Jacob
served Laban to make Rachel his wife,--and not a few drudge for years
with this hope before them.
Sometimes, in order to secure service gratis, the elders of the
young woman will suddenly dismiss the young man after a prolonged
expectation, and take another _Catipad_. as he is called, on the
same terms. The old colonial legislation--"Leyes de Indias"--in vain
prohibited this barbarous ancient custom, and there was a modern
Spanish law (of which few availed themselves) which permitted the
intended bride to be "deposited" away from parental custody, whilst
the parents were called upon to show cause why the union should not
take place. However, it often happens that when Cupid has already
shot his arrow into the virginal breast, and the betrothed foresee
a determined opposition to their mutual hopes, they anticipate the
privileges of matrimony, and compel the bride's parents to countenance
their legitimate aspirations to save the honour of the family. _Honi
soit qui mal y pense_--they simply force the hand of a dictatorial
mother-in-law. The women are notably mercenary, and if, on the part
of the girl and her people, there be a hitch, it is generally on
the question of dollars when both parties are native. Of course,
if the suitor be European, no such question is raised--the ambition
of the family and the vanity of the girl being both satisfied by the
alliance itself.
When the proposed espousals are accepted, the donations _propter
nuptias_ are paid by the father of the bridegroom to defray the
wedding expenses, and often a dowry settlement, called in Tagálog
dialect "_bigaycaya_" is made in favour of the bride. Very rarely
the bride's property is settled on the husband. I never heard of such
a case. The Spanish laws relating to married persons' property were
quaint. If the husband were poor and the wife well-off, so they might
remain, notwithstanding the marriage. He, as a rule, became a simple
administrator of her possessions, and, if honest, often depended on
her liberality to supply his own necessities. If he became bankrupt
in a business in which he employed also her capital or possessions,
she ranked as a creditor of the second class under the "Commercial
Code." If she died, the poor husband, under no circumstances, by legal
right (unless under a deed signed before a notary) derived any benefit
from the fact of his having espoused a rich wife: her property passed
to their legitimate issue, or--in default thereof--to her nearest blood
relation. The children might be rich, and, but for their generosity,
their father might be destitute, whilst the law compelled him to
render a strict account to them of the administration of their property
during their minority. This fact has given rise to many lawsuits.
A married woman often signs her maiden name, sometimes adding "_de_
----" (her husband's surname). If she survives him, she again takes
up her _nomen ante nuptias_ amongst her old circle of friends,
and only adds "widow of ----" to show who she is to the public (if
she be in trade), or to those who have only known her as a married
woman. The offspring use both the parental surnames, the mother's
coming after the father's; hence it is the more prominent. Frequently,
in Spanish documents requiring the mention of a person's name in full,
the mother's maiden surname is revived.
Thus marriage, as I understand the spirit of the Spanish law, seems
to be a simple contract to legitimize and license procreation.
Up to the year 1844, only a minority of the christian natives had
distinctive family names. They were, before that date, known by certain
harsh ejaculations, and classification of families was uncared for
among the majority of the population. Therefore, in that year, a list
of Spanish surnames was sent to each parish priest, and every native
family had to adopt a separate appellation, which has ever since
been perpetuated. Hence one meets natives bearing illustrious names
such as Juan Salcedo, Juan de Austria, Rianzares, Ramon de Cabrera,
Pio Nono Lopez, and a great many Legaspis.
When a wedding among natives was determined upon, the betrothed went
to the priest--not necessarily together--kissed his hand, and informed
him of their intention. There was a tariff of marriage fees, but the
priest usually set this aside, and fixed his charges according to the
resources of the parties. This abuse of power could hardly be resisted,
as the natives have a radicate aversion to being married elsewhere than
in the village of the bride. The priest, too (not the bride), usually
had the privilege of "naming the day." The fees demanded were sometimes
enormous, the common result being that many couples merely cohabited
under mutual vows because they could not pay the wedding expenses.
The banns were verbally published after the benediction following
the conclusion of the Mass. In the evening, prior to the marriage,
it was compulsory on the couple to confess and obtain absolution from
the priest. The nuptials almost invariably took place after the first
Mass, between five and six in the morning, and those couples who were
spiritually prepared first presented themselves for Communion. Then an
acolyte placed over the shoulders of the bridal pair a thick mantle
or pall. The priest recited a short formula of about five minutes'
duration, put his interrogations, received the muttered responses, and
all was over. To the espoused, as they left the church, was tendered
a bowl of coin; the bridegroom passed a handful of the contents to
the bride, who accepted it and returned it to the bowl. This act was
symbolical of his giving to her his worldly goods. Then they left the
church with their friends, preserving that solemn, stoical countenance
common to all Malay natives. There was no visible sign of emotion
as they all walked off, with the most matter-of-fact indifference,
to the paternal abode. This was the custom under the Spaniards,
and it still largely obtains; the Revolution decreed civil marriage,
which the Americans have declared lawful, but not compulsory.
After the marriage ceremony the feast called the _Catapúsan_ [80]
begins. To this the vicar and headmen of the villages, the immediate
friends and relatives of the allied families, and any Europeans who
may happen to be resident or sojourning, are invited. The table is
spread, _à la Russe_, with all the good things procurable served at
the same time--sweetmeats predominating. Imported beer, Dutch gin,
chocolate, etc., are also in abundance. After the early repast, both
men and women are constantly being offered betel-nut to masticate,
and cigars or cigarettes, according to choice.
Meanwhile, the company is entertained by native dancers. Two at
a time--a young man and woman--stand _vis-à-vis_ and alternately
sing a love ditty, the burthen of the theme usually opening by
the regret of the young man that his amorous overtures have been
disregarded. Explanations follow, in the poetic dialogue, as the
parties dance around each other, keeping a slow step to the plaintive
strains of music. This is called the _Balítao_. It is most popular
in Visayas.
Another dance is performed by a young woman only. If well executed
it is extremely graceful. The girl begins singing a few words in an
ordinary tone, when her voice gradually drops to the _diminuendo_,
whilst her slow gesticulations and the declining vigour of the music
together express her forlornness. Then a ray of joy seems momentarily
to lighten her mental anguish; the spirited _crescendo_ notes gently
return; the tone of the melody swells; her measured step and action
energetically quicken--until she lapses again into resigned sorrow,
and so on alternately. Coy in repulse, and languid in surrender,
the _danseuse_ in the end forsakes her sentiment of melancholy for
elated passion.
The native dances are numerous. Another of the most typical, is that
of a girl writhing and dancing a _pas seul_ with a glass of water on
her head. This is known as the _Comítan_.
When Europeans are present, the bride usually retires into the
kitchen or a back room, and only puts in an appearance after repeated
requests. The conversation rarely turns upon the event of the meeting;
there is not the slightest outward manifestation of affection between
the newly-united couple, who, during the feast, are only seen together
by mere accident. If there are European guests, the repast is served
three times--firstly for the Europeans and headmen, secondly for
the males of less social dignity, and lastly for the women. Neither
at the table nor in the reception-room do the men and women mingle,
except for perhaps the first quarter of an hour after the arrival,
or whilst dancing continues.
About an hour after the mid-day meal, those who are not lodging at the
house return to their respective residences to sleep the _siesta_. On
an occasion like this--at a _Catapúsan_ given for any reason--native
outsiders, from anywhere, always invade the kitchen in a mob, lounge
around doorways, fill up corners, and drop in for the feast uninvited,
and it is usual to be liberally complaisant to all comers.
As a rule, the married couple live with the parents of one or the
other, at least until the family inconveniently increases. In old
age, the elder members of the families come under the protection
of the younger ones quite as a matter of course. In any case, a
newly-married pair seldom reside alone. Relations from all parts
flock in. Cousins, uncles and aunts, of more or less distant grade,
hang on to the recently-established household, if it be not extremely
poor. Even when a European marries a native woman, she is certain to
introduce some vagabond relation--a drone to hive with the bees--a
condition quite inevitable, unless the husband be a man of specially
determined character.
Death at childbirth is very common, and it is said that 25 per cent. of
the new-born children die within a month.
Among the lowest classes, whilst a woman is lying-in, the husband
closes all the windows to prevent the evil spirit (_asuan_) entering;
sometimes he will wave about a stick or bowie-knife at the door, or on
top of the roof, for the same purpose. Even among the most enlightened,
at the present day, the custom of shutting the windows is inherited
from their superstitious forefathers, probably in ignorance of the
origin of this usage.
In Spanish times it was considered rather an honour than otherwise
to have children by a priest, and little secret was made of it.
In October, 1888, I was in a village near Manila, at the bedside
of a sick friend, when the curate entered. He excused himself for
not having called earlier, by explaining that "Turing" had sent him
a message informing him that as the vicar (a native) had gone to
Manila, he might take charge of the church and parish. "Is 'Turing'
an assistant curate?" I inquired. My friend and the pastor were so
convulsed with laughter at the idea, that it was quite five minutes
before they could explain that the intimation respecting the parochial
business emanated from the absent vicar's _bonne amie_.
Consanguine marriages are very common, and perhaps this accounts for
the low intellect and mental debility perceptible in many families.
Poor parents offer their girls to Europeans for a loan of money,
and they are admitted under the pseudonym of sempstress or
housekeeper. Natives among themselves do not kiss--they smell each
other, or rather, they place the nose and lip on the cheek and draw
a long breath.
Marriages between Spaniards and pure native women, although less
frequent than formerly, still take place. Since 1899 many Americans,
too, have taken pure native wives. It is difficult to apprehend an
alliance so incongruous, there being no affinity of ideas, the only
condition in common being, that they are both human beings professing
Christianity. The husband is either drawn towards the level of
the native by this heterogeneous relationship, or, in despair of
remedying the error of a passing passion, he practically ignores
his wife in his own social connections. Each forms then a distinct
circle of friends of his, or her, own selection, whilst the woman is
but slightly raised above her own class by the white man's influence
and contact. There are some exceptions, but I have most frequently
observed in the houses of Europeans married to native women in the
provinces, that the wives make the kitchen their chief abode, and are
only seen by the visitor when some domestic duty requires them to move
about the house. Familiarity breeds contempt, and these _mésalliances_
diminish the dignity of the superior race by reducing the birth-origin
of both parents to a common level in their children.
The Spanish half-breeds and Creoles constitute a very influential
body. A great number of them are established in trade in Manila and
the provinces. Due to their European descent, more or less distant,
they are of quicker perception, greater tact, and gifted with wider
intellectual faculties than the pure Oriental class. Also, the Chinese
half-breeds,--a caste of Chinese fathers and Philippine mothers,--who
form about one-sixth of the Manila population, are shrewder than
the natives of pure extraction, their striking characteristic being
distrust and suspicion of another's intentions. It is a curious
fact that the Chinese half-caste speaks with as much contempt of
the Chinaman as the thorough-bred Filipino does, and would fain
hide his paternal descent. There are numbers of Spanish half-breeds
fairly well educated, and just a few of them very talented. Many
of them have succeeded in making pretty considerable fortunes in
their negotiations, as middlemen, between the provincial natives
and the European commercial houses. Their true social position is
often an equivocal one, and the complex question has constantly to
be confronted whether to regard a Spanish demi-sang from a native or
European standpoint. Among themselves they are continually struggling
to attain the respect and consideration accorded to the superior class,
whilst their connexions and purely native relations link them to the
other side. In this perplexing mental condition, we find them on the
one hand striving in vain to disown their affinity to the inferior
races, and on the other hand, jealous of their true-born European
acquaintances. A morosity of disposition is the natural outcome. Their
character generally is evasive and vacillating. They are captious,
fond of litigation, and constantly seeking subterfuges. They appear
always dissatisfied with their lot in life, and inclined to foster
grievances against whoever may be in office over them. Pretentious
in the extreme, they are fond of pomp and paltry show, and it is
difficult to trace any popular movement, for good or for evil,
without discovering a half-breed initiator, or leader, of one caste
or another. They are locally denominated _Mestizos_.
The Jesuit Father, Pedro Murillo Velarde, at p. 272 of his work
on this Colony, expressed his opinion of the political-economical
result of mixed marriages to the following effect:--"Now," he says,
"we have a querulous, discontented population of half-castes, who,
sooner or later, will bring about a distracted state of society, and
occupy the whole force of the Government to stamp out the discord." How
far the prophecy was fulfilled will be seen in another chapter.
Being naturally prone to superstitious beliefs, the Islanders accepted,
without doubting, all the fantastic tales which the early missionaries
taught them. Miraculous crosses healed the sick, cured the plague,
and scared away the locusts. Images, such as the _Holy Child of Bangi,_
relieved them of all worldly sufferings. To this day they revere many
of these objects, which are still preserved.
The most ancient miraculous image in these Islands appears to be the
_Santo Nino de Cebú_--the Holy Child of Cebú. It is recorded that on
July 28, 1565, an image of the Child Jesus was found on Cebú Island
shore by a Basque soldier named Juan de Camus. It was venerated and
kept by the Austin friars. Irreverent persons have alleged it was a
pagan idol. Against this, it may be argued that the heathen Cebúanos
were not known to have been idolaters. In 1627 a fire occurred
in Cebú city, when the Churches of Saint Nicholas and of the Holy
Child were burnt down. The image was saved, and temporarily placed
in charge of the Recoleto friars. A fire also took place on the site
of the first cross erected on the island by Father Martin de Rada,
the day Legaspi landed, and it is said that this cross, although made
of bamboo, was not consumed. There now stands an Oratory, wherein
on special occasions is exposed the original cross. Close by is the
modern Church of the Holy Child.
In June, 1887, the Prior of the convent conducted me to the strong-room
where the wonderful image is kept. The Saint is of wood, about fifteen
inches high, and laden with silver trinkets, which have been presented
on different occasions. When exposed to public view, it has the
honours of field-marshal accorded to it. It is a mystic deity with
ebon features--so different from the lovely Child presented to us
on canvas by the great masters! During the feast held in its honour
(January 20), pilgrims from the remotest districts of the island and
from across the seas come to purify their souls at the shrine of "The
Holy Child." In the same room was a beautiful image of the Madonna,
besides two large tin boxes containing sundry arms, legs, and heads
of Saints, with their robes in readiness for adjustment on procession
days. The patron of Cebú City is Saint Vidal.
The legend of the celestial protector of Manila is not less
interesting. It is related that in Dilao (now called Paco), near
Manila, a wooden image of Saint Francis de Assisi, which was in the
house of a native named Alonso Cuyapit, was seen to weep so copiously
that many cloths were moistened by its tears. The image, with its hands
outspread during three hours, invoked God's blessing on Manila. And
then, on closing its hands, it grasped a cross and skull. Vows were
made to the Saint, who was declared protector of the capital, and
the same image is now to be seen in the Franciscan Church, under
the appellation of _San Francisco de las lágrimas_--"Saint Francis
of Tears."
Up to the seventies of last century, a disgusting spectacle used to be
annually witnessed at the Church of San Miguel (Manila) on December 8;
it was a realistic representation of the Immaculate Conception!
"Our Lady of Cagsaysay," near Taal (Batangas), has been revered for
many years both by Europeans and natives. So enthusiastic was the
belief in the miraculous power of this image, that the galleons,
when passing the Batangas coast on their way to and from Mexico,
were accustomed to fire a salute from their guns (_vide_ pp. 18,
19). This image was picked up by a native in his fishing-net, and
he placed it in a cave, where it was discovered by other natives,
who imagined they saw many extraordinary lights around it. According
to the local legend, they heard sweet sonorous music proceeding from
the same spot, and the image came forward and spoke to a native woman,
who had brought her companions to adore the Saint.
The history of the many shrines all over the Colony would well fill
a volume; however, by far the most popular one is that of the Virgin
of Antipolo--_Nuestra Señora de Buen Viaje y de la Paz_, "Our Lady
of Good Voyage and Peace."
This image is said to have wrought many miracles. It was first brought
from Acapulco (Mexico) in 1626 in the State galleon, by Juan Niño de
Tabora, who was appointed Gov.-General of these Islands (1626-32) by
King Philip IV. The Saint, it is alleged, had encountered numberless
reverses between that time and the year 1672, since which date it has
been safely lodged in the Parish Church of Antipolo--a village in the
old Military District of Mórong (Rizal Province)--in the custody of
the Austin friars. In the month of May, thousands of people repair to
this shrine; indeed, this village of 3,800 inhabitants (diminished to
2,800 in 1903) chiefly depends upon the pilgrims for its existence,
for the land within the jurisdiction of Antipolo is all mountainous
and very limited in extent. The priests also do a very good trade in
prints of Saints, rosaries, etc., for the sale of which, in Spanish
times, they used to open a shop during the feast inside and just in
front of the convent entrance. The total amount of money spent in the
village by visitors during the pilgrimage has been roughly computed
to be P30,000. They come from all parts of the Islands.
The legends of the Saint are best described in a pamphlet published
in Manila, [81] from which I take the following information.
The writer says that the people of Acapulco (Mexico) were loth to
part with their Holy Image, but the saintly Virgin herself, desirous
of succouring the inhabitants of the Spanish Indies, smoothed all
difficulties. During her first voyage, in the month of March, 1626,
a tempest arose, which was calmed by the Virgin, and all arrived
safely in the galleon at the shores of Manila. She was then carried
in procession to the Cathedral, whilst the church bells tolled and
the artillery thundered forth salutes of welcome. A solemn Mass was
celebrated, which all the religious communities, civil authorities,
and a multitude of people attended.
Six years afterwards the Gov.-General Juan Niño de Tabora died. By
his will he intrusted the Virgin to the care of the Jesuits, whilst
a church was being built under the direction of Father Juan Salazár
for her special reception. During the erection of this church, the
Virgin often descended from the altar and exhibited herself amongst the
flowery branches of a tree, called by the natives Antipolo (_Artocarpus
incisa_). The tree itself was thenceforth regarded as a precious relic
by the natives, who, leaf by leaf and branch by branch, were gradually
carrying it off. Then Father Salazar decreed that the tree-trunk should
serve for a pedestal to the Divine Miraculous Image--hence the title
"Virgin of Antipolo."
In 1639 the Chinese rebelled against the Spanish authority (_vide_
p. 115). In their furious march through the ruins and the blood of
their victims, and amidst the wailing of the crowd, they attacked the
Sanctuary wherein reposed the Virgin. Seizing the Holy Image, they
cast it into the flames, and when all around was reduced to ashes,
there stood the Virgin of Antipolo, resplendent, with her hair,
her lace, her ribbons and adornments intact, and her beautiful body
of brass without wound or blemish! Passionate at seeing frustrated
their designs to destroy the deified protectress of the Christians,
a wanton infidel stabbed her in the face, and all the resources of
art have ever failed to heal the lasting wound. Again the Virgin
was enveloped in flames, which hid the appalling sight of her
burning entrails. Now the Spanish troops arrived, and fell upon
the heretical marauders with great slaughter; then, glancing with
trembling anxiety upon the scene of the outrage, behold! with glad
astonishment they descried the Holy Image upon a smouldering pile
of ashes--unhurt! With renewed enthusiasm, the Spanish warriors bore
away the Virgin on their shoulders in triumph, and Sebastian Hurtado
de Corcuera, the Gov.-General at the time, had her conveyed to Cavite
to be the patroness of the faithful upon the high seas.
A galleon arrived at Cavite, and being unable to go into port, the
commander anchored off at a distance. Then the new Gov.-General,
Diego Fajardo (1644-53), sent the Virgin on board, and, by her help,
a passage was found for the vessel to enter.
Later on, twelve Dutch warships appeared off Marivéles, the
northwestern extremity of Manila Bay. They had come to attack Cavite,
and in their hour of danger the Spaniards appealed to the Virgin,
who gave them a complete victory over the Dutchmen, causing them
to flee, with their commander mortally wounded. During the affray,
the Virgin had been taken away for safety on board the _San Diego_,
commanded by Cépeda. In 1650 this vessel returned, and the pious
prelate, José Millan Poblete, [82] thought he perceived clear
indications of an eager desire on the part of the Virgin to retire to
her Sanctuary. The people, too, clamoured for the Saint, attributing
the many calamities with which they were afflicted at that period
to her absence from their shores. Assailed by enemies, frequently
threatened by the Dutch, lamenting the loss of several galleons,
and distressed by a serious earthquake, their only hope reposed in
the beneficent aid of the Virgin of Antipolo.
But the galleon _San Francisco Xavier_ feared to make the journey
to Mexico without the saintly support, and for the sixth time the
Virgin crossed the Pacific Ocean. In Acapulco the galleon lay at
anchor until March, 1653, when the newly-appointed Gov.-General,
Sabiniano Manrique de Lara, Archbishop Miguel Poblete, Father
Rodrigo Cárdenas, Bishop-elect of Cagayán, and many other passengers
embarked and set sail for Manila. Their sufferings during the voyage
were horrible. Almost overcome by a violent storm, the ship became
unmanageable. Rain poured in torrents, whilst her decks were washed by
the surging waves, and all was on the point of utter destruction. In
this plight the Virgin was exhorted, and not in vain, for at her
command the sea lessened its fury, the wind calmed, black threatening
clouds dispersed, all the terrors of the voyage ceased, and under a
beautiful blue sky a fair wind wafted the galleon safely to the port
of Cavite.
These circumstances gained for the Saint the title of "Virgin of Good
Voyage and Peace"; and the sailors,--who gratefully acknowledged that
their lives were saved by her sublime intercession,--followed by the
ecclesiastical dignitaries and military chiefs, carried the image to
her retreat in Antipolo (September 8, 1653), where it was intended
she should permanently remain. However, deprived of the succour of
the Saint, misfortunes again overtook the galleons. Three of them
were lost, and the writer of the brochure to which I refer supposes
(Chap. iv.) that perchance the sea, suffering from the number of
furrows cut by the keels of the ships, had determined to take a fierce
revenge by swallowing them up!
Once more, therefore, the Virgin condescended to accompany a galleon
to Mexico, bringing her back safely to Philippine shores in 1672.
This was the Virgin's last sea voyage. Again, and for ever, she was
conveyed by the joyous multitude to her resting-place in Antipolo
Church, and on her journey thither, there was not a flower, adds the
chronicler, which did not greet her by opening a bud--not a mountain
pigeon which remained in silence, whilst the breezes and the rivulets
poured forth their silent murmurings of ecstasy. Saintly guardian
of the soul, dispersing mundane evils!--no colours, the chronicler
tells us, can paint the animation of the faithful; no discourse can
describe the consolation of the pilgrims in their adoration at the
Shrine of the Holy Virgin of Antipolo.
Yet the village of Antipolo and its neighbourhood was, in Spanish
times, the centre of brigandage, the resort of murderous highwaymen,
the focus of crime. What a strange contrast to the sublime virtues
of the immortal divinity enclosed within its Sanctuary!
On November 26, 1904, this miraculous Image was temporarily removed
from Antipolo to Manila for the celebration of the feast of the
Immaculate Conception. Carried by willing hands to the place of
embarkation, it made the voyage to the capital, down the Pasig
River, in a gorgeously decorated barge, towed by a steam launch,
escorted by hundreds of floating craft and over 20,000 natives,
marching along the river banks in respectful accompaniment. The next
day a procession of about 35,000 persons followed the Virgin to the
Cathedral of Manila, where she was enshrined, awaiting the great event
of December 8. Subsequently she was restored to her shrine at Antipolo.
The most lucrative undertaking in the Colony is that of a shrine. It
yields all gain, without possible loss. Among the most popular of
these "Miraculous Saint Shows" was that of Gusi, belonging to the
late parish priest of Ilug, in Negros Island. At Gusi, half an hour's
walk from the Father's parish church, was enthroned San Joaquin,
who, for a small consideration, consoled the faithful or relieved
them of iheir sufferings. His spouse, Santa Ana, having taken up
her residence in the town of Molo (Yloilo Province), was said to
have been visited by San Joaquin once a year. He was absent on the
journey at least a fortnight, but the waters in the neighbourhood of
the Shrine being sanctified the _clientèle_ was not dispersed. Some
sceptics have dared to doubt whether San Joaquin really paid this
visit to his saintly wife, and alleged that his absence was feigned,
firstly to make his presence longed for, and secondly to remove the
cobwebs from his hallowed brow, and give him a wash and brush up for
the year. The Shrine paid well for years--every devotee leaving his
mite. At the time of my pilgrimage there, the holy Father's son was
the petty-governor of the same town of Ilug.
Shrine-owners are apparently no friends of free trade. In 1888 there
was a great commotion amongst them when it was discovered that a
would-be competitor and a gownsman had conspired, in Pampanga Province,
to establish a Miraculous Saint, by concealing an image in a field
in order that it should "make itself manifest to the faithful,"
and thenceforth become a source of income.
It is notorious that in a church near Manila, a few years ago,
an image was made to move the parts of its body as the reverend
preacher exhorted it in the course of his sermon. When he appealed
to the Saint, it wagged its head or extended its arms, whilst the
female audience wept and wailed. Such a scandalous disturbance did
it provoke that the exhibition was even too monstrous for the clergy
themselves, and the Archbishop prohibited it. But religion has many
wealth-producing branches. In January, 1889, a friend of mine showed
me an account rendered by the Superior of the Jesuits' School for
the education of his sons, each of whom was charged with one peso as
a gratuity to the Pope, to induce him to canonize a deceased member
of their Order. I have been most positively assured by friends, whose
good faith I ought not to doubt, that San Pascual Bailón really has,
on many occasions, had compassion on barren women (their friends)
and given them offspring. Jose Rizal, in his "Noli me tangere" hints
that the real Pascual was a friar.
Trading upon the credulity of devout enthusiasts by fetishism and
shrine quackery is not altogether confined to the ecclesiastics. A
Spanish layman in Yloilo, some few years ago, when he was an official
of the prison, known as the "Cotta," conceived the idea of declaring
that the Blessed Virgin and Child Jesus had appeared in the prison
well, where they took a bath and disappeared. When, at length,
the belief became popular, hundreds of natives went there to get
water from the well, and the official imposed a tax on the pilgrims,
whereby he became possessed of a modest fortune, and owned two of
the best houses in the Square of Yloilo.
The Feast of Tigbáuang (near Yloilo), which takes place in January,
is also much frequented on account of the miracles performed by
the patron Saint of the town. The faith in the power of this minor
divinity to dispel bodily suffering is so deeply rooted that members
of the most enlightened families of Yloilo and the neighbouring towns
go to Tigbáuang simply to attend High Mass, and return at once. I
have seen steamers entering Yloilo from this feast so crowded with
passengers that there was only standing room for them.
An opprobrious form of religious imposture--perhaps the most
contemptible--which frequently offended the public eye, before the
American advent, was the practice of prowling about with doll-saints
in the streets and public highways. A vagrant, too lazy to earn an
honest subsistence, procured a licence from the monks to hawk about a
wooden box containing a doll or print covered by a pane of glass. This
he offered to hold before the nose of any ignorant passer-by who was
willing to pay for the boon of kissing the glass!
During Holy Week, a few years ago, the captain of the Civil Guard
in Tayabas Province went to the town of Atimonan, and saw natives
in the streets almost in a state of nudity doing penance "for the
wounds of Our Lord." They were actually beating themselves with
flails, some of which were made of iron chain, and others of rope
with thongs of rattan-cane. Having confiscated the flails--one of
which he gave to me--he effectually assisted the fanatics in their
penitent castigation. Alas! to what excesses will faith, unrestrained
by reason, bring one!
The result of tuition in mystic influences is sometimes manifested
in the appearance of native Santones--indolent scamps who roam
about in remote villages, feigning the possession of supernatural
gifts, the faculty of saving souls, and the healing art, with the
object of living at the expense of the ignorant. I never happened
to meet more than one of these creatures--an escaped convict named
Apolonio, a native of Cabuyao (Laguna), who, assuming the character
of a prophet and worker of miracles, had fled to the neighbourhood
of San Pablo village. I have often heard of them in other places,
notably in Cápis Province, where the Santones were vigorously pursued
by the Civil Guard, and as recently as May, 1904, a notorious humbug
of this class, styling himself _Pope Isio, alias Nazarenong Gala_,
was arrested in West Negros and punished under American authority.
The Spanish clergy were justifiably zealous in guarding the Filipinos
from a knowledge of other doctrines which would only lead them to
immeasurable bewilderment. Hence all the civilized natives were
Roman Catholics exclusively. The strict obedience to _one_ system
of Christianity, even in its grossly perverted form, had the effect
desired by the State, of bringing about social unity to an advanced
degree. Yet, so far as I have observed, the native seems to understand
extremely little of the "inward and spiritual grace" of religion. He
is so material and realistic, so devoid of all conception of things
abstract, that his ideas rarely, if ever, soar beyond the contemplation
of the "outward and visible signs" of christian belief. The symbols
of faith and the observance of religious rites are to him religion
itself. He also confounds morality with religion. Natives go to church
because it is the custom. Often if a native cannot put on a clean
shirt, he abstains from going to Mass. The petty-governor of a town
was compelled to go to High Mass accompanied by his "ministry." In
some towns the _Barangay Chiefs_ were fined or beaten if they were
absent from church on Sundays and certain Feast Days. [83]
As to the women, little or no pressure was necessary to oblige them
to attend Mass; many of them pass half their existence between private
devotion and the confessional.
The parish priest of Lipa (Batangas) related to a friend of mine that
having on one occasion distributed all his stock of pictures of the
Saints to those who had come to see him on parochial business, he
had to content the last suppliant with an empty raisin-box, without
noticing that on the lid there was a coloured print of Garibaldi. Later
on Garibaldi's portrait was seen in a hut in one of the suburbs with
candles around it, being adored as a Saint.
A curious case of native religious philosophy was reported in a
Manila newspaper. [84] A milkman, accused by one of his customers of
having adulterated the milk, of course denied it at first, and then,
yielding to more potent argument than words, he confessed that he had
diluted the milk with _holy water from the church fonts_, for at the
same time that he committed the sin he was penitent.
Undoubtedly Roman Catholicism appears to be the form of Christianity
most successful in proselytizing uncivilized races, which are impressed
more through their eyes than their understanding. If the grandeur of
the ritual, the magnificence of the processions, the lustre of the
church vessels and the images themselves have never been understood
by the masses in the strictly symbolic sense in which they appeal
to us, at least they have had their influence in drawing millions to
civilization and to a unique uniformity of precept, the practice of
which it is beyond all human power to control.
For Music the native has an inherent passion. Musicians are to be found
in every village, and even among the very poorest classes. Before
the Revolution there was scarcely a parish, however remote, without
its orchestra, and this natural taste was laudably encouraged by the
priests. Some of these bands acquired great local fame, and were sought
for wherever there was a feast miles away. The players seemed to enjoy
it as much as the listeners, and they would keep at it for hours at a
time, as long as their bodily strength lasted. Girls from six years
of age learn to play the harp almost by instinct, and college girls
quickly learn the piano. There are no native composers--they are but
imitators. There is an absence of sentimental feeling in the execution
of set music (which is all foreign), and this is the only drawback to
their becoming fine instrumentalists. For the same reason, classical
music is very little in vogue among the Philippine people, who prefer
dance pieces and ballad accompaniments. In fact, a native musical
performance is so void of soul and true conception of harmony that
at a feast it is not an uncommon thing to hear three bands playing
close to each other at the same time; and the mob assembled seem to
enjoy the confusion of the melody! There are no Philippine vocalists
worth hearing.
Travelling through the Laguna Province in 1882 I was impressed by
the ingenuity of the natives in their imitation of European musical
instruments. Just an hour before I had emerged from a dense forest,
abundantly adorned with exquisite foliage, and where majestic trees,
flourishing in gorgeous profusion, afforded a gratifying shelter from
the scorching sun. Not a sound was heard but the gentle ripple of a
limpid stream, breaking over the boulders on its course towards the
ravine below. But it was hardly the moment to ponder on the poetic
scene, for fatigue and hunger had almost overcome sentimentality,
and I got as quickly as I could to the first resting-place. This I
found to be a native cane-grower's plantation bungalow, where quite
a number of persons was assembled, the occasion of the meeting being
the baptism and benediction of the sugar-cane mill. Before I was
near enough, however, to be seen by the party--for it was nearly
sunset--I heard the sound of distant music floating through the
air. Such a strange occurrence excited my curiosity immensely, and
I determined to find out what it all meant. I soon discovered that
it was a bamboo band returning from the feast of the "baptism of the
mill." Each instrument was made of bamboo on a semi-European model,
and the players were merely farm-labourers.
Philippine musicians have won fame outside their own country. Some
years ago there was a band of them in Shanghai and another in
Cochin China on contract. It was reported, too, that the band of the
Constabulary sent to the St. Louis Exhibition in 1904 was the delight
of the people in Honolulu, where they touched _en route_.
Slavery was prohibited by law as far back as the reign of Philip
II.; [85] it nevertheless still exists in an occult form among
the natives. Rarely, if ever, do its victims appeal to the law
for redress, firstly, because of their ignorance, and secondly,
because the untutored class have an innate horror of resisting
anciently-established custom, and it would never occur to them
to do so. Moreover, in the time of the Spaniards, the numberless
_procuradores_ and _pica-pleitos_--touting solicitors had no interest
in taking up cases so profitless to themselves. Under the pretext
of guaranteeing a loan, parents readily sell their children (male or
female) into bondage. The child is handed over to work until the loan
is repaid; but as the day of restitution of the advance never arrives,
neither does the liberty of the youthful victim. Among themselves
it was a law, and is still a practised custom, for the debts of
the parents to pass on to the children, and, as I have said before,
debts are never repudiated by them. Slavery, in an overt form, now
only exists among some wild tribes and the Moros.
Education was almost exclusively under the control of the friars. Up
to the year 1844 anything beyond religious tuition was reserved
for the Spanish youth, the half-castes, and the children of
those in office. Among the many reforms introduced in the time of
Gov.-General Narciso Claveria (1844-49), that of extending Education
to the provincial parishes was a failure. In the middle of the reign
of Isabella II. (about 1850) it was the exclusive privilege of the
classes mentioned and the native petty aristocracy, locally designated
the _gente ilustrada_ and the _pudientes_ (Intellectuals and people
of means and influence). Education, thus limited, divided the people
into two separate castes, as distinct as the ancient Roman citizen and
the plebeian. Residing chiefly in the ports open to foreign trade,
the Intellectuals acquired wealth, possessed rich estates and fine
houses artistically adorned. Blessed with all the comforts which
money could procure and the refinement resulting from education, they
freely associated and intermarried with the Spaniards, whose easy grace
and dignified manners they gradually acquired and retain, to a great
extent, to the present day. The other caste--the Illiterates--were
dependents of the Intellectuals. Without mental training, with few
wants, and little expenses, they were as contented, in their sphere,
as the upper class were in theirs. Like their masters, they had their
hopes, but they never knew what misery was, as one understands it in
Europe, and in this felicitous, ambitionless condition, they never
urgently demanded education, even for their children. The movement came
from higher quarters, and during the O'Donnell ministry a Royal Decree
was sent from Madrid establishing schools throughout the provinces.
On the banks of the Pasig River there was a training college for
schoolmasters, who were drafted off to the villages with a miserable
stipend, to teach the juvenile rustics. But the governmental system
of centralization fell somewhat hard on the village teacher. For
instance, I knew one who received a monthly salary of 16 pesos,
and every month he had to spend two of them to travel to Manila and
back to receive the money--an outlay equal to 12 1/2 per cent. of his
total income. For such a wretched pittance great things were not to
be expected of the teacher, even though he had had a free hand in his
work. Other circumstances of greater weight contributed to keep the
standard of education among the common townfolk very low; in some
places to abolish it totally. The parish priests were _ex-officio_
Inspectors of Schools for primary instruction, wherein it was their
duty to see that the Spanish language was taught. The old "Laws
of the Indies" provided that christian doctrine should be taught
to the heathen native in Spanish. [86] Several decrees confirming
that law were issued from time to time, but their fulfilment did
not seem to suit the policy of the friars. On June 30, 1887, the
Gov.-General published another decree with the same object, and sent
a communication to the Archbishop to remind him of this obligation
of his subordinates, and the urgency of its strict observance. But it
had no effect whatever, and the poor-class villagers were only taught
to gabble off the christian doctrine by rote, for it suited the friar
to stimulate that peculiar mental condition in which belief precedes
understanding. The school-teacher, being subordinate to the inspector,
had no voice in the matter, and was compelled to follow the views of
the priest. Few Spaniards took the trouble to learn native dialects (of
which there are about 30), and only a small percentage of the natives
can speak intelligible Spanish. There is no literature in dialect; the
few odd compositions in Tagalog still extant are wanting in the first
principles of literary style. There were many villages with untrained
teachers who could not speak Spanish; there were other villages with
no schools at all, hence no preparation whatever for municipal life.
If the friars had agreed to the instruction of the townfolk through the
medium of Spanish, as a means to the attainment of higher culture, one
could well have understood their reluctance to teach it to the rural
labourers, because it is obvious to any one who knows the character
of this class that the knowledge of a foreign language would unfit
them for agricultural labour and the lower occupations, and produce
a new social problem. Even this class, however, might have been
mentally improved by elementary books translated into dialect. But,
unfortunately, the friars were altogether opposed to the education
of the masses, whether through dialect or Spanish, in order to hold
them in ignorant subjection to their own will, and the result was
that the majority grew up as untutored as when they were born.
Home discipline and training of manners were ignored, even in
well-to-do families. Children were left without control, and by
excessive indulgence allowed to do just as they pleased; hence they
became ill-behaved and boorish.
Planters of means, and others who could afford it, sent their sons and
daughters to private schools, or to the colleges under the direction
of the priests in Manila, Jaro (Yloilo Province), or Cebú. A few--very
few--sent their sons to study in Europe, or in Hong-Kong.
According to the Budget of 1888 the State contributed to the expense
of Education, in that year, as follows, viz.:--
P. cts.
Schools and Colleges for high-class education in Manila,
including Navigation, Drawing, Painting, Book-keeping,
Languages, History, Arts and Trades, Natural History
Museum and Library and general instruction. 86,450 00
School of Agriculture (including 10 schools and model
farms in 10 Provinces) 113,686 64
General Expenses of Public Instruction, including National
Schools in the Provinces 38,513 70
==========
P238,650 34
The teaching offered to students in Manila was very advanced, as will
be seen from the following Syllabus of Education in the Municipal
Athenæum of the Jesuits:--
Agriculture. Geometry. Philosophy.
Algebra. Greek. Physics and Chemistry.
Arithmetic. History. Rhetoric and Poetry.
Commerce. Latin. Spanish Classics.
Geography. Mechanics. Spanish Composition.
English. Natural History. Topography.
French. Painting. Trigonometry.
In the highest Girls' School--the Santa Isabel College--the following
was the curriculum, viz.:--
Arithmetic. Geology. Philippine History.
Drawing. Geometry. Physics.
Dress-cutting. History of Spain. Reading.
French. Music. Sacred History.
Geography. Needlework. Spanish Grammar.
There were also (for girls) the Colleges of Santa Catalina, Santa
Rosa, La Concordia, the Municipal School, etc. A few were sent to
the Italian Convent in Hong-Kong.
A college known as Saint Thomas' was founded in Manila by Fray Miguel
de Benavides, third Archbishop of Manila, between the years 1603
and 1610. He contributed to it his library and P 1,000, to which
was added a donation by the Bishop of Nueva Segovia of P 3,000 and
his library. In 1620 it already had professors and masters under
Government auspices. It received three Papal Briefs for 10 years
each, permitting students to graduate in Philosophy and Theology. It
was then raised to the status of a University in the time of Philip
IV. by Papal Bull of November 20, 1645. The first rector of Saint
Thomas' University was Fray Martin Real de la Cruz. In the meantime,
the Jesuits' University had been established. Until 1645 it was the
only place of learning superior to primary education, and conferred
degrees. The Saint Thomas' University (under the direction of Dominican
friars) now disputed the Jesuits' privilege to confer degrees, claiming
for themselves exclusive right by Papal Bull. A lawsuit followed, and
the Supreme Court of Manila decided in favour of Saint Thomas'. The
Jesuits appealed to the King against this decision. The Supreme Council
of the Indies was consulted, and revoked the decision of the Manila
Supreme Court, so that the two Universities continued to give degrees
until the Jesuits were expelled from the Colony in 1768. From 1785
Saint Thomas' University was styled the "Royal University," and was
declared to rank equally with the Peninsular Universities.
There were also the Dominican College of San Juan de Letran, founded
in the middle of the 17th century, the Jesuit Normal School, the
Convent of Mercy for Orphan Students, and the College of Saint
Joseph. This last was founded in 1601, under the direction of the
Jesuits. King Philip V. gave it the title of "Royal College," and
allowed an escutcheon to be erected over the entrance. The same king
endowed three professorial chairs with P 10,000 each. Latterly it was
governed by the Rector of the University, whilst the administration
was confided to a licentiate in pharmacy.
At the time of the Spanish evacuation, therefore, the only university
in the City of Manila was that of Saint Thomas, which was empowered to
issue diplomas of licentiate in law, theology, medicine, and pharmacy
to all successful candidates, and to confer degrees of LL.D. The
public investiture was presided over by the Rector of the University, a
Dominican friar; and the speeches preceding and following the ceremony,
which was semi-religious, were made in the Spanish language.
In connection with this institution there was the modern Saint Thomas'
College for preparing students for the University.
The Nautical School naturally stood outside the sphere of
ecclesiastical control. Established in 1839 in Calle Cabildo (walled
city), its purpose was to instruct youths in the science of navigation
and prepare them for the merchant service within the waters of the
Archipelago and the adjacent seas. During the earthquake of 1863 the
school building was destroyed. It was then re-established in Calle
San Juan de Letran, subsequently located in Calle del Palacio, and
was finally (in 1898) removed from the walled city to the business
quarter of Binondo. Special attention was given to the teaching of
mathematics, and considerable sums of money were allocated, from time
to time, for the equipment of this technical centre of learning.
One of the most interesting and amusing types of the native was
the average college student from the provinces. After a course
of two, three, up to eight years, he learnt to imitate European
dress and ape Western manners; to fantastically dress his hair;
to wear patent-leather shoes, jewellery, and a latest-fashioned
felt hat adjusted carefully towards one side of his head. He went
to the theatre, drove a "tilbury," and attended native _réunions_,
to deploy his abilities before the _beau sexe_ of his class. During
his residence in the capital, he was supposed to learn, amongst
other subjects, Latin, Divinity, Philosophy, and sometimes Theology,
preparatory, in many cases, to succeeding his father in a sugar-cane
and rice plantation. The average student had barely an outline idea
of either physical or political geography, whilst his notions of
Spanish or universal history were very chaotic. I really think the
Manila newspapers--poor as they were--contributed very largely to
the education of the people in this Colony.
Still, there are cases of an ardent genius shining as an exception to
his race. Amongst the few, there were two brothers named Luna--the
one was a notably skilful performer on the guitar and violin, who,
however, died at an early age. The other, Juan Luna, developed
a natural ability for painting. A work of his own conception--the
"Spoliarium," executed by him in Rome in 1884--gained the second prize
at the Madrid Academy Exhibition of Oil Paintings. The Municipality
of Barcelona purchased this _chef d'oeuvre_ for the City Hall. Other
famous productions of his are "The Battle of Lepanto," "The Death of
Cleopatra," and "The Blood Compact" (q.v). This last masterpiece
was acquired by the Municipality of Manila for the City Hall,
but was removed when the Tagálog Rebellion broke out, for reasons
which will be understood after reading Chapter xxii. This artist,
the son of poor parents, was a second mate on board a sailing ship,
when his gifts were recognized, and means were furnished him with
which to study in Rome. His talent was quite exceptional, for these
Islanders are not an artistic people. Having little admiration for
the picturesque and the beautiful in Nature, they cannot depict them:
in this respect they form a decided contrast to the Japanese. Paete
(La Laguna) is the only place I know of in the provinces where there
are sculptors by profession. The Manila Academy was open to all comers
of all nationalities, and, as an ex-student under its Professors Don
Lorenzo Rocha and Don Agustin Saez, I can attest to their enthusiasm
for the progress of their pupils.
In the General Post and Telegraph Office in Manila I was shown an
excellent specimen of wood-carving--a bust portrait of Mr. Morse
(the celebrated inventor of the Morse system of telegraphy)--the work
of a native sculptor. Another promising native, Vicente Francisco,
exhibited some good sculpture work in the Philippine Exhibition, held
in Madrid in 1887: the jury recommended him for a State pension, to
study in Madrid and Rome. The beautiful design of the present insular
coinage (Philippine peso) is the work of a Filipino. The biography
of the patriot martyr Dr. José Rizal (q.v.), the most brilliant of
all Filipinos, is related in another chapter.
The native of cultivated intellect, on returning from Europe, found a
very limited circle of friends of his own new training. If he returned
a lawyer or a doctor, he was one too many, for the capital swarmed
with them; if he had learnt a trade, his knowledge was useless outside
Manila, and in his native village his technical acquirements were
generally profitless. Usually the native's sojourn in Europe made
him too self-opinionated to become a useful member of society. It
remains to be seen how American training will affect them.
The (American) Insular Government has taken up the matter of Philippine
education very earnestly, and at considerable outlay: the subject is
referred to in Chapter xxx.
The intellectual and spiritual life, as we have it in Europe, does
not exist in the Philippines. If ever a Filipino studied any subject,
purely for the love of study, without the hope of material or social
advantage being derived therefrom, he would be a _rara avis_.
The _Disease_ most prevalent among the Filipinos is fever--especially
in the spring: and although, in general, they may be considered a
robust, enduring race, they are less capable than the European of
withstanding acute disease. I should say that quite 50 per cent. of
the native population are affected by cutaneous disease, said to be
caused by eating fish daily, and especially shell-fish. It is locally
known as _Sarnas_: natives say that monkey flesh cures it.
In 1882 _Cholera morbus_ in epidemic form ravaged the native
population, carrying off thousands of victims, the exact number of
which has never been published. The preventive recommended by the
priests on this occasion, viz., prayer to Saint Roque, proved quite
ineffectual to stay the plague. A better remedy, found in the country,
is an infusion of _Niota tetrapetala_ (Tagálog, _Manungal_). From time
to time this disease reappears. The returns given in the _Official
Gazette_ of March 2, 1904, Vol. II., No. 9, show the average monthly
mortality due to _Cholera_, in the 20-1/3 months between March 20,
1902, and December 1, 1903, to be 5,360. Annually, many natives suffer
from what is called _Colerin_--a mild form of _Cholera_, but not
epidemic. In the spring, deaths always occur from acute indigestion,
due to eating too plentifully of new rice. Many who have recovered
from _Cholera_ become victims to a disease known as _Beri-Beri_,
said to be caused by the rice and fish diet. The first symptom of
_Wet Beri-Beri_ is a swelling of the legs, like dropsy; that of _Dry
Beri-Beri_ is a wasting away of the limbs. _Smallpox_ makes great
ravages, and _Measles_ is a common complaint. _Lung_ and _Bronchial_
affections are very rare. The most fearful disease in the Colony is
_Leprosy_. [87] To my knowledge it is prevalent in the Province of
Bulacan (Luzon Is.), and in the islands of Cebú and Negros. There is an
asylum for lepers near Manila and at Mabolo, just outside the City of
Cebú (_vide_ Lepers), but no practical measures were ever adopted by
the Spaniards to eradicate this disease. The Spanish authorities were
always too indifferent about the propagation of leprosy to establish
a home on one island for all male lepers and another home, on another
island, for female lepers--the only effectual way to extirpate this
awful malady. In Baliuag (Bulacan), leper families, personally known
to me, were allowed to mix with the general public. In Cebú and Negros
Islands they were permitted to roam about on the highroads and beg.
The Insular Government has taken up the question of the Lepers,
and in 1904 a tract of land was purchased in the Island of Culion
(Calamianes group) to provide for their hygienic isolation. According
to the _Official Gazette_ of March 2, 1904, Vol. II., No. 9, the
total number of lepers, of whom the Insular Government had obtained
cognizance, up to December 31, 1903, was 3,343. Besides these there
would naturally be an unknown number who had escaped recognition.
There is apparently little _Insanity_ in the Islands. From the
Report of the Commissioner of Public Health for February, 1904,
it would appear that there were only about 1,415 insane persons in
a population of over seven-and-a-half millions.
Since the American advent (1898) the _Death-rate_ is believed to have
notably decreased. The Report of the Commissioner of Public Health
for 1904 states the death-rate per thousand in Manila to have been as
follows, viz.:--Natives 53.72; Europeans other than Spaniards 16.11;
Spaniards 15.42; and Americans 9.34. The Commissioner remarks that
"over 50 per cent. of the children born in the city of Manila never
live to see the first anniversary of their birthday." The Board of
Health is very active in the sanitation of Manila. Inspectors make
frequent domiciliary visits. The extermination of rats in the month
of December, 1903, amounted to 24,638. House-refuse bins are put into
the streets at night, and an inspector goes round with a lamp about
midnight to examine them. Dead animals, market-rubbish, house-refuse,
rotten hemp, sweepings, etc., are all cremated at Palomar, Santa Cruz,
and Paco, and in July, 1904, this enterprising department started
the extermination of mosquitoes! In the suburbs of Manila there are
now twelve cemeteries and one crematorium.
CHAPTER XII
The Religious Orders
History attests that at least during the first two centuries of Spanish
rule, the subjugation of the natives and their acquiescence in the
new order of things were obtained more by the subtle influence of the
missionaries than by the sword. As the soldiers of Castile carried war
into the interior and forced its inhabitants to recognize their King,
so the friars were drafted off from the mother country to mitigate
the memory of bloodshed and to mould Spain's new subjects to social
equanimity. In many cases, in fact, the whole task of gaining their
submission to the Spanish Crown and obedience to the dictates of
Western civilization was confided solely to the pacific medium of
persuasion. The difficult mission of holding in check the natural
passions and instincts of a race which knew no law but individual
will, was left to the successors of Urdaneta. Indeed, it was but the
general policy of Philip II. to aggrandize his vast realm under the
pretence of rescuing benighted souls. The efficacy of conversion was
never doubted for a moment, however suddenly it might come to pass,
and the Spanish cavalier conscientiously felt that he had a high
mission to fulfil under the Banner of the Cross. In every natural
event which coincided with their interests, in the prosecution of
their mission, the wary priests descried a providential miracle.
In their opinion the non-Catholic had no rights in this world--no
prospect of gaining the next. If the Pope claimed the whole world
(such as was known of it) to be in his gift--how much more so heathen
lands! The obligation to convert was imposed by the Pope, and was
an inseparable condition of the conceded right of conquest. It was
therefore constantly paramount in the conqueror's mind. [88] The
Pope could depose and give away the realm of any sovereign prince
"_si vel paulum deflexerit_." The Monarch held his sceptre under the
sordid condition of vassalage; hence Philip II., for the security
of his Crown, could not have disobeyed the will of the Pontiff,
whatever his personal inclinations might have been regarding the
spread of Christianity. [89] If he desired it, he served his ends with
advantage to himself--if he were indifferent to it, he secured by its
prosecution a formidable ally in Rome. America had already drained the
Peninsula of her able-bodied men to such an extent that a military
occupation of these Islands would have overtaxed the resources of
the mother country. The co-operation of the friars was, therefore, an
almost indispensable expedient in the early days, and their power in
secular concerns was recognized to the last by the Spanish-Philippine
authorities, who continued to solicit the aid of the parish priests
in order to secure obedience to decrees affecting their parishioners.
Up to the Rebellion of 1896 the placid word of the ecclesiastic, the
superstitious veneration which he inspired in the ignorant native,
had a greater law-binding effect than the commands of the civil
functionary. The gownsman used those weapons appropriate to his
office which best touched the sensibilities and won the adhesion of
a rude audience. The priest appealed to the soul, to the unknown,
to the awful and the mysterious. Go where he would, the convert's
imagination was so pervaded with the mystic tuition that he came
to regard his tutor as a being above common humanity. The feeling
of dread reverence which he instilled into the hearts of the most
callous secured to him even immunity from the violence of brigands,
who carefully avoided the man of God. In the State official the native
saw nothing but a man who strove to bend the will of the conquered race
to suit his own. A Royal Decree or the sound of the cornet would not
have been half so effective as the elevation of the Holy Cross before
the fanatical majority, who became an easy prey to fantastic promises
of eternal bliss, or the threats of everlasting perdition. Nor is this
assertion by any means chimerical, for it has been proved on several
occasions, notably in the raising of troops to attempt the expulsion
of the British in 1763, and in the campaign against the Sultan of Sulu
in 1876. But through the Cavite Conspiracy of 1872 (_vide_ p. 106)
the friars undoubtedly hastened their own downfall. Many natives,
driven to emigrate, cherished a bitter hatred in exile, whilst others
were emerging yearly by hundreds from their mental obscurity. Already
the intellectual struggle for freedom from mystic enthralment had
commenced without injury to faith in things really divine.
Each decade brought some reform in the relations between the
parish priest and the people. Link by link the chain of priestcraft
encompassing the development of the Colony was yielding to natural
causes. The most enlightened natives were beginning to understand that
their spiritual wants were not the only care of the friars, and that
the aim of the Religious Orders was to monopolize all within their
reach, and to subordinate to their common will all beyond their mystic
circle. The Romish Church owes its power to the uniformity of precept
and practice of the vast majority of its members, and it is precisely
because this was the reverse in political Spain--where statesmen are
divided into a dozen or more groups with distinct policies--that the
Church was practically unassailable. In the same way, all the members
of a Religious Order are so closely united that a quarrel with one
of them brings the enmity and opposition of his whole community. The
Progressists, therefore, who combated ecclesiastical preponderance in
the Philippines, demanded the retirement of the friars to conventual
reclusion or missions, and the appointment of _clérigos_, or secular
clergymen to the vicarages and curacies. By such a change they hoped
to remedy the abuses of collective power, for a misunderstanding with
a secular vicar would only have provoked a single-handed encounter.
That a priest should have been practically a Government agent in his
locality would not have been contested in the abstract, had he not,
as a consequence, assumed the powers of the old Roman Censors, who
exercised the most dreaded function of the _Regium Morum_. Spanish
opinion, however, was very much divided as to the political safety of
strictly confining the friars to their religious duties. It was doubted
by some whether any State authority could ever gain the confidence or
repress the inherent inclinations of the native like the friar, who led
by superstitious teaching, and held the conscience by an invisible cord
through the abstract medium of the confessional. Others opined that
a change in the then existing system of semi-sacerdotal Government
was desirable, if only to give scope to the budding intelligence of
the minority, which could not be suppressed.
Emerging from the lowest ranks of society, with no training
whatever but that of the seminary, it was natural to suppose that
these Spanish priests would have been more capable than ambitious
political men of the world of blending their ideas with those of the
native, and of forming closer associations with a rural population
engaged in agricultural pursuits familiar to themselves in their
own youth. Before the abolition of monasteries in Spain the priests
were allowed to return there after 10 years residence in the Colony;
since then they have usually entered upon their new lives for the
remainder of their days, so that they naturally strove to make the
best of their social surroundings.
The Civil servant, as a rule, could feel no personal interest in
his temporary native neighbours, his hopes being centred only in
rising in the Civil Service there or elsewhere--Cuba or Porto Rico,
or where the ministerial wheel of fortune placed him.
The younger priests--narrow-minded and biased--those who had just
entered into provincial curacies--were frequently the greater
bigots. Enthusiastic in their calling, they pursued with ardour
their mission of proselytism without experience of the world. They
entered the Islands with the zeal of youth, bringing with them the
impression imparted to them in Spain, that they were sent to make
a moral conquest of savages. In the course of years, after repeated
rebuffs, and the obligation to participate in the affairs of everyday
life in all its details, their rigidity of principle relaxed, and they
became more tolerant towards those with whom they necessarily came
in contact. They were usually taken from the peasantry and families
of lowly station. As a rule they had little or no secular education,
and, regarding them apart from their religious training, they might be
considered a very ignorant class. Amongst them the Franciscan friars
appeared to be the least--and the Austins the most--polished of all.
The Spanish parish priest was consulted by the native in all matters;
he was, by force of circumstances, often compelled to become an
architect,--to build the church in his adopted village--an engineer,
to make or mend roads, and more frequently a doctor. His word was
paramount in his parish, and in his residence he dispensed with
that stern severity of conventual discipline to which he had been
accustomed in the Peninsula. Hence it was really here that his
mental capacity was developed, his manners improved, and that the
raw sacerdotal peasant was converted into the man of thought, study,
and talent--occasionally into a gentleman. In his own vicinity,
when isolated from European residents, he was practically the
representative of the Government and of the white race as well as
of social order. His theological knowledge was brought to bear upon
the most mundane subjects. His thoughts necessarily expanded as the
exclusiveness of his religious vocation yielded to the realization
of a social position and political importance of which he had never
entertained an idea in his native country.
So large was the party opposed to the continuance of priestly
influence in the Colony that a six-months' resident would not fail
to hear of the many misdeeds with which the friars in general were
reproached. It would be contrary to fact to pretend that the bulk of
them supported their teaching by personal example. I was acquainted
with a great number of the friars, and their offspring too, in spite
of their vow of chastity; whilst many lived in comparative luxury,
notwithstanding their vow of poverty.
There was the late parish priest of Malolos, whose son, my friend,
was a prominent lawyer. Father S----, of Bugason, had a whole family
living in his parish. An Archbishop who held the See in my time had a
daughter frequently seen on the _Paseo de Santa Lucia_; and in July,
1904, two of his daughters lived in Calle Quiotan, Santa Cruz, Manila,
and two others, by a different mother, in the town of O----. The
late parish priest of Lipa, Father B----, whom I knew, had a son
whom I saw in 1893. The late incumbent of Santa Cruz, Father M----
L----, induced his spiritual flock to petition against his being made
prior of his Order in Manila so that he should not have to leave his
women. The late parish priest (friar) of Baliuag (Bulacan) had three
daughters and two sons. I was intimately acquainted with the latter;
one was a doctor of medicine and the other a planter, and they bore the
surname of Gonzalez. At Cadiz Nuevo (Negros Is.) I once danced with
the daughter of a friar (parish priest of a neighbouring village),
whilst he took another girl as his partner. I was closely acquainted,
and resided more than once, with a very mixed-up family in the south
of Negros Island. My host was the son of a secular clergyman, his wife
and sister-in-law were the daughters of a friar, this sister-in-law was
the mistress of a friar, my host had a son who was married to another
friar's daughter, and a daughter who was the wife of a foreigner. In
short, bastards of the friars are to be found everywhere in the
Islands. Regarding this merely as the natural outcome of the celibate
rule, I do not criticize it, but simply wish to show that the pretended
sanctity of the regular clergy in the Philippines was an absurdity,
and that the monks were in no degree less frail than mankind in common.
The mysterious deaths of General Solano (August 1860) and of Zamora,
the Bishop-elect of Cebú (1873), occurred so opportunely for Philippine
monastic ambition that little doubt existed in the public mind as
to who were the real criminals. When I first arrived in Manila, a
quarter of a century ago, a fearful crime was still being commented
on. Father Piernavieja, formerly parish priest of San Miguel de
Mayumo, had recently committed a second murder. His first victim
was a native youth, his second a native woman _enceinte_. The public
voice could not be raised very loudly then against the priests, but
the scandal was so great that the criminal friar was sent to another
province--Cavite--where he still celebrated the holy sacrifice of
the Eucharist. Nearly two decades afterwards--in January 1897--this
rascal met with a terrible death at the hands of the rebels. He was
in captivity, and having been appointed "Bishop" in a rebel diocese,
to save his life he accepted the mock dignity; but, unfortunately for
himself, he betrayed the confidence of his captors, and collected
information concerning their movements, plans, and strongholds for
remittance to his Order. In expiation of his treason he was bound
to a post under the tropical sun and left there to die. See how the
public in Spain are gulled! In a Málaga newspaper this individual was
referred to as a "venerable figure, worthy of being placed high up on
an altar, before which all Spaniards should prostrate themselves and
adore him. As a _religieux_ he was a most worthy minister of the Lord;
as a patriot he was a hero."
Within my recollection, too, a friar absconded from a Luzon Island
parish with a large sum of parochial funds, and was never heard of
again. The late parish priests of Mandaloyan and Iba did the same.
I well remember another interesting character of the monastic
Orders. He had been parish priest in a Zambales province town, but
intrigues with a _soi-disant cousine_ brought him under ecclesiastical
arrest at the convent of his Order in Manila. Thence he escaped, and
came over to Hong-Kong, where I made his acquaintance in 1890. He
told me he had started life in an honest way as a shoemaker's boy,
but was taken away from his trade to be placed in the seminary. His
mind seemed to be a blank on any branch of study beyond shoemaking
and Church ritual. He pretended that he had come over to Hong-Kong
to seek work, but in reality he was awaiting his _cousine_, whom he
rejoined on the way to Europe, where, I heard, he became a _garçon
de café_ in France.
In 1893 there was another great public scandal, when the friars were
openly accused of having printed the seditious proclamations whose
authorship they attributed to the natives. The plan of the friars was
to start the idea of an intended revolt, in order that they might be
the first in the field to quell it, and thus be able to again proclaim
to the Home Government the absolute necessity of their continuance in
the Islands for the security of Spanish sovereignty. But the plot was
discovered; the actual printer, a friar, mysteriously disappeared,
and the courageous Gov.-General Despujols, Conde de Caspe, was,
through monastic influence, recalled. He was very popular, and the
public manifestation of regret at his departure from the Islands was
practically a protest against the Religious Orders.
In June, 1888, some cases of personal effects belonging to a friar
were consigned to the care of an intimate friend of mine, whose guest
I was at the time. They had become soaked with sea-water before he
received them, and a neighbouring priest requested him to open the
packages and do what he could to save the contents. I assisted my
friend in this task, and amongst the friar's personal effects we
were surprised to find, intermixed with prayer-books, scapularies,
missals, prints of saints, etc., about a dozen most disgustingly
obscene double-picture slides for a stereoscope. What an entertainment
for a guide in morals! This same friar had held a vicarage before
in another province, but having become an habitual drunkard, he was
removed to Manila, and there appointed a confessor. From Manila he
had just been again sent to take charge of the _cure of souls_.
I knew a money-grabbing parish priest--a friar--who publicly announced
raffles from the pulpit of the church from which he preached morality
and devotion. On one occasion a 200-peso watch was put up for P500--at
another time he raffled dresses for the women. Under the pretext of
being a pious institution, he established a society of women, called
the Association of St. Joseph (_Confradia de San José_), upon whom
he imposed the very secular duties of domestic service in the convent
and raffle-ticket hawking. He had the audacity to dictate to a friend
of mine--a planter--the value of the gifts he was to make to him,
and when the planter was at length wearied of his importunities,
he conspired with a Spaniard to deprive my friend of his estate,
alleging that he was not the real owner. Failing in this, he stirred
up the petty-governor and headmen against him. The petty-governor was
urged to litigation, and when he received an unfavourable sentence,
the priest, enraged at the abortive result of his malicious intrigues,
actually left his vicarage to accompany his litigious _protégé_ to the
chief judge of the province in quest of a reversion of the sentence.
A priest of evil propensities brought only misery to his parish and
aroused a feeling of odium against the Spanish friars in general. As
incumbents they held the native in contempt. He who should be the
parishioner was treated despotically as the subject whose life,
liberty, property, and civil rights were in his sacerdotal lord's
power. And that power was not unfrequently exercised, for if a
native refused to yield to his demands, or did not contribute with
sufficient liberality to a religious feast, or failed to come to
Mass, or protected the virtue of his daughter, or neglected the
genuflexion and kissing of hands, or was out of the priest's party in
the municipal affairs of the parish, or in any other trivial way became
a _persona non grata_ at the "convent," he and his family would become
the pastor's sheep marked for sacrifice. As Government agent it was
within his arbitrary power to attach his signature to or withhold it
from any municipal document. From time to time he could give full vent
to his animosity by secretly denouncing to the civil authorities as
"inconvenient in the town" all those whom he wished to get rid of. He
had simply to send an official advice to the Governor of the province,
who forwarded it to the Gov.-General, stating that he had reason
to believe that the persons mentioned in the margin were disloyal,
immoral, or whatever it might be, and recommend their removal from
the neighbourhood. A native so named suddenly found at his door a
patrol of the Civil Guard, who escorted him, with his elbows tied
together, from prison to prison, up to the capital town and thence to
Manila. Finally, without trial or sentence, he was banished to some
distant island of the Archipelago. He might one day return to find
his family ruined, or he might as often spend his last days in misery
alone. Sometimes a native who had privately heard of his "denunciation"
became a _remontado_, that is to say he fled to the mountains to lead a
bandits life where the evils of a debased civilization could not reach
him. Banishment in these circumstances was not a mere transportation
to another place, but was attended with all the horrors of a cruel
captivity, of which I have been an eye-witness. From the foregoing
it may be readily understood how the conduct of the regular clergy
was the primary cause of the Rebellion of 1896; it was not the monks'
immorality which disturbed the mind of the native, but their Cæsarism
which raised his ire. The ground of discord was always infinitely more
material than sentimental. Among the friars, however, there were many
exceptional men of charming manners and eminent virtue. If little was
done to coerce the bulk of the friars to live up to the standard of
these exceptions, it was said to be because the general interests of
Mother Church were opposed to investigation and admonition, for fear
of the consequent scandal destructive of her prestige.
The Hierarchy of the Philippines consists of one Archbishop in Manila,
and four Suffragan Bishoprics, respectively of Nueva Segovia, Cebú,
Jaro, and Nueva Cáceres. [90] The provincials, the vicars-general,
and other officers of the Religious Orders were elected by the
Chapters and held office for four years. The first Bishop of Manila
took possession in 1581, and the first Archbishop in 1598.
The Jesuits came to these Islands in 1581, and were expelled therefrom
in 1770 by virtue of an Apostolic Brief [91] of Pope Clement XIV.,
but were permitted to return in 1859, on the understanding that
they would confine their labours to scholastic education and the
establishment of missions amongst uncivilized tribes. Consequently,
in Manila they refounded their school--the Municipal Athenæum--a
mission house, and a Meteorological Observatory, whilst in many parts
of Mindanao Island they have established missions, with the vain hope
of converting Mahometans to Christianity. [92] The Jesuits, compared
with the members of the other Orders, are very superior men, and their
fraternity includes a few, and almost the only, learned ecclesiastics
who came to the Colony. Since their return to the Islands (1859)
in the midst of the strife with the Religious Orders, the people
recognized the Jesuits as disinterested benefactors of the country.
Several Chinese have been admitted to holy orders, two of them
having become Austin Friars. [93] The first native friars date their
admission from the year 1700, since when there have been sixteen of
the Order of St. Augustine. Subsequently they were excluded from the
confraternities, and only admitted to holy orders as vicars, curates
to assist parish vicars, chaplains, and in other minor offices. Up
to the year 1872 native priests were appointed to benefices, but in
consequence of their alleged implication in the Cavite Conspiracy of
that year, their church livings, as they became vacant, were given
to Spanish friars, whose headquarters were established in Manila.
The _Austin Friars_ were the religious pioneers in these Islands;
they came to Cebú in 1565 and to Manila in 1571; then followed the
_Franciscans_ in 1577; the _Dominicans_ in 1587, a member of this
Order having been ordained first Bishop of Manila, where he arrived
in 1581. The _Recoletos_ (unshod Augustinians), a branch of the Saint
Augustine Order, came to the Islands in 1606; the _Capuchins_--the
lowest type of European monk in the Far East, came to Manila in 1886,
and were sent to the Caroline Islands (_vide_ p. 45). The _Paulists_,
of the Order of Saint Vincent de Paul, were employed in scholastic
work in Nueva Cáceres, Jaro, and Cebú, the same as the Jesuits were
in Manila. The _Benedictines_ came to the Islands in 1895. Only the
members of the first four Orders above named were parish priests,
and each (except the _Franciscans_) possessed agricultural land;
hence the animosity of the natives was directed against these
four confraternities only, and not against the others, who neither
monopolized incumbencies, nor held rural property, but were simply
teachers, or missionaries, whose worldly interests in no way clashed
with those of the people. Therefore, whenever there was a popular
outcry against "the friars," it was understood to refer solely to
the Austins, the Franciscans, the Dominicans and the Recoletos. [94]
There was no Spanish secular clergy in the Islands, except three or
four military chaplains.
The Church was financially supported by the State to the extent of
about three-quarters of a million pesos per annum.
The following are some of the most interesting items taken from
"The Budget for 1888," viz.:--
_Sanctorum_ or Church tax of 18 3/4 cents (i.e., 1 1/2 reales)
on each _Cédula personal_, say on 2,760,613 Cédulas in 1888,
less 4 per cent, cost of collection P496,910.00
The friars appointed to incumbencies received in former times tithes
from the Spaniards, and a Church tax from the natives computed by the
amount of tribute paid. Tithe payment (_diézmos prediales_) by the
Spaniards became almost obsolete, and the _Sanctorum_ tax on _Cédulas_
was paid to the Church through the Treasury (_vide_ p. 55).
There were priests in missions and newly-formed parishes where the
domiciled inhabitants were so few that the _Sanctorum_ tax on the
aggregate of the _Cédulas_ was insufficient for their support. These
missionaries were allowed salaries, and parish priests were permitted
to appropriate from their revenues, as annual stipend, amounts ranging
from 500 to 800 pesos, as a rule, with a few exceptions (such as
Binondo parish and others), rated at 1,200 pesos, whilst one, at
least (the parish priest, or missionary of Vergara, Davao Province),
received 2,200 pesos a year. In practice, however, a great many parish
priests spent far more than their allotted stipends.
A project was under consideration to value the incumbencies, and
classify them, like the Courts of Justice (_vide_ p. 234), with the
view of apportioning to each a fixed income payable by the Treasury
in lieu of accounting to the Church for the exact amount of the
_Sanctorum_.
By decree of Gov.-General Terrero, dated November 23,1885, the
State furnished free labour (by natives who did not pay poll-tax)
for Church architectural works, provided it was made clear that the
cost of such labour could not be covered by the surplus funds of the
_Sanctorum_. The chief items of Church expenditure were as follows,
viz.:--
_State outlay for Church._
P. cts.
Archbishop's salary 12,000 00
Other salaries (Cathedral) 40,300 00
Other expenses (Cathedral) 3,000 00
Four Bishops, each with a salary of P6,000 24,000 00
Court of Arches (amount contributed by the State [95]) 5,000 00
Chaplain of Los Baños 120 00
Sulu Mission 1,000 00
Mission House in Manila for Capuchin friars 1,700 00
12 Capuchins (State paid) for the Caroline and Pelew
Islands--6 at P300 and 6 at P500 each per annum 4,800 00
Transport of Missionaries estimated at about, per annum 10,000 00
The anticipated _total_ State outlay for the support of
the Church, Missions, Monasteries, Convents, etc.,
_including the above and all other items_ for the
financial year of 1888 was P724,634 50
Moreover, the religious Corporations possessed large private
revenues. The Dominicans' investments in Hong-Kong, derived from
capitalized income, are still considerable. The Austin, Recoleto,
and Dominican friars held very valuable real estate in the provinces,
which was rented to the native agriculturists on conditions which the
tenants considered onerous. The native planters were discontented with
the treatment they received from these landowners, and their numerous
complaints formed part of the general outcry against the regular
clergy. The bailiffs of these corporation lands were unordained
brothers of the Order. They resided in the Estate Houses, and by
courtesy were styled "fathers" by the natives. They were under certain
religious vows, but not being entitled to say Mass, they were termed
"legos," or ignorant men, by their own Order.
The clergy also derived a very large portion of their incomes from
commissions on the sale of _cédulas_, sales of Papal Bulls, masses,
pictures, books, chaplets and indulgences, marriage, burial and
baptismal fees, benedictions, donations touted for after the crops
were raised, legacies to be paid for in masses, remains of wax candles
left in the church by the faithful, fees for getting souls out of
purgatory, alms, etc. The surplus revenues over and above parochial
requirements were supposed to augment the common Church funds in
Manila. The Corporations were consequently immensely wealthy, and
their power and influence were in consonance with that wealth.
Each Order had its procurator in Madrid, who took up the cudgels in
defence of his Corporation's interest in the Philippines whenever
this was menaced. On the other hand, the Church, as a body politic,
dispensed no charity, but received all. It was always begging; always
above civil laws and taxes; claimed immunity, proclaimed poverty,
and inculcated in others charity to itself.
Most of the parish priests--Spanish or native--were very hospitable
to travellers, and treated them with great kindness. Amongst them
there were some few misanthropes and churlish characters who did not
care to be troubled by anything outside the region of their vocation,
but on the whole I found them remarkably complaisant.
In Spain there were training colleges of the three Communities, in
Valladolid, Ocaña, and Monte Agudo respectively, for young novices
intended to be sent to the Philippines, the last Spanish Colony where
friars held vicarages.
The ecclesiastical archives of the Philippines abound with proofs of
the bitter and tenacious strife sustained, not only between the civil
and Church authorities, but even amongst the religious communities
themselves. Each Order was so intensely jealous of the others, that
one is almost led to ponder whether the final goal of all could have
been identical. All voluntarily faced death with the same incentive,
whilst amicable fellowship in this world seemed an impossibility. The
first Bishop (_vide_ p. 56) struggled in vain to create a religious
monopoly in the Philippines for the exclusive benefit of the
Augustine Order. It has been shown how ardent was the hatred which
the Jesuits and the other Religious Orders mutually entertained for
each other. Each sacred fraternity laboured incessantly to gain the
ascendancy in the conquered territories, and their Divine calling
served for nothing in palliating the acrimony of their reciprocal
accusations and recriminations, which often involved the civil power.
For want of space I can only refer to a few of these disputes.
The Austin friars attributed to the Jesuits the troubles with the
Mahometans of Mindanao and Sulu, and, in their turn, the Jesuits
protested against what they conceived to be the bad policy of
the Government, adopted under the influence of the other Orders in
Manila. So distinct were their interests that the Augustine chroniclers
refer to the other Orders as _different religions_.
In 1778 the Province of Pangasinán was spiritually administered by the
Dominicans, whilst that of Zambales was allotted to the Recoletos. The
Dominicans, therefore, proposed to the Recoletos to cede Zambales
to them, because it was repugnant to have to pass through Recoleto
territory going from Manila to their own province! The Recoletos
were offered Mindoro Island in exchange, which they refused, until
the Archbishop compelled them to yield. Disturbances then arose in
Zambales, the responsibility of which was thrown on the Dominicans by
their rival Order, and the Recoletos finally succeeded in regaining
their old province by intrigue.
During the Governorship of Martin de Urena, Count de Lizárraga
(1709-15), the Aragonese and Castilian priests quarrelled about the
ecclesiastical preferments.
At the beginning of the 18th century the Bishop-elect of Cebú, Fray
Pedro Saez de la Vega Lanzaverde, refused to take possession because
the nomination was _in partibus_. He objected also that the Bishopric
was merely one in perspective and not yet a reality. The See remained
vacant whilst the contumacious priest lived in Mexico. Fray Sebastian
de Jorronda was subsequently appointed to administer the Bishopric,
but also refused, until he was coerced into submission by the Supreme
Court (1718).
In 1767 the Austin friars refused to admit the episcopal visits, and
exhibited such a spirit of independence that Pope Benedict XIV. was
constrained to issue a Bull to exhort them to obey, admonishing them
for their insubordination.
The friars of late years were subject to a visiting priest--the
Provincial--in all matters _de vita et moribus_, to the Bishop of
the diocese in all affairs of spiritual dispensation, and to the
Gov.-General as vice-royal patron in all that concerned the relations
of the Church to the Civil Government. [96]
An observant traveller, unacquainted with the historical antecedents
of the friars in the Philippines, could not fail to be impressed by the
estrangement of religious men, whose sacred mission, if genuine, ought
to have formed an inseverable bond of alliance and goodfellowship.
CHAPTER XIII
Spanish Insular Government
From the days of Legaspi the supreme rule in these Islands was usually
confided for indefinite periods to military men: but circumstances
frequently placed naval officers, magistrates, the Supreme Court,
and even ecclesiastics at the head of the local government. During the
last half century of Spanish rule the common practice was to appoint
a Lieut.-General as Governor, with the local rank of Captain-General
pending his three-years' term of office. An exception to this rule in
that period was made (1883-85) when Joaquin Jovellar, a Captain-General
and ex-War Minster in Spain, was specially empowered to establish some
notable reforms--the good policy of which was doubtful. Again, in 1897,
Fernando Primo de Rivera, Marquis de Estella, also a Captain-General
in Spain, held office in Manila under the exceptional circumstances
of the Tagálog Rebellion of 1896, in succession to Ramon Blanco,
Marquis de Peña Plata. Considering that Primo de Rivera, during his
previous Gov.-Generalship (1880-83), had won great popularity with
the Filipinos, he was deemed, in Madrid, to be the man most capable
of arresting the revolutionary movement. How far the confidence of
the Home Government was misplaced will be seen in Chapter xxii.
Soon after the conquest the Colony was divided and sub-divided into
provinces and military districts as they gradually yielded to the
Spanish sway. Such districts, called _Encomiendas_, [97] were then
farmed out to _Encomenderos_, who exercised little scruple in their
rigorous exactions from the natives. Some of the _Encomenderos_
acquired wealth during the terms of their holdings, whilst others
became victims to the revenge of their subjects. They must indeed
have been bold, enterprising men who, in those days, would have taken
charge of districts distant from the capital. It would appear that
their tenure was, in a certain sense, feudal, for they were frequently
called upon to aid the Central Government with vessels, men, and arms
against the attacks of common enemies. Against Mahometan incursions
necessity made them warriors,--if they were not so by taste,--civil
engineers to open communications with their districts, administrators,
judges, and all that represented social order. _Encomiendas_ were
sometimes given to Spaniards as rewards for high services rendered
to the commonwealth, [98] although favouritism or (in later years)
purchase-money more commonly secured the vacancies, and the holders
were quite expected to make fortunes in the manner they thought fit,
with due regard for the Royal Treasury (_vide_ p. 54).
The _Encomenderos_ were, in the course of time, superseded by
Judicial Governors, called _Alcaldes_, who received small salaries,
from £60 per annum and upwards, but were allowed to trade. The
right to trade--called "_indulto de comercio_"--was sold to the
_Alcalde-Governors_, except those of Tondo, [99] Zamboanga, Cavite,
Nueva Ecija, Islas Batanes and Antique, whose trading right was
included in the emoluments of office. The Government's object was
economy.
In 1840 Eusebio Mazorca wrote thus [100]:--"The salary paid to the
chiefs of provinces who enjoy the right of trade is more or less P300
per annum, and after deducting the amount paid for the trading right,
which in some provinces amounts to five-sixths of the whole--as in
Pangasinán; and in others to the whole of the salary--as in Caraga;
and discounting again the taxes, it is not possible to conceive how
the appointment can be so much sought after. There are candidates up
to the grade of brigadier who relinquish a P3,000 salary to pursue
their hopes and projects in governorship."
This system obtained for many years, and the abuses went on
increasing. The _Alcaldes_ practically monopolized the trade of their
districts, unduly taking advantage of their governmental position to
hinder the profitable traffic of the natives and bring it all into
their own hands. They tolerated no competition; they arbitrarily
fixed their own purchasing prices, and sold at current rates. Due to
the scarcity of silver in the interior, the natives often paid their
tribute to the Royal Treasury in produce,--chiefly rice,--which was
received into the Royal Granaries at a ruinously low valuation, and
accounted for to the State at its real value; the difference being the
illicit profit made by the _Alcalde_. Many of these functionaries
exercised their power most despotically in their own circuits,
disposing of the natives' labour and chattels without remuneration,
and not unfrequently, for their own ends, invoking the King's name,
which imbued the native with a feeling of awe, as if His Majesty were
some supernatural being.
In 1810 Tomás de Comyn wrote as follows:--"In order to be a chief
of a province in these Islands, no training or knowledge or special
services are necessary; all persons are fit and admissible.... It is
quite a common thing to see a barber or a Governor's lackey, a sailor
or a deserter, suddenly transformed into an Alcalde, Administrator,
and Captain of the forces of a populous province without any counsellor
but his rude understanding, or any guide but his passions." [101]
By Royal Decree of 1844 Government officials were thenceforth strictly
prohibited to trade, under pain of removal from office.
In the year 1850 there were 34 Provinces, and two Political Military
Commandancies. Until June, 1886, the offices of provincial Civil
Governor and Chief Judge of that province were vested in the same
person--the _Alcalde Mayor_. This created a strange anomaly, for an
appeal against an edict of the Governor had to be made to himself
as Judge. Then if it were taken to the central authority in Manila,
it was sent back for "information" to the Judge-Governor, without
independent inquiry being made in the first instance; hence protest
against his acts was fruitless.
During the Regency of Queen Maria Christina, this curious arrangement
was abolished by a Decree dated in Madrid, February 26, 1886, to take
effect on June 1 following.
Eighteen Civil Governorships were created, and _Alcaldes'_ functions
were confined to their judgeships; moreover, the Civil Governor was
assisted by a Secretary, so that two new official posts were created
in each of these provinces.
The Archipelago, including Sulu, was divided into 19 Civil Provincial
Governments, four Military General Divisions, 43 Military Provincial
Districts, and four Provincial Governments under Naval Officers,
forming a total of 70 Divisions and Sub-Divisions.
COST OF SPANISH ADMINISTRATION
P. cts.
The Gov.-General received a salary of 40,000 00
The Central Government Office, called "_Gobierno
General_," with its Staff of Officials and all
expenses 43,708 00
The General Government Centre was assisted in the
General Administration of the Islands by two other
Governing Bodies, namely:
The General Direction of Civil Administration 29,277 34
The Administrative Council 28,502 00
The Chief of the General Direction received a salary of P12,000, with
an allowance for official visits to the Provinces of P500 per annum.
The Council was composed of three Members, each at a salary of P4,700,
besides a Secretary and officials.
Seventy divisions and sub-divisions as follows, viz.:--
CIVIL GOVERNMENTS
Manila Pce
Salary of Civil Governor P5,000 Total Cost. 20,248 00
Alday, Batangas, Bulacan, Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur,
La Laguna, Pampanga, Pangasinán.
Eight First-Class Govts.:
Salary of each Civil Gov. P4,500
Total cost of each Govt. P8,900
Eight First-Class Govts. cost 71,200 00
Bataán, Camarines Norte, Camarines Sur, Mindoro,
Nueva Eclia, Tayabas, Zambales.
Seven Second-Class Govts.:
Salary of each Civil Gov. P4,000
Total cost of each Govt. P7,660
Seven Second-Class Govts. cost 53,620 00
Cagayan, Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya
Three Third-Class Govts.:
Salary of each Civil Gov. P3,500
Total cost of each Govt. P6,700
Three Third-Class Govts. cost 20,100 00
MILITARY GENERAL GOVERNMENTS
Under a Brig.-Gen. and Staff
Gen. Division of S. Visayas 10,975 00
Gen. Division of N. Visayas 10,975 00
Gen. Division of Mindanao 17,825 00
Gen. Division of Cavite 6,596 66
MILITARY PROVINCES AND DISTRICTS
Under a Colonel and Staff
Sulu 7,240 00
Yloilo 4,410 00
Cottabato 5,426 00
Under a Lieut.-Colonel and Staff
East Carolines and Pelew Islands 4,900 00
West Carolines and Pelew Islands 5,970 00
Cebú 3,500 00
Cápiz 3,500 00
Misámis 4,816 66
Ladrone Islands 4,975 00
Under a Major and Staff
Zamboanga 3,856 66
Surigao 4,356 66
Davao 4,156 66
Dapítan 2,692 00
Zucuran 2,692 00
La Union, Antique, Sámar, Leyte, El Abra, Bojol,
Tárlac, Negros, Morong
Each under a Major:--
Nine Districts @ P3,040
27,360 00
Batanes, Calamianes, Romblun, Benguet, Lepanto,
Burias, Infante, Príncipe, Bontoc, Concepcion:
Each under a Captain:--
Ten Districts @ P1,980 19,800 00
Cagayán (Mindanao)--Biling, Nueva Vizcaya, Sasangani
(Palaúan)
Each under a Captain:--
Five Districts @ P1,792 8,960 00
Siassi, Bongao, Tatoan
Each under a Captain:--
Three Districts @ P2,032 6,096 00
Escalante, [102] under a Lieutenant 1,525 00
Masbate, under a Cavalry Sub-Lieutenant 1,450 00
PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENTS UNDER NAVAL OFFICERS, OFFICERS IN CHARGE OF
NAVAL STATIONS AS EX-OFFICIO GOVERNORS
Corregidor 3,821 00
Balábac 3,960 00
Isabela de Basílan 5,276 66
Palaúan (Puerta Princesa) 6,910 00
Total cost of General Government of the Islands 500,677 96
Deduct--
Officers' Pay, etc., included in Army Estimates P145,179 96
Officers' Pay, etc., included in Navy Estimates 14,640 00
159,819 96
P340,858 00
The Spanish Government intended, in due course, to establish
Civil Government throughout the Islands. A Civil Governor was the
representative of the Gov.-General, whose orders and decrees he had to
publish and execute at his own discretion. He could not absent himself
from his province without permission. He had to maintain order, veto
petitions for arms' licences, hold under his orders and dispose of the
Civil Guard, Carabineers, and local guards. He could suspend the pay
for ten days of any subordinate official who failed to do his duty,
or he could temporarily suspend him in his functions with justifiable
cause, and propose to the Gov.-General his definite removal. He had to
preside at all municipal elections; to bring delinquents to justice;
to decree the detention on suspicion of any individual, and place him
at the disposal of the chief judge within three days after his capture;
to dictate orders for the government of the towns and villages; to
explain to the petty-governors the true interpretation of the law
and regulations affecting their districts.
The Governor was chief of police, and could impose fines up to P50
without the intervention of judicial authority; and in the event of the
mulcted person being unable to pay, he could order his imprisonment
at the rate of one day's detention for each half-peso of the fine;
it was provided, however, that the imprisonment could not exceed
30 days in any case. He had to preside at the ballot for military
conscription, but he could delegate this duty to his Secretary, or,
failing him, to the Administrator. Where no harbour-master had been
appointed, the Civil Governor acted as such. He had the care of the
primary instruction; and it was his duty specially to see that the
native scholars were taught the Spanish language. Land concessions,
improvements tending to increase the wealth of the province, permits
for felling timber, and the collection of excise taxes were all
under his care. He had also to furnish statistics relating to the
labour poll-tax; draw up the provincial budget; render provincial
and municipal accounts, etc., all of which had to be counter-signed
under the word _Intervine_ by the Secretary. He was provincial
postmaster-general, chief of telegraph service, prisons, charities,
board of health, public works, woods and forests, mines, agriculture
and industry. Under no circumstances could he dispose of the public
funds, which were in the care of the Administrator and Interventor, and
he was not entitled to any percentages (as _Alcalde-Governors_ formerly
were), or any emoluments whatsoever further than his fixed salary.
A Governor had to be a Spaniard over 30 years of age. It is curious to
note, from its political significance, that among the many classes of
persons eligible for a Civil Governorship were those who had been
Members of the Spanish Parliament or Senate during one complete
session.
Upon the whole, a Provincial Governor passed life very comfortably
if he did not go out of his way to oppress his subjects and create
discord. His tranquillity, nevertheless, was always dependent upon his
maintaining a good understanding with the priesthood of his district,
and his conformity with the demands of the friars. If he had the
misfortune to cross their path, it brought him a world of woe, and
finally his downfall. There have been Provincial Governors who in
reality held their posts by clerical influence, whilst others who
exercised a more independent spirit--who set aside Church interests
to serve those of the State, with which they were intrusted--fell
victims to sacerdotal intrigue; for the subordinates of the hierarchy
had power to overthrow as well as to support those who were appointed
to their districts. Few improvements appear to have been made in the
provinces by the initiative of the local Governors, nor did they
seem to take any special interest in commercial and agricultural
advancement. This lack of interest was somewhat excusable and
comprehensible, however, seeing that after they were appointed, and
even though they governed well within the strict limitations of their
office, they were constantly expecting that a ministerial change or the
fall of a single minister might remove them from their posts, or that
the undermining influence of favouritism might succeed in accomplishing
their withdrawal. It was natural, therefore, that they should have
been indifferent about the fostering of new agricultural enterprises,
of opening tracks for bringing down timber, of facilitating trade,
or of in any way stimulating the development of the resources of a
province when the probability existed that they would never have the
personal satisfaction of seeing the result of their efforts.
Some Governors with whom I am personally acquainted have, in spite of
all discouragement, studied the wants of their provinces, but to no
purpose. Their estimates for road-making and mending, bridge-building,
and public works generally were shelved in Manila, whilst the local
funds (_Fondos locales_), which ought to have been expended in the
localities where they were collected, were seized by the authorities
in the capital and applied to other purposes.
An annual statement of one province will be sufficient, as an example,
to illustrate the nature of this local tax:--
LOCAL FUNDS [103]--ALBAY PROVINCE
Provincial Revenue
P. cts. P. cts.
Stamps on Weights and Measures 2,490 00
Billiard Tax and Live Stock credentials 496 00
90% of fines for shirking forced labour 1,500 00
Tax in lieu of forced labour 85,209 00
Vehicle tax 4,000 00
93,695 00
Municipal Revenue
Tax paid by sellers in the public
market-place 7,050 00
Tax on slaughter of animals for food 12,098 00
Tax on local sales of hemp 40 00
90% of the Municipal fines and tax on
Chinese 554 00
10% on tithes paid and house-property
tax 380 00
10% on Industrial licences 5,710 00
10% on Alcohol licences 2,525 00
28,357 00
======== ==
P122,052 00
In the same year this province contributed to the common funds of
the Treasury a further sum of P133,009.
There was in each town another local tax called _Caja de Comunidad,_
contributed to by the townspeople to provide against any urgent
necessity of the community, but it found its way to Manila and was
misappropriated, like the _Fondos locales_.
There was not a peso at the disposal of the Provincial Governor for
local improvements. If a bridge broke down so it remained for years,
whilst thousands of travellers had to wade through the river unless
a raft were put there at the expense of the very poorest people by
order of the petty-governor of the nearest village. The "Tribunal,"
which served the double purpose of Town Hall and Dâk Bungalow for
wayfarers, was often a hut of bamboo and palm-leaves, whilst others,
which had been decent buildings generations gone by, lapsed into
a wretched state of dilapidation. In some villages there was no
Tribunal at all, and the official business had to be transacted in
the municipal Governor's house. I first visited Calamba (La Laguna)
in 1880, and for 14 years, to my knowledge, the headmen had to meet
in a sugar-store in lieu of a Tribunal. In San José de Buenavista,
the capital town of Antique Province, the Town Hall was commenced in
good style and left half finished during 15 years. Either some one
for pity's sake, or the headmen for their own convenience, went to
the expense of thatching over half the unfinished structure, which
was therefore saved from entire ruin, whilst all but the stone walls
of the other half rotted away. So it continued until 1887, when the
Government authorized a partial restoration of this building.
As to the roads connecting the villages, quite 20 per cent. of them
serve only for travellers on foot, on horse or on buffalo back at
any time, and in the wet season certainly 60 per cent, of all the
Philippine highways are in too bad a state for any kind of passenger
conveyance to pass with safety. In the wet season, many times I
have made a sea journey in a prahu, simply because the highroad near
the coast had become a mud-track, for want of macadamized stone and
drainage, and only serviceable for transport by buffalo. In the dry
season the sun mended the roads, and the traffic over the baked clods
reduced them more or less to dust, so that vehicles could pass. Private
property-owners expended much time and money in the preservation of
public roads, although a curious law existed prohibiting repairs to
highways by non-official persons.
Every male adult inhabitant (with certain specified exceptions) had to
give the State fifteen days' labour per annum, or redeem that labour
by payment. Of course thousands of the most needy class preferred to
give their fifteen days. This labour and the redemption-money were
only theoretically employed in local improvements. This system was
reformed in 1884 (_vide_ p. 224).
The Budget for 1888 showed the trivial sum of P120,000 to be used
in road-making and mending in the whole Archipelago. It provided
for a Chief Inspector of Public Works with a salary of P6,500,
aided by a staff composed of 48 technical and 82 non-technical
subordinates. As a matter of fact, the Provincial and District
Governors often received intimation not to encourage the employment
of labour for local improvements, but to press the labouring-class
to pay the redemption-tax to swell the central coffers, regardless
of the corresponding misery, discomfort, and loss to trade in the
interior. But labour at the Governor's disposal was not alone
sufficient. There was no fund from which to defray the cost of
materials; or, if these could be found without payment, some one must
pay for the transport by buffaloes and carts and find the implements
for the labourers' use. How could hands alone repair a bridge which
had rotted away? To cut a log of wood for the public service would
have necessitated communications with the Inspection of Woods and
Forests and other centres and many months' delay.
The system of controlling the action of one public servant by
appointing another under him to supervise his work has always found
favour in Spain, and was adopted in this Colony. There were a great
many Government employments of the kind which were merely sinecures. In
many cases the pay was small, it is true, but the labour was often of
proportionately smaller value than that pay. With very few exceptions,
all the Government Offices in Manila were closed to the public
during half the ordinary working-day,--the afternoon,--and many of
the Civil Service officials made their appearance at their desks
about ten o'clock in the morning, retiring shortly after mid-day,
when they had smoked their habitual number of cigarettes.
The crowd of office-seekers were indifferent to the fact that
the true source of national vigour is the spirit of individual
self-dependence. Constant clamour for Government employment tends
only to enfeeble individual effort, and destroys the stimulus, or
what is of greater worth, the necessity of acting for one's self. The
Spaniard (except the Basque and the Catalonian) looks to the Government
for active and direct aid, as if the Public Treasury were a natural
spring at the waters of which all temporal calamities could be washed
away--all material wants supplied. He will tell you with pride rather
than with abashment that he is an _empleado_--a State dependent.
National progress is but the aggregate of personal individual
activity rightly directed, and a nation weakens as a whole as its
component parts become dormant, or as the majority rely upon the
efforts of the few. The spirit of Cæsarism--"all for the people and
nothing by them"--must tend not only to political slavery, but to a
reduction in commercial prosperity, national power, and international
influence. The Spaniards have indeed proved this fact. The best laws
were never intended to provide for the people, but to regulate the
conditions on which they could provide for themselves. The consumers
of public wealth in Spain are far too numerous in proportion to the
producers; hence not only is the State constantly pressed for funds,
but the busy bees who form the nucleus of the nation's vitality are
heavily taxed to provide for the dependent office-seeking drones. It
is the fatal delusion that liberty and national welfare depend solely
upon good government, instead of good government depending upon united
and co-operative individual exertion, that has brought the Spanish
nation to its present state of deplorable impotence.
The Government itself is but the official counterpart of the
governed. By the aid of servile speculators, a man in political
circles struggles to come to the front--to hold a portfolio in the
ministry--if it only be for a session, when his pension for life is
assured on his retirement. Merit and ability have little weight, and
the proteges of the outgoing minister must make room for those of the
next lucky ministerial pension-seeker, and so on successively. This
Colony therefore became a lucrative hunting-ground at the disposal
of the Madrid Cabinet wherein to satisfy the craving demands of their
numerous partisans and friends. They were sent out with a salary and to
make what they could,--at their own risk, of course,--like the country
lad who was sent up to London with the injunction from his father,
"Make money, honestly if you can, but make it."
From the Conquest up to 1844, when trading by officials was abolished,
it was a matter of little public concern how Government servants made
fortunes. Only when the jealousy of one urged him to denounce another
was any inquiry instituted so long as the official was careful not to
embezzle or commit a direct fraud on the _Real Haber_ (the Treasury
funds). When the _Real Haber_ was once covered, then all that could
be got out of the Colony was for the benefit of the officials, great
and small. In 1840, Eusebio Mazorca wrote as follows: [104]--"Each
chief of a province is a real sultan, and when he has terminated his
administration, all that is talked of in the capital is the thousands
of pesos clear gain which he made in his Government."
Eusebio Mazorca further states: [105]--"The Governor receives payment
of the tribute in rice-paddy, which he credits to the native at two
reales in silver per caban. Then he pays this sum into the Royal
Treasury in money, and sells the rice-paddy for private account at
the current rate of six, eight or more reales in silver per caban,
and this simple operation brings him 200 to 300 per cent. profit."
The same writer adds:--"Now quite recently the Interventor of Zamboanga
is accused by the Governor of that place of having made some P15,000
to P16,000 solely by using false measures ... The same Interventor to
whom I refer, is said to have made a fortune of P50,000 to P60,000,
whilst his salary as second official in the Audit Department [106]
is P540 per annum." According to Zúñiga, the salary of a professor
of law with the rank of magistrate was P800 per annum.
Up to June, 1886, the provincial taxes being in the custody of the
Administrator, the Judicial Governor had a percentage assigned to him
to induce him to control the Administrator's work. The Administrator
himself had percentages, and the accounts of these two functionaries
were checked by a third individual styled the "Interventor," whose
duties appeared to be to intervene in the casting-up of his superiors'
figures. He was forbidden to reside with the Administrator. After
the above date the payment of all these percentages ceased.
But for the peculations by Government officials from the highest
circles downwards, the inhabitants of the Colony would doubtless
have been a million or so richer per annum. One frequently heard
of officials leaving for Spain with sums far exceeding the total
emoluments they had received during their term of office. Some
provincial employees acquired a pernicious habit of annexing what
was not theirs by all manner of pretexts. To cite some instances:
I knew a Governor of Negros Island who seldom saw a native pass the
Government House with a good horse without begging it of him; thus,
under fear of his avenging a refusal, his subjects furnished him
little by little with a large stud, which he sold before he left,
much to their disgust.
In another provincial capital there happened to be a native headman
imprudently vain enough to carry a walking-stick with a chased
gold-knob handle studded with brilliants. It took the fancy of the
Spanish Governor, who repeatedly expressed his admiration of it, hoping
that the headman would make him a present of it. At length, when the
Governor was relieved of his post, he called together the headmen to
take formal leave of them, and at the close of a flattering speech, he
said he would willingly hand over his official-stick as a remembrance
of his command. In the hubbub of applause which followed, he added,
"and I will retain a souvenir of my loyal subordinates." Suiting the
action to the word, he snatched the coveted stick out of the hand
of the owner and kept it. A Gov.-General in my time enriched himself
by peculation to such an extent that he was at his wits' end to know
how to remit his ill-gotten gains clandestinely. Finally, he resolved
to send an army Captain over to Hong-Kong with P35,000 to purchase a
draft on Europe for him. The Captain went there, but he never returned.
There were about 725 towns and 23 missions in the Colony. Each town
was locally governed by a native--in some cases a Spanish or Chinese
half-caste--who was styled the petty-governor or _Gobernadorcillo_,
whilst his popular title was that of _Capitan_. This service was
compulsory. The elections of _Gobernadorcillos_ and their subordinates
took place every two years, the term of office counting from the July 1
following such elections. In the few towns where the _Gobernadorcillos_
were able to make considerable sums, the appointment was eagerly
sought for, but as a rule it was considered an onerous task, and I
know several who have paid bribes to the officials to rid them of it,
under the pretext of ill-health, legal incapacity, and so on. The
_Gobernadorcillo_ was supported by what was pompously termed a
"ministry," composed of two lieutenants of the town, lieutenants of
the wards, the chiefs of police, of plantations, and of live-stock.
The _Gobernadorcillo_ was nominally the delegate and practically the
servant of his immediate chief, the Provincial Governor. He was the
arbiter of local petty questions, and endeavoured to adjust them,
but when they assumed a legal aspect, they were remitted to the local
Justice of the Peace, who was directly subordinate to the Provincial
Chief Judge. He was also responsible to the Administrator for the
collection of taxes--to the Chief of the Civil Guard for the capture
of criminals, and to the priest of his parish for the interests of
the Church. His responsibility for the taxes to be collected sometimes
brought him imprisonment, unless he succeeded in throwing the burden
on the actual collectors--the _Cabezas de Barangay_.
The _Gobernadorcillo_ was often put to considerable expense in the
course of his two years, in entertaining and supplying the wants of
officials passing through. To cover this outlay, the loss of his own
time, the salaries of writers in the Town Hall, presents to his Spanish
chiefs to secure their goodwill, and other calls upon his private
income, he naturally had to exact funds from the townspeople. Legally,
he could receive, if he chose (but few did), the munificent salary of
P2 per month, and an allowance for clerks equal to about one-fifth
of what he had to pay them. Some of these _Gobernadorcillos_ were
well-to-do planters, and were anxious for the office, even if it
cost them money, on account of the local prestige which the title of
"Capitan" gave them, but others were often so poor that if they had
not pilfered, this compulsory service would have ruined them. However,
a smart _Gobernadorcillo_ was rarely out of pocket by his service. One
of the greatest hardships of his office was that he often had to
abandon his plantation or other livelihood to go to the provincial
capital at his own expense whenever he was cited there. Many of them
who did not speak or understand Spanish had to pay and be at the
mercy of a Secretary (_Directorcillo_), who was also a native.
When any question arose of general interest to the townspeople (such
as a serious innovation in the existing law, or the annual feasts,
or the anticipated arrival of a very big official, etc.) the headmen
(_principalia_) were cited to the Town Hall. They were also expected
to assemble there every Sunday and Great Feast Days (three-cross Saint
days in the Calendar), to march thence in procession to the church
to hear Mass, under certain penalties if they failed to attend. Each
one carried his stick of authority; and the official dress was a
short Eton jacket of black cloth over the shirt, the tail of which
hung outside the trousers. Some _Gobernadorcillos_, imbued with a
sense of the importance and solemnity of office, ordered a band to
play lively dance music at the head of the _cortége_ to and from the
church. After Mass they repaired to the convent, and on bended knee
kissed the priest's hand. Town affairs were then discussed. Some
present were chided, others were commended by their spiritual dictator.
In nearly every town the people were, and still are, divided into
parties holding divergent views on town affairs, each group being ready
to give the other a "stab in the back" when the opportunity offers,
and not unfrequently these differences seriously affect the social
relations of the individual members.
For the direct collection of taxes each township was sub-divided into
groups of forty or fifty families called _Barangays_: each group had
to pay taxes to its respective head, styled _Cabeza de Barangay_,
who was responsible to the petty-governor, who in turn made the
payment to the Provincial Administrator for remission to the Treasury
(_Intendencia_) in Manila. This _Barangay chiefdom_ system took its
origin from that established by the natives themselves prior to the
Spanish conquest, and in some parts of the Colony the original title
of _datto_ was still applied to the chief. This position, hereditary
among themselves, continued to be so for many years under Spanish
rule, and was then considered an honourable distinction because it
gave the heads of certain families a birthright importance in their
class. Later on they were chosen, like all the other native local
authorities, every two years, but if they had anything to lose, they
were invariably re-elected. In order to be ranked among the headmen
of the town (the _principalia_), a _Barangay chief_ had to serve for
ten years in that capacity unless he were, meanwhile, elected to a
higher rank, such as lieutenant or _gobernadorcillo_. Everybody,
therefore, shirked the repugnant obligations of a chiefdom, for
the Government rarely recognized any bad debts in the collection of
the taxes, until the chief had been made bankrupt and his goods and
chattels sold to make good the sums which he could not collect from
his group, whether it arose from their poverty, death, or from their
having absconded. I have been present at auction sales of live-stock
seized to supply taxes to the Government, which admitted no excuses
or explanations. Many _Barangay chiefs_ went to prison through
their inability or refusal to pay others' debts. On the other hand,
there were among them some profligate characters who misappropriated
the collected taxes, but the Government had really little right to
complain, for the labour of tax-gathering was a _forced service_
without remuneration for expenses or loss of time incurred.
In many towns, villages, and hamlets there were posts of the Civil
Guard established for the arrest of criminals and the maintenance of
public order; moreover, there was in each town a body of guards called
_Cuadrilleros_ for the defence of the town and the apprehension of
bandits and criminals within the jurisdiction of the town only. The
town and the wards together furnished these local guards, whose
social position was one of the humblest and least enviable. There
were frequent cases of _Cuadrilleros_ passing over to a band of
brigands. Some years ago the whole muster belonging to the town of
Mauban (Tayabas) suddenly took to the mountains; on the other hand,
many often rendered valuable aid to society, but their doubtful
reliability vastly diminished their public utility.
From the time Philippine administration was first organized up to
the year 1884, all the subdued natives paid tribute. Latterly it
was fixed at one peso and ten cents per annum, and those who did not
choose to work for the Government during forty days in the year, paid
also a poll-tax (_fallas_) of P3 per annum. But, as a matter of fact,
thousands were declared as workers who never did work, and whilst
roads were in an abominable condition and public works abandoned,
not much secret was made of the fact that a great portion of the
poll-tax never reached the Treasury. These pilferings were known
to the Spanish local authorities as _caidas_ or droppings; and in a
certain province I met at table a provincial chief judge, the nephew
of a general, and other persons who openly discussed the value of
the different Provincial Governments (before 1884) in Luzon Island,
on the basis of so much for salary and so much for fees and _caidas_.
However, although the tribute and _fallas_ system worked as well as any
other would under the circumstances, for some reason, best known to the
authorities, it was abolished. In lieu thereof a scheme was proposed,
obliging _every civilized inhabitant_ of the Philippines, excepting
only public servants, the clergy, and a few others, _to work for
fifteen days per annum without the right of redeeming this obligation
by payment_. Indeed, the decree to that effect was actually received
in Manila from the Home Government, but it was so palpably ludicrous
that the Gov.-General did not give it effect. He had sufficient common
sense to foresee in its application the extinction of all European
prestige and moral influence over the natives if Spanish and foreign
gentlemen of good family were seen sweeping the streets, lighting the
lamps, road-mending, guiding buffalo-carts loaded with stones, and so
on. This measure, therefore, regarded by some as a practical joke,
by others as the conception of a lunatic theorist--was withdrawn,
or at least allowed to lapse.
Nevertheless, those in power were bent on reform, and the Peninsular
system of a document of identity (_Cédula personal_), which works
well amongst Europeans, was then adopted for all civilized classes
and nationalities above the age of 18 years without exception, its
possession being compulsory. The amount paid for this document, which
was of nine classes, [107] from P25 value downwards, varied according
to the income of the holder or the cost of his trading-licences. Any
person holding this document of a value under P3 1/2 was subject to
fifteen days' forced labour per annum, or to pay 50 cents for each
day he failed to work. The holder of a document of P3 1/2 or over
paid also P1 1/2 "Municipal Tax" in lieu of labour. The "_Cédula_"
thenceforth served as a passport for travelling within the Archipelago,
to be exhibited at any time on demand by the proper authority. No
legal document was valid unless the interested parties had produced
their _Cédulas_, the details of which were inscribed in the legal
instrument. No petitions would be noticed, and very few transactions
could be made in the Government offices without the presentation of
this identification document. The decree relating to this reform,
like most ambiguous Spanish edicts, set forth that any person was at
liberty to take a higher-valued _Cédula_ than that corresponding to
his position, without the right of any official to ask the reason
why. This clause was prejudicial to the public welfare, because it
enabled thousands of able-bodied natives to evade labour for public
improvements of imperative necessity in the provinces. The public
labour question was indeed altogether a farce, and simply afforded
a pretext for levying a tax.
It would appear that whilst the total amount of taxation in Spanish
times was not burdensome, the fiscal system was obviously defective.
The (American) Insular Government has continued the issue of the
_Cédula_ on a reasonable plan which bears hard on no one. Forced
labour is abolished; government work is paid for out of the taxes;
and the uniform cost of the _Cédula_ is one peso for every male
between the ages of 18 and 60 years.
In 1890 certain reforms were introduced into the townships, most
of which were raised to the dignity of Municipalities. The titles
of _Gobernadorcillo_ and _Directorcillo_ (the words themselves in
Spanish bear a sound of contempt) were changed to _Capitan Municipal_
and _Secretario_ respectively (Municipal Captain and Secretary) with
nominally extended powers. For instance, the Municipal Captains were
empowered to disburse for public works, without appeal to Manila,
a few hundred pesos in the year (to be drawn, in some cases, from
empty public coffers, or private purses). The functions of the local
Justices of the Peace were amplified and abused to such a degree
that these officials became more the originators of strife than
the guardians of peace. The old-established obligation to supply
travellers, on payment therefor, with certain necessaries of life
and means of transport was abolished.
Hitherto it had been the custom for a traveller on arriving at a town
without knowing any one there, or without letters of introduction,
to alight (by right) at the Tribunal, or Town Hall. Each such
establishment had, or ought to have had, a tariff of necessary
provisions and the means of travelling to the next town (such
as ponies, gigs, hammocks, sedan-chairs, etc., according to the
particular conditions of the locality). Each _Barangay_ or _Cabezeria_
furnished one _Cuadrillero_ (_vide_ pp. 223, 224) for the service
of the Tribunal, so that the supply of baggage-carriers, bearers,
etc., which one needed could not be refused on payment. The native
official in charge of this service to travellers, and in control of the
_Cuadrilleros_, was styled the _Alguacil_. Hence the Tribunal served
the double purpose of Town Hall and casual ward for wayfarers. There
were all sorts of Tribunales, from the well-built stone and wood
house to the poverty-stricken bamboo shanty where one had to pass
the night on the floor or on the table.
By decree of Gov.-General Weyler (1888-91) dated October 17, 1888,
which came into force on January 1, 1889, the obligation of the
Tribunal officials to supply provisions to travelling civilians had
been already abolished, although, under both reforms, civilians could
continue to take refuge at the Tribunal as theretofore. Notwithstanding
the reform of 1890, until the American advent the European traveller
found it no more difficult than before to procure _en route_ the
requisite means for provincial travelling.
CHAPTER XIV
Spanish-Philippine Finances
The secession of Mexico from the Spanish Crown in the second decade
of last century brought with it a complete revolution in Philippine
affairs. Direct trade with Europe through one channel or another had
necessarily to be permitted. The "Situado," or subsidy (_vide_ p. 244),
received from Mexico became a thing of the past, and necessity urged
the home authorities to relax, to a certain extent, the old restraint
on the development of Philippine resources.
In 1839 the first Philippine Budget was presented in the Spanish
Córtes, but so little interest did the affairs of the Colony excite
that it provoked no discussion. After the amendment of only one
item the Budget was adopted in silence. It was not the practice
in the earliest years to publish the full Philippine Budget in the
Islands, although allusion was necessarily made to items of it in the
_Gaceta de Manila_. However, it could be seen without difficulty in
Madrid. Considering that the Filipinos had no political rights, except
for the very brief period alluded to in Chapter xxii. (_vide Córtes de
Cádiz_), it is evident that popular discussion of public finance would
have been undesirable, because it could have led to no practical issue.
There is apparently no record of the Philippine Islands having been at
any time in a flourishing financial condition. With few exceptions,
in latter years the collected revenue of the Colony was usually much
less than the estimated yield of taxes. The Budget for 1888 is here
given in detail as an example.
PHILIPPINE BUDGETS
Financial Estimated Income Difference.
Year. Income. Realized.
P P P
1884-85 11,298,508.98 9,893,745.87 1,404,763.11
1885-86 11,528,178.00 9,688,029.70 1,840,148.30
1886-87 11,554,379.00 9,324,974.08 2,229,404.92
1894-95 13,280,139.40 13,579,900.00 299,760.60
1896-97 17,086,423.00 17,474,000.00 387,577.00
ANTICIPATED REVENUE, YEAR 1888
P cts.
Direct Taxes 5,206,836 93
Customs Dues 2,023,400 00
Government Monopolies (stamps, cock-fighting,
opium, gambling, etc.) 1,181,239 00
Lotteries and Raffles 513,200 00
Sale of State property 153,571 00
War and Marine Department (sale of useless
articles. Gain on repairs to private ships in
the Government Arsenal) 15,150 00
Sundries 744,500 00
9,837,896 93
Anticipated Expenditure, year 1888 9,825,633 29
Anticipated Surplus P 12,263 64
The actual deficit in the last previous Budget for which there was
no provision was estimated at P1,376,179.56, against which the above
balance would be placed. There were some remarkable inconsistencies
in the 1888 Budget. The Inspection of Woods and Forests was an
institution under a Chief Inspector with a salary of P6,500,
assisted by a technical staff of 64 persons and 52 non-technical
subordinates. The total cost for the year was estimated at P165,960,
against which the expected income derived from duties on felled
timber was P80,000; hence a loss of P85,960 was duly anticipated to
satisfy office-seekers. Those who wished to cut timber were subjected
to very complicated and vexatious regulations. The tariff of duties
and mode of calculating it were capriciously modified from time to
time on no commercial basis whatever. Merchants who had contracted to
supply timber at so much per foot for delivery within a fixed period
were never sure of their profits; for the dues might, meanwhile,
be raised without any consideration for trading interests. The most
urgent material want of the Colony was easy means of communication
with the interior of the Islands. Yet, whilst this was so sadly
neglected, the Budget provided the sum of P113,686.64 for a School of
Agriculture in Manila and 10 model farms and Schools of Cultivation
in the provinces. It was not the want of farming knowledge, but the
scarcity of capital and the scandalous neglect of public highways
and bridges for transport of produce which retarded agriculture. The
113,000 pesos, if disbursed on roads, bridges, town halls, and
landing-jetties, would have benefited the Colony; as it was, this
sum went to furnish salaries to needy Spaniards.
The following are some of the most interesting items of the Budget:
CURIOUS ITEMS OF REVENUE
P cts.
2,760,613 Identification Documents (_Cedulas personales_),
costing 4 per cent, to collect--gross value
4,401,629 25
Tax on the above, based on the estimated local consumption
of Tobacco
222,500 00
Chinese Capitation Tax
236,250 00
Tax on the above for the estimated local consumption of Tobacco
11,250 00
Recognition of vassalage collected from the unsubdued
mountain tribes
12,000 00
Industrial and Trading Licences (costing 1/2 per cent, to
collect), gross value
1,350,000 00
Yield of the Opium Contract (farmed out)
483,400 00
Yield of the Cock-fighting Contract (farmed out)
149,039 00
Lotteries and Raffles, nett profit say
501,862 00
State Lands worked by miners
100 00
Sale of State Lands
50,000 00
Mint--Profits on the manipulation of the bullion, less expenses
of the Mint (P 46,150), nett
330,350 00
Stamps and Stamped Paper
548,400 00
Convict labour hired out
50,000 00
CURIOUS ITEMS OF EXPENDITURE
P cts.
34 per cent, of the maintenance of Fernando Po (by Decree of
August 5, 1884)
68,618 18
Share of the pension paid to the heir of Christopher Columbus,
the Duke de Veragua (P 23,400 a year)
3,000 00
Share of the pension paid to Ferdinand Columbus, Marquis
de Bárboles
1,000 00
The Marquis de Bedmar is the heir of the assayer and caster
in the Mint of Potosi (Peru). The concern was taken over by
the Spanish Government, in return for an annual perpetual
pension, of which this Colony contributed the sum of
1,500 00
The Consular and Diplomatic Services, Philippine Share
66,000 00
Postal and Telegraph Services (staff of 550 persons)
406,547 17
The Submarine Cable Co. Subsidy (Bolinao to Hong-Kong)
48,000 00
Charitable Institutions partly supported by Government,
including the "Lepers' Hospital" P500
26,887 50
THE ARMY AND ARMED LAND FORCES
Rank and File and Non-commissioned Officers as follows:--
Infantry, Artillery, Engineer, and Carabineer Corps 9,470
Cavalry Corps 407
Disciplinary Corps (Convicts) 630
Disciplinary Corps (Non-commissioned Officers) 92
Three Civil Guard Corps (Provincial Constabulary) 3,342
Veteran Civil Guard Corps (Manila Military Police) 400
Total number of men 14,341
ARMY OFFICERS IN THE PHILIPPINES.
Year 1888.
How Employed. Lieutenant-Generals.
| Brigadier-Generals.
| | Colonels.
| | | Lieutenant-Colonels.
| | | | Majors.
| | | | | Captains.
| | | | | | Lieutenants.
| | | | | | | Sub-Lieutenants.
| | | | | | | | Totals.
| | | | | | | | |
Governor-General, with local
rank of Captain-General 1 1
Employed in Government
Administration, Political
Military Provincial
Governments, Staff Officers
and Officers at the Orders
of the Governor-General 1 7 7 14 39 37 23 12 140
With command or attached to
Army Corps and Disciplinary
Corps 5 11 14 88 136 127 381
Civil Guard 3 3 9 33 54 54 156
Veteran Civil Guard 1 6 6 13
Invalid Corps 1 1
Military Academy 1 1 2 4
Prisons and Penitentiaries 1 1 4 3 9
Commissariat Department 1 1 1 14 18 35
Judicial Audit Department 1 1 2 2 6
In expectation of service 1 3 6 12 12 12 46
In excess of Active Service
requirements 3 1 7 9 20
Total of Officers 2 9 19 36 73 191 262 220 812
The Archbishop, as Vicar-General of the Armed Forces, ranked in
precedence as a Field-Marshal. (In the Spanish Army a Field-Marshal
ranks between a Brig.-General and Lieut.-General.)
OFFICERS' PAY PER ANNUM
Rank. Ordinary Pay.
| When Commanding a Corps. _Extra_.
| | When in Civil Guard.
| | | When in Veteran
| | | Civil Guard.
| | | |
P P P P
Captain-General
was paid as
Governor-General
of the Colony 40,000 [108]
Lieutenant-General
(local rank), Sub-
Inspector of
Army Corps 12,000
Brigadier-General 4,500 800
Colonel 3,450 600 4,200
Lieutenant-Colonel 2,700 400 3,288
Major 2,400 2,520 2,880
Captain 1,500 1,584
Lieutenant 1,125 1,242 1,485
Sub-Lieutenant 975 1,068 1,275
After 6 years' and up to 9 years' service, an officer could claim
a free passage back to the Peninsula for himself and, if married,
his family.
After 9 years' service, his retirement from the Colony for three years
was compulsory. If he nevertheless wished to remain in the Colony,
he must quit military service. If he left before completing six
years' service, he would have to pay his own passage unless he went
"on commission" or with sick-leave allowance.
Estimated Annual Disbursements for--
P cts
The Civil Guard (Constabulary), composed of Three
Corps = 3,342 Men and 156 Officers 638,896 77
The Veteran Civil Guard (Manila Police) One Corps =
400 Men and 13 Officers 73,246 88
----------
The Disciplinary Corps, Maintenance of 630 Convicts
and Material 56,230 63
(For the Disciplinary Convict Corps) 92 Non-commissioned
Officers and 23 Officers 47,909 51
==========
P 104,140 14
Army Estimates
P cts
Estimate according to the Budget for 1888 _Plus_
the following sums charged on other estimates,
viz.:-- 3,016,185 91
Disciplinary Corps, maintenance of 630 Convicts
and material 56,230 63
The Civil Guard 638,896 77
The Veteran Civil Guard 73,246 88
Pensions 117,200 00
Transport and maintenance of Recruits from Provinces 6,000 00
Expeditions to be made against the Moros--Religious
ceremonies to celebrate Victories gained over
them--Maintenance of War Prisoners, etc. 11,000 00
============
Total cost of Army and Armed Land Forces P 3,918,760 19
Before the walls were built around Manila, about the year 1590,
each soldier and officer lived where he pleased, and, when required,
the troops were assembled by the bugle call.
At the close of the 16th century barracks were constructed, but up
to the middle of last century the native troops were so badly and
irregularly paid that they went from house to house begging alms of
the citizens (_vide_ p. 53, King Philip II.'s Decree).
In the 17th century troops died of sheer want in the Fort of Ylígan
(Mindanao Is.), and when this was represented to the Gov.-General
he generously ordered that the Spanish soldiers were in future to be
paid P2 per month and native soldiers P1 per month to hold the fort,
at the risk of their lives, against attack from the Mahometans.
In the forts of Labo and Taytay (Palaúan Is.) the soldiers' pay was
only nominal, rations were often short, and their lives altogether
most wretched. Sometimes they were totally overlooked by the military
chiefs, and they had to seek subsistence as best they could when
provisions were not sent from the capital (_vide_p. 157).
Mexican soldiers arrived in nearly every ship, but there were no
barracks for them, no regular mode of living, no regulations for
their board and lodging, etc.; hence many had to subsist by serving
natives and half-breeds, much to the discredit of the mother country,
and consequent loss of prestige. Each time a new expedition was
organized a fresh recruiting had to be made at great cost and with
great delay. There was practically no regular army except those
necessarily compelled to mount guard, etc., in the city. Even the
officers received no regular pay until 1754, and there was some excuse
for stealing when they had a chance, and for the total absence of
enthusiasm in the Service. When troops were urgently called for, the
Gov.-General had to bargain with the officers to fill the minor posts
by promises of rewards, whilst the high commands were eagerly sought
for, not for the pay or the glory, but for the plunder in perspective.
In 1739 the Armoury in Manila contained only 25 Arquebuses of
native make, 120 Biscayan muskets, 40 Flint guns, 70 Hatchets, and
40 Cutlasses.
The first regular military organization in these Islands was in the
time of Governor Pedro Manuel de Arandia (1754), when one regiment
was formed of five companies of native soldiers, together with four
companies of troops which arrived with the Governor from Mexico. This
corps, afterwards known as the "King's Regiment" [109] (_Regimiento
del Rey_) was divided into two battalions, increased to 10 companies
each as the troops returned from the provinces.
The 20 companies were each composed as follows:--
1 captain, 1 lieutenant, 1 sub-lieutenant, 4 sergeants, 2 drummers,
6 first corporals, 6 seconds corporals, and 88 rank and file.
The Gov.-General's Body Guard of Halberdiers was reformed, and
thenceforth consisted of 18 men, under a captain and a corporal.
The Monthly Pay under these reforms was as follows:--
Staff Officers. Regimental Officers Governor-General's
P. and Staff P. c. Body Guard P.
Chief of the Staff 40 Captain 25 00 Captain 35
Adjutant-Major. 25 Lieutenant. 18 00 Corporal 10
Adjutant. 18 Sub-Lieutenant. 14 00 Guards 5
Captain 12 Sergeant 4 00
Drummer 3 00
First Corporal 3 25
Second Corporal 3 00
Rank and File 2 62 1/2
From October 1, 1754, the troops were quartered in barracks,
Commissariat Officers were appointed, and every man and every officer
was regularly paid fortnightly. The soldiers were not used to this
discipline, and desertion was frequent. They much preferred the old
style of roaming about to beg or steal and live where they chose
until they were called out to service, and very vigorous measures
had to be adopted to compel them to comply with the new regulations.
In May, 1755, four artillery brigades were formed, the commanding
officer of each receiving P30 per month pay.
In 1757 there were 16 fortified provincial outposts, at a total
estimated cost of P37,638 per annum (including Zamboanga, the chief
centre of operations against the Mahometans, which alone cost P18,831
in 1757), besides the armed forces and Camp of Manila, Fort Santiago,
and Cavite Arsenal and Fort, which together cost a further sum of
P157,934 for maintenance in that year.
SPANISH VESSELS IN PHILIPPINE WATERS
Year 1898
Name. Class. Tons. H.P.
Reina Cristina Cruiser 3,500 3,950
Castilla Cruiser 3,260 4,400
Don Anto. de Ulloa Cruiser 1,200 1,523
Don Juan de Austria Cruiser 1,130 1,600
Isla de Cuba Cruiser 1,048 2,200
Isla de Luzon Cruiser 1,048 2,200
Velasco Gunboat 1,152 1,500
Elcano Gunboat 560 600
General Lezo Gunboat 520 600
Argos Gunboat 508 600
Marqués del Duero Gunboat 500 550
Manila Transport 1,900 750
General Alava Transport 1,200 1,000
Cebú Transport 532 600
Callao Gunboat, and 4 others very small,
besides 3 armed steam launches built
in Hong-Kong, viz.:--_Lanao, Corcuera_,
and _General Blanco_.
NAVAL DIVISIONS
Station. Commander's Pay.
P
South Division 5,760
Palaúan (Pta. Princesa) 4,560
Isabel de Basílan 3,360
Balábac Island 3,360
Corregidor Island 3,360
West Caroline Islands 3,360
East Caroline Islands 4,560
HARBOUR-MASTERS
Station. Pay. Station. Pay.
P P
Manila 3,200 Pangasinán 1,500
Yloilo 3,200 Ilocos Norte y Sur. 1,500
Cebú 1,500 Cagayán 1,500
Cápis 1,500 Ladrone Islands 1,500
Zamboanga 1,500 Laguimanoc (Civilian) 144
The Chief of the Philippine Naval Forces was a Rear-Admiral receiving
P16,392 per annum.
There were two Brigades of Marine Infantry, composed of 376 men with
18 officers.
_Cavite Arsenal_
The chief Naval Station was at Cavite, six miles from Manila. The
forces at this station were 90 Marines as Guards, and 244 Marines as
reserves. One hundred convicts were employed for Arsenal labour.
The Officer in command of the Cavite Arsenal and Naval Station took
rank after the Rear-Admiral, and received a salary of P8,496 per annum.
The Navy Estimates (Budget for 1888) amounted to P2,573,776·27.
_Spanish Judicial Statistics_
_Civil and Criminal Law Courts_
The Civil and Criminal Law Courts were as follows, viz.:--
2 Supreme Courts in Manila and Cebú, quite independent of each other.
4 First-Class Courts of Justice in Manila (called "de término.")
8 First-Class Courts of Justice in the Provinces (called "de término_.")
10 Second-Class Courts of Justice in the Provinces (called "de ascenso.")
19 Third-Class Courts of Justice in the Provinces (called "de entrada.")
7 Provincial Governments with judicial powers.
_Judges' Salaries_
President of the Supreme Court of Manila P7,000
President of the Supreme Court of Cebu 6,000
Judge of each of the 12 First-Class Courts 4,000
Judge of each of the 10 Second-Class Courts 3,000
Judge of each of the 19 Third-Class Courts 2,000
_Law Courts Estimate for_ 1888
P cts.
Supreme Court of Manila 90,382 00
Supreme Court of Cebú 49,828 00
All the minor Courts and allowances to Provincial
Governors with judicial powers 192,656 00
------- --
Estimated total cost for the year P332,866 00
_Penitentiaries and Convict Settlements_
Manila (Bilíbid Jail) containing on an average 900 Native Convicts
And in 1888 there were also 3 Spanish Convicts
Cavite Jail contained in 1888 51 Native Convicts
Zamboanga Jail contained in 1888 98 Native Convicts
Agricultural Colony of San Ramon (Zamboanga),
worked by convict labour, contained in 1888 164 Native Convicts
Ladrone Island Penal Settlement contained in 1888 101 Native Convicts
Ladrone Island Penal Settlement contained in 1888 3 Spanish Convicts
In the Army and Navy Services 730 Native Convicts
-----
2,045 Convicts
Total estimated disbursements for Penitentiaries
and Convict maintenance in the Settlements for the year P82,672.71
_Brigandage_ first came into prominence in Governor Arandia's time
(1754-59), and he used the means of "setting a thief to catch a
thief," which answered well for a short time, until the crime became
more and more habitual as provincial property increased in value
and capital was accumulated there. In 1888 the Budget provided an
allowance of 2,000 pesos for rewards for the capture or slaughter of
these ruffians. Up to the end of Spanish rule, brigandage, pillage,
and murder were treated with such leniency by the judges that there
was little hope for the extinction of such crimes. When a band of
thieves and assassins attacked a village or a residence, murdered its
inhabitants, and carried off booty, the Civil Guard at once scoured the
country, and often the malefactors were arrested. The Civil Guard was
an excellent institution, and performed its duty admirably well; but
as soon as the villains were handed over to the legal functionaries,
society lost hope. Instead of the convicted criminals being garrotted
according to law, as the public had a right to demand, they were
"protected"; some were let loose on the world again, whilst others
were sent to prison and allowed to escape, or they were transported to
a penal settlement to work without fetters, where they were just as
comfortable as if they were working for a private employer. I record
these facts from personal knowledge, for my wanderings in the Islands
brought me into contact with all sorts and conditions of men. I have
been personally acquainted with many brigands, and I gave regular
employment to an ex-bandit for years.
The Philippine brigand--known in the northern islands as _Tulisán_
and in the southern islands as _Pulaján_--is not merely an outlaw,
such as may yet be found in Southern and Eastern Europe; his infamous
work of freebooting is never done to his satisfaction without the
complement of bloodshed, even though his victim yield to him all
without demur. Booty or no booty, blood must flow, if he be the
ordinary _Tulisán_ of the type known to the Tagálogs as _dugong-aso_
(blood of a dog). as distinguished from the milder _Tulisán pulpul_
(literally, the blunt brigand), who robs, uses no unnecessary violence,
but runs away if he can, and only fights when he must.
At Christmas, 1884, I went to Laguimanoc in the Province of Tayabas
to spend a few days with an English friend of mine. [110] On the way
there, at Sariaya, I stayed at the house of the Captain of the Civil
Guard, when a message came to say that an attack had been made the
night before on my friend's house, his manager, a Swede, having been
killed, and many others in the village wounded. The Captain showed me
the despatch, and invited me to join him as a volunteer to hunt down
the murderers. I agreed, and within half an hour we were mounted and
on their track all through that dark night, whilst the rain poured in
torrents. Four native soldiers were following us on foot. We jumped
over ditches, through rice-paddy fields and cocoanut plantations,
and then forded a river, on the opposite bank of which was the
next guards' post in charge of a lieutenant, who joined us with
eight foot-soldiers. That same night we together captured five of
the wretches, who had just beached a canoe containing part of their
spoils. The prisoners were bound elbows together at their backs and
sent forward under escort. We rode on all night until five o'clock
the next morning, arriving at the convent of Pagbilao just as Father
Jesus was going down to say Mass. I had almost lost my voice through
being ten hours in the rain; but the priest was very attentive to us,
and we went on in a prahu to the village where the crime had been
committed. In another prahu the prisoners were sent in charge of
the soldiers. In the meantime, the Chief Judge and the Government
Doctor of the province had gone on before us. On the way we met a
canoe going to Pagbilao, carrying the corpse of the murdered Swede
for burial. When we arrived at Laguimanoc, we found one native dead
and many natives and Chinese badly wounded.
My friend's house had the front door smashed in--an iron strong-box
had been forced, and a few hundred pesos, with some rare coins, were
stolen. The furniture in the dining-room was wantonly hacked about
with bowie-knives, only to satisfy a savage love for mischief. His
bedroom had been entered, and there the brigands began to make
their harvest; the bundles of wearing-apparel, jewellery, and
other valuables were already tied up, when lo! the Virgin herself
appeared, casting a penetrating glance of disapproval upon the wicked
revelry! Forsaking their plunder, the brigands fled in terror from the
saintly apparition. And when my friend re-entered his home and crossed
the bloodstained floor of the dining-room to go to his bedroom, the
cardboard Virgin, with a trade advertisement on the back, was still
peeping round the door-jamb to which she was nailed, with the words
"Please to shut the door" printed on her spotless bust.
The next day the Captain remained in the village whilst I went on
with the Lieutenant and a few guards in a prahu down the coast,
where we made further captures, and returned in three days. During
our journey in the prahu the wind was so strong that we resolved to
beach our craft on the seashore instead of attempting to get over
the shoal of the San Juan River. We ran her ashore under full sail,
and just at that moment a native rushed towards us with an iron
bar in his hand. In the evening gloom he must have mistaken us for
a party of weather-beaten native or Chinese traders whose skulls
he might smash in at a stroke and rifle their baggage. He halted,
however, perfectly amazed when two guards with their bayonets fixed
jumped forward in front of him. Then we got out, took him prisoner,
and the next day he was let off with a souvenir of the lash, as
there was nothing to prove that he was a brigand by profession. The
second leader of the brigand gang was shot through the lungs a week
afterwards, by the guards who were on his track, as he was jumping
from the window-opening of a hut, and there he died.
The Captain of the Civil Guard received an anonymous letter stating
where the brigand chief was hiding. This fact came to the knowledge of
the native _cuadrillero_ officer who had hitherto supplied his friend,
the brigand, with rice daily, so he hastened on before the Captain
could arrive, and imposed silence for ever on the fugitive bandit by
stabbing him in the back. Thus the _cuadrillero_ avoided the disclosure
of unpleasant facts which would have implicated himself. The prisoners
were conducted to the provincial jail, and three years afterwards,
when I made inquiries about them, I learnt that two of them had died
of their wounds, whilst not a single one had been sentenced.
The most ignorant classes believe that certain persons are possessed
of a mystic power called _anting-anting_, which preserves them from
all harm, and that the body of a man so affected is even refractory
to bullet or steel. Brigands are often captured wearing medallions of
the Virgin Mary or the Saints as a device of the _anting-anting_. In
Maragondón (Cavite), the son of a friend of mine was enabled to go
into any remote place with impunity, because he was reputed to be
possessed of this charm. Some highwaymen, too, have a curious notion
that they can escape punishment for a crime committed in Easter Week,
because the thief on the cross was pardoned his sins.
In 1885 I purchased a small estate, where there was some good wild-boar
hunting and snipe-shooting, and I had occasion to see the man who
was tenant previous to my purchase, in Manila Jail. He was accused
of having been concerned in an attack upon the town of Mariquina,
and was incarcerated for eighteen months without being definitely
convicted or acquitted. Three months after his release from prison
he was appointed petty-governor of his own town, much to the disgust
of the people, who in vain petitioned against it in writing.
I visited the Penal Settlement, known as the Agricultural Colony of
San Ramon, situated about fifteen miles north of Zamboanga, where I
remained twelve days. The director of the settlement was D. Felipe
Dujiols, an army captain who had defended Oñate (in Guipuzcoa, Spain),
during the Carlist war; so, as we were each able to relate our personal
experiences of that stirring period, we speedily became friends. As
his guest, I was able to acquire more ample information about the
system of convict treatment. With the 25 convicts just arrived,
there were in all 150 natives of the most desperate class--assassins,
thieves, conspirators, etc., working on this penal settlement. They
were well fed, fairly well lodged, and worked with almost the same
freedom as independent labourers. Within a few yards of the director's
bungalow were the barracks, for the accommodation of a detachment
of 40 soldiers--under the command of a lieutenant--who patrolled the
settlement during the day and mounted guard at night. During my stay
one prisoner was chained and flogged, but that was for a serious
crime committed the day before. The severest hardship which these
convicts had to endure under the rule of my generous host, D. Felipe,
was the obligation to work as honest men in other countries would be
willing to do. In this same penal settlement, some years ago, a party
of convicts attacked and killed three of the European overseers,
and then escaped to the Island of Basilan, which lies to the south
of Zamboanga. The leader of these criminals was a native named Pedro
Cuevas, whose career is referred to at length in Chap. xxix.
Within half a day's journey from Manila there are several well-known
marauders' haunts, such as San Mateo, Imus, Silan, Indan, the mouths
of the Hagonoy River (Pampanga), etc. In 1881 I was the only European
amongst 20 to 25 passengers in a canoe going to Balanga on the west
shore of Manila Bay, when about midday a canoe, painted black and
without the usual outriggers, bore down upon us, and suddenly two
gun-shots were fired, whilst we were called upon to surrender. The
pirates numbered eight; they had their faces bedaubed white and their
canoe ballasted with stones. There was great commotion in our craft;
the men shouted and the women fell into a heap over me, reciting
Ave Marias, and calling upon all the Saints to succour them. Just
as I extricated myself and looked out from under the palm-leaf
awning, the pirates flung a stone which severely cut our pilot's
face. They came very close, flourishing their knives, but our crew
managed to keep them from boarding us by pushing off their canoe
with the paddles. When the enemy came within range of my revolver,
one of their party, who was standing up brandishing a bowie-knife,
suddenly collapsed into a heap. This seemed to discourage the rest,
who gave up the pursuit, and we went on to Balanga.
The most famous _Tulisán_ within living memory was a Chinese half-caste
named Juan Fernandez, commonly known as _Tancad_ ("tall," in Tagálog)
because of his extraordinary stature. His sphere of operations was
around Bulacan, Tárlac, Mórong, and Nueva Ecija. He took part in
21 crimes which could have been proved against him, and doubtless
many more. A man of wonderful perception and great bravery, he was
only 35 years old when he was captured in Bulacan Province by the
Spanish Captain Villa Abrille. Brought before a court-martial on the
specific charge of being the chief actor in a wholesale slaughter at
Tayud, which caused a great sensation at the time, he and ten of his
companions were executed on August 28, 1877, to the immense relief of
the people, to whom the very name of _Tancad_ gave a thrill of horror.
No one experienced in the Colony ever thought of privately prosecuting
a captured brigand, for a criminal or civil lawsuit in the Philippines
was one of the worst calamities that could befall a man. Between
notaries, procurators, barristers, and the sluggish process of the
courts, a litigant was fleeced of his money, often worried into a
bad state of health, and kept in horrible suspense for years. It was
as hard to get the judgement executed as it was to win the case. Even
when the question at issue was supposed to be settled, a defect in the
sentence could always be concocted to re-open the whole affair. If the
case had been tried and judgement given under the Civil Code, a way
was often found to convert it into a criminal case; and when apparently
settled under the Criminal Code, a flaw could be discovered under the
_Laws of the Indies_, or the _Siete Partidas_, or the _Roman Law_,
or the _Novisima Recopilacion_, or the _Antiguos fueros_, Decrees,
Royal Orders, _Ordenanzas de buen Gobierno_, and so forth, by which
the case could be re-opened. It was the same in the 16th century
(_vide_ p. 56).
I knew a planter in Negros Island who was charged with homicide. The
judge of his province acquitted him, but fearing that he might
again be arrested on the same charge, he came up to Manila with me
to procure a ratification of the sentence in the Supreme Court. The
legal expenses were so enormous that he was compelled to fully mortgage
his plantation. Weeks passed, and having spent all his money without
getting justice, I lent his notary £40 to assist in bringing the case
to an end. The planter returned to Negros apparently satisfied that he
would be troubled no further, but later on, the newly-appointed judge
in that Island, whilst prospecting for fees by turning up old cases,
unfortunately came across this one, and my planter acquaintance was
sentenced to eight years' imprisonment, although the family lawyer,
proceeding on the same shifty lines, still hoped to find defects in
the sentence in order to reverse it in favour of his client.
Availing one's self of the dilatoriness of the Spanish law, it was
possible for a man to occupy a house, pay no rent, and refuse to quit
on legal grounds during a couple of years or more. A person who had
not a cent to lose could persecute another of means by a trumped-up
accusation until he was ruined, by an "_informacion de pobreza_"--a
declaration of poverty--which enabled the persecutor to keep the
case going as long as he chose without needing money for fees. [111]
A case of this kind was often started at the instigation of a native
lawyer. When it had gone on for a certain time, the prosecutor's
adviser would propose an "extra-judicial arrangement," to extort
costs from the wearied and browbeaten defendant.
About the year 1886 there was a _cause célèbre_, the parties being
the firm of Jurado & Co. _versus_ the Hong-Kong and Shanghai Banking
Corporation. The Bank had agreed to make advances on goods to be
imported by the firm in exchange for the firm's acceptances. The
agreement was subject to six months' notice from the Bank. In
due course the Bank had reason to doubt the genuineness of certain
documents. Mr. Jurado was imprisoned, but shortly released on bail. He
was dismissed from his official post of second chief of Telegraphs,
worth P4,000 a year. Goods, as they arrived for his firm, were
stored pending litigation, and deteriorated to only a fraction of
their original value. His firm was forced by these circumstances into
liquidation, and Mr. Jurado sued the Bank for damages. The case was
open for several years, during which time the Bank coffers were once
sealed by judicial warrant, a sum of cash was actually transported from
the Bank premises, and the manager was nominally arrested, but really
a prisoner on parole in his house. Several sentences of the Court were
given in favour of each party. Years after this they were all quashed
on appeal to Madrid. Mr. Jurado went to Spain to fight his case,
and in 1891 I accidentally met him and his brother (a lawyer) in the
street in Madrid. The brother told me the claim against the Bank then
amounted to P935,000, and judgement for that sum would be given within
a fortnight. Still, years after that, when I was again in Manila, the
case was yet pending, and another onslaught was made on the Bank. The
Court called on the manager to deliver up the funds of the Bank, and
on his refusal to do so a mechanic was sent there to open the safes,
but he laboured in vain for a week. Then a syndicate of Philippine
capitalists was formed to fleece the Bank, one of its most energetic
members being a native private banker in Manila. Whilst the case was
in its first stages I happened to be discussing it at a shop in the
_Escolta_ when one of the partners, a Spaniard, asked me if I would
like to see with my own eyes the contending lawyers putting their
heads together over the matter. "If so," said he, "you have only to
go through my shop and up the winding back staircase, from the landing
of which you can see them any day you like at one o'clock." I accepted
his invitation, and there, indeed, were the rival advocates laughing,
gesticulating, and presumably cogitating how they could plunder the
litigant who had most money to spend. At one stage of the proceedings
the Bank specially retained a Spanish lawyer of great local repute,
who went to Madrid to push the case. Later on Mr. Francis, Q.C.,
was sent over to Manila from Hong-Kong to advise the Bank. The Prime
Minister was appealed to and the good offices of our Ambassador in
Madrid were solicited. For a long time the Bank was placed in a most
awkward legal dilemma. The other side contended that the Bank could
not be heard, or appear for itself or by proxy, on the ground that
under its own charter it had no right to be established in Manila;
that, in view of the terms of that charter, it had never been legally
registered as a Bank in Manila, and that it had no legal existence
in the Philippines. This was merely a technical quibble. Several
times when the case was supposed to be finally settled, it was again
re-opened. Happily it may now be regarded as closed for ever.
A great many well-to-do natives have a mania for seeing their sons
launched into the "learned professions"; hence there was a mob of
native doctors who made a scanty living, and a swarm of half-lawyers,
popularly called "abogadillos," who were a pest to the Colony. Up
to the beginning of the 18th century the offices of solicitors and
notaries were filled from Mexico, where the licences to practise
in Manila were publicly sold. After that period the colleges and
the university issued licences to natives, thus creating a class of
native pettifogging advocates who stirred up strife to make cases,
for this purpose availing themselves of the intricacies of the law.
The Spanish-Philippine _Criminal Law Procedure_ was briefly as
follows:--(1) The Judge of Instruction took the _sumaria_, i.e.,
the inquiry into whether a crime had been committed, and, if so,
who was the presumptive culprit. It was his duty to find the facts
and sift the case. In a light case he could order the immediate
arrest of the presumptive delinquent; in a grave case he would
remit it. (2) In the Court of First Instance the verbal evidence was
heard and sifted, the _fiscal_, or prosecuting attorney, expressing
his opinion to the judge. The judge would then qualify the crime,
and decide who was the presumptive culprit. Then the defence began,
and when this was exhausted the judge would give his opinion. This
court could not acquit or condemn the accused. The opinion on the
_sumaria_ was merely advisory, and not a sentence. This inquiry was
called the "vista"; it was not in reality a trial, as the defendant
was not allowed to cross-examine; but, on the other hand, in theory,
he was not called upon to prove his innocence before two courts, but
before the sentencing court (_Audiencia_) only. The case would then
be remitted with the _sumaria_, and the opinion of the Court of First
Instance, to the _Audiencia_, or Supreme Court, for review of errors
of law, but not of facts which remained. The _Audiencia_ did not call
for testimony, but, if new facts were produced, it would remit back
the _sumaria_ to the lower court, with the new written testimony
added to the _autos_ (documents in the case). These new witnesses
were never confronted with the accused, and might never be seen by
him, and were not cross-examined. If no new facts were elicited,
the record of the lower court would be accepted by the _Audiencia_,
errors of law being the only point at issue, and this court might
at once pass sentence. In practice the _Audiencia_ usually treated
the finding of the lower court as sentence (not merely opinion),
and confirmed it, if no new testimony were produced and there were no
errors of law. But, although the opinion of the lower court might be
practically an acquittal, the _Audiencia_ might find errors of law,
thus placing the accused twice in jeopardy. If the case were remitted
back, in view of new testimony, it finally returned to the _Audiencia_
for decision, nine judges being required to give their opinion in a
grave case, so that if the Court of First Instance and five judges
of the _Audiencia_ found the accused guilty, there was a majority
against him. The sentencing court was always the _Audiencia_. If
the sentence were against the accused, a final appeal could be made,
by "writ of error," to the Supreme Court of Spain, whose decision,
however, rested not on facts, but on errors of law.
The (American) Insular Government tacitly admitted that the Spanish
written law was excellent, notwithstanding its fulfilment being
dilatory. The Spanish Penal Code has been adopted in its general
application, but a new code, based on it, was in course of compilation
in 1904. The application of the Spanish Code occasionally evolves
some curious issues, showing its variance with fundamental American
law. For instance, in September, 1905, a native adulteress having
been found by her husband _in flagrante delicto_, he stabbed her
to death. The Spanish law sustains the husband's right to slay his
faithless consort and her paramour, in such circumstances (_vide_
p. 80), but provides that the lawful slayer shall be banished
from the country. The principle of this law is based on Roman law,
human instinctive reasoning, and the spirit of the law among the
Latin nations of Europe. American law assumes this natural act of
the husband to be a crime, but whilst admitting the validity of the
Spanish Code in these Islands, the American bench was puzzled to
decide what punishment could be inflicted if the arraigned husband
committed contempt of court by thereafter returning to his native land.
CHAPTER XV
Trade of the Islands
Its Early History
From within a year after the foundation of the Colony up to the
second decade of last century direct communication with Mexico was
maintained by the State galleons, termed the _Naos de Acapulco_. The
first sailings of the galleons were to Navidad, but for over two
centuries Acapulco was the port of destination on the Mexican side, and
this inter-communication with New Spain only ceased a few years before
that Colony threw off its allegiance to the mother country. But it was
not alone the troubled state of political affairs which brought about
the discontinuance of the galleons' voyages, although the subsequent
secession of Mexico would have produced this effect. The expense of
this means of intercourse was found to be bearing too heavily upon
the scanty resources of the Exchequer, for the condition of Spain's
finances had never, at any period, been so lamentable.
The Commander of the State _Nao_ had the title of General, with a
salary of P40,000 per annum. The chief officer received P25,000 a
year. The quarter-master was remunerated with 9 per cent, on the value
of the merchandise shipped, and this amounted to a very considerable
sum per voyage.
The last State galleon left Manila for Mexico in 1811, and the last
sailing from Acapulco for Manila was in 1815.
These ships are described as having been short fore and aft, but
of great beam, light draught, and, when afloat, had a half-moon
appearance, being considerably elevated at bows and stern. They were
of 1,500 tons burden, had four decks, and carried guns.
The Gov.-General, the clergy, the civil functionaries, troops,
prisoners, and occasionally private persons, took passage in these
ships to and from the Philippines. It was practically the Spanish Mail.
The Colony had no coin of its own. [112] It was simply a dependency
of Mexico; and all that it brought in tribute and taxes to its Royal
Treasury belonged to the Crown, and was at the King's disposal. For
many years these payments were made wholly--and afterwards
partially--in kind, and were kept in the Royal Stores. As the junks
from China arrived each spring, this colonial produce belonging to the
Crown was bartered for Chinese wares and manufactures. These goods,
packed in precisely 1,500 bales, each of exactly the same size,
constituted the official cargo, and were remitted to Mexico by the
annual galleon. The surplus space in the ship was at the disposal of
a few chosen merchants who formed the "_Consulado_,"--a trading ring
which required each member to have resided in the Colony a stipulated
number of years, and to be possessed of at least eight thousand pesos.
For the support of the Philippine administration Mexico remitted
back to Manila, on the return of the galleon, a certain percentage of
the realized value of the above-mentioned official cargo, but seeing
that in any case--whether the Philippine Treasury were flourishing
or not--a certain sum was absolutely necessary for the maintenance
of the Colony, this remittance, known as the "_Real Situado_," or
royal subsidy, was, from time to time, fixed. [113]
The Philippine Colony was therefore nominally self-supporting, and
the _Situado_ was only a guaranteed income, to be covered, as far as
it could be, by shipments of foreign bartered manufactures and local
produce to Mexico. But, as a matter of fact, the Mexican subsidy
seldom, if ever, was so covered.
By Royal Decree of June 6, 1665, the Mexican subsidy to the Philippines
was fixed at P2,500,000, of which P2,000,000 was remitted in coin
and P500,000 in merchandise for the Royal Stores. Against this was
remitted value in goods (Philippine taxes and tribute) P 176,101.40
so that the net Subsidy, or donation, from Mexico was P 2,323,898.60.
Hence, in the course of time, coin--Mexican dollars called
_pesos_--found its way in large quantities to the Philippines, and
thence to China.
The yearly value of the merchants' shipments was first limited to
P250,000, whilst the return trade could not exceed P500,000 in coin
or stores, and this was on the supposition that 100 per cent. profit
would be realized on the sales in Mexico.
The allotment of surplus freight-room in the galleon was regulated by
the issue of _boletas_--documents which, during a long period, served
as paper money in fact, for the holders were entitled to use them for
shipping goods, or they could transfer them to others who wished to
do so. The demand for freight was far greater than the carrying power
provided. Shipping warrants were delivered gratis to the members
of the _Consulado_, to certain ecclesiastics, and others. Indeed,
it is asserted by some writers that the Governor's favourites were
served with preference, to the prejudice of legitimate trade.
The Spaniards were not allowed to go to China to fetch merchandise
for transhipment, but they could freely buy what was brought by the
Chinese. Indian and Persian goods uninterruptedly found their way to
Manila. Spanish goods came exclusively _viâ_ Mexico.
The mail galleon usually sailed in the month of July in each year, and
the voyage occupied about five months. Very strict regulations were
laid down regarding the course to be steered, but many calamities
befell the ships, which were not unfrequently lost through the
incapacity of the officers who had procured their appointments
by favour. For a century and a half there was practically no
competition. All was arranged beforehand as to shape, quantity, size,
etc., of each bale. There was, however, a deal of trickery practised
respecting the declared values, and the _boletas_ were often quoted
at high prices. Even the selling-price of the goods sent to Mexico
was a preconcerted matter.
The day of the departure of the galleon or its arrival with a couple
of millions of pesos or more, [114] and new faces, was naturally one
of rejoicing--it was almost the event of the year. A _Te Deum_ was
chanted in the churches, the bells tolled, and musicians perambulated
the streets, which were illuminated and draped with bunting.
So far as commercial affairs were concerned, the Philippine merchants
passed very easy lives in those palmy days. One, sometimes two, days
in the week were set down in the calendar as Saint-days to be strictly
observed; hence an active business life would have been incompatible
with the exactions of religion. The only misadventure they had to fear
was the loss of the galleon. Market fluctuations were unknown. During
the absence of the galleon, there was nothing for the merchants to do
but to await the arrival of the Chinese junks in the months of March,
April, and May, and prepare their bales. For a century and a half this
sort of trading was lucrative; it required no smartness, no spirit of
enterprise or special tact. Shippers were busy for only three months
in the year, and during the remaining nine months they could enjoy
life as they thought fit--cut off from the rest of the world.
Some there were who, without means of their own, speculated with the
_Obras Pias_funds, lent at interest. [115]
The Philippine merchants often lost the value of their shipments in the
State galleons by shipwreck or seizure by enemies. Mexico frequently
lost the Philippine remittances to her, and the specie she sent to
the Philippines. The State galleon made only one voyage a year there
and back, if all went well; but if it were lost, the shipment had to
be renewed, and it often happened that several galleons were seized
in a year by Spain's enemies.
The abortive attempt to annex the British Isles to the Spanish Crown in
1588 brought about the collapse of Spain's naval supremacy, enabling
English mariners to play havoc with her galleons from America. The
Philippine Islands, as a colony, had at that date only just come into
existence, but during the series of Anglo-Spanish wars which preceded
the "Family Compact" (_vide_ p. 87), Philippine-Mexican galleons
laden with treasure became the prey of British commanders, notably
Admiral Anson. The coasts were beset by Anson's squadron. He was the
terror of the Philippines from the year 1743. His exploits gave rise
to consternation, and numerous councils were held to decide what to
do to get rid of him. The captured galleon _Pilar_ gave one-and-a-half
million pesos to the enemy--the _Covadonga_ was an immense prize. All
over the Islands the Spaniards were on the alert for the dreaded foe;
every provincial Governor sent look-outs to high promontories with
orders to signal by beacons if the daring Britisher's ships were seen
hovering about, whilst, in Manila, the citizens were forewarned that,
at any moment, they might be called upon to repel the enemy.
Not only in fleets of gold-laden vessels did Spain and her dependencies
lose immense wealth through her hostile ambition, for in view of the
restrictions on Philippine trade, and the enormous profits accruing
to the Spanish merchants on their shipments, British, Dutch, French,
and Danish traders competed with them. Shippers of these nationalities
bought goods in Canton, where they established their own factories,
or collecting-stores. In 1731 over three millions of Mexican dollars
(pesos) were taken there for making purchases, and these foreign ships
landed the stuffs, etc., in contraband at the American ports, where
Spaniards themselves co-operated in the trade which their absolute King
declared illicit, whilst the traders considered it a natural right.
As the Southern (Peninsula) Spanish merchants were helpless to stay
this competition, which greatly affected their profits, their rancorous
greed made them clamour against the Philippine trade, to which they
chose to attribute their misfortunes, and the King was petitioned to
curtail the commerce of this Colony with Mexico for their exclusive
benefit. But it was not Spanish home trade alone which suffered:
Acapulco was so beset by smugglers, whose merchandise, surreptitiously
introduced, found its way to Mexico City, that, in latter days, the
Philippine galleons' cargoes did not always find a market. Moreover,
all kinds of frauds were practised about this time in the quality of
the goods baled for shipment, and the bad results revealed themselves
on the Mexican side. The shippers, unwisely, thought it possible to
deceive the Mexicans by sending them inferior articles at old prices;
hence their disasters became partly due to "the vaulting ambition that
o'erleaps itself and falls on t'other side." The Governor commissioned
four of the most respectable Manila traders to inspect the sorting
and classification of the goods shipped. These citizens distinguished
themselves so highly, to their own advantage, that the Governor had
to suppress the commission and abandon the control, in despair of
finding honest colleagues. Besides this fraud, contraband goods were
taken to Acapulco in the galleons themselves, hidden in water-jars.
In the time of Governor Pedro de Arandia (1754-59) the 100 per
cent. fixed profit was no longer possible. Merchants came down to
Acapulco and forced the market, by waiting until the ships were obliged
to catch the monsoon back, or lie up for another season, so that often
the goods had to be sold for cost, or a little over. In 1754 returns
were so reduced that the _Consulado_ was owing to the _Obras Pias_
over P300,000, and to the _Casa Misericordia_ P147,000, without any
hope of repayment. The _Casa Misericordia_ lent money at 40 per cent.,
then at 35 per cent., and in 1755 at 20 per cent. interest, but the
state of trade made capital hardly acceptable even at this last rate.
Early in the 18th century the Cadiz merchants, jealous of the
Philippine shippers, protested that the home trade was much injured by
the cargoes carried to Mexico in Philippine bottoms. So effectually
did they influence the King in their favour that he issued a decree
prohibiting the trade between China and the Philippines in all
woven stuffs, skein and woven silk and clothing, except the finest
linen. Manila imports from China were thereby limited to fine linen,
porcelain, wax, pepper, cinnamon, and cloves. At the expiration of six
months after the proclamation of the decree, any remaining stocks of
the proscribed articles were to be burnt! Thenceforth trade in such
prohibited articles was to be considered illicit, and such goods
arriving in Mexico after that date were to be confiscated.
By Royal Decree dated October 27, 1720, and published in Mexico by the
Viceroy on February 15, 1724, the following was enacted, viz.:--That
in future there should be two galleons per annum, instead of one
as heretofore, carrying merchandise to Acapulco, each to be of 500
tons. That the merchandise sent in the two was to be of the value of
P300,000 precisely in gold, cinnamon, wax, porcelain, cloves, pepper,
etc., but not silks, or stuffs of any kind containing silk, under
pain of confiscation, to be allotted in three equal parts, namely,
to the Fiscal officer, the Judge intervening, and the informer, and
perpetual banishment from the Indies of all persons concerned in the
shipment. That the number of Manila merchants was to be fixed, and any
one not included in that number was to be prohibited from trading. No
ecclesiastic, or professor of religion, or foreigner could be included
in the elected few, whose rights to ship were non-transferable. That if
the proceeds of the sale happened to exceed the fixed sum of P600,000,
on account of market prices being higher than was anticipated,
only that amount could be brought back in money, and the difference,
or excess, in goods. [If it turned out to be less than that amount,
the difference could not be remitted in cash by Mexican merchants for
further purchases, the spirit of the decree being to curtail the supply
of goods from this Colony to Mexico, for the benefit of the Spanish
home traders. The infringer of this regulation was subject to the
penalties of confiscation and two years' banishment from the Indies.]
By Royal Decree of the year 1726, received and published in Manila
on August 9, 1727, the following regulations were made known,
viz.:--That the prohibition relating to silk and all-silk goods was
revoked. That only one galleon was to be sent each year (instead of
two) as formerly. That the prohibition on clothing containing some
silk, and a few other articles, was maintained. That for five years
certain stuffs of fine linen were permitted to be shipped, to the
limit of 4,000 pieces per annum, precisely in boxes containing each
500 pieces.
The Southern Spanish traders in 1729 petitioned the King against the
Philippine trade in woven goods, and protested against the five-years'
permission granted in the above decree of 1726, declaring that it
would bring about the total ruin of the Spanish weaving industry,
and that the galleons, on their return to the Philippines, instead of
loading Spanish manufactures, took back specie for the continuance
of their traffic to the extent of three or four millions of pesos
each year. The King, however, refused to modify the decree of 1726
until the five years had expired, after which time the Governor was
ordered to load the galleons according to the former decree of 1720.
The Manila merchants were in great excitement. The Governor, under
pretext that the original Royal Decree ought to have been transmitted
direct to the Philippines and not merely communicated by the Mexican
Viceroy, agreed to "obey and not fulfil" its conditions.
From the year 1720, during the period of prohibitions, the Royal
Treasury lost about P50,000 per annum, and many of the taxes were
not recovered in full. Besides this, the donations to Government by
the citizens, which sometimes had amounted to P40,000 in one year,
ceased. A double loss was also caused to Mexico, for the people there
had to pay much higher prices for their stuffs supplied by Spanish
(home) monopolists, whilst Mexican coffers were being drained to make
good the deficits in the Philippine Treasury. The Manila merchants
were terribly alarmed, and meeting after meeting was held. A Congress
of Government officials and priests was convened, and each priest
was asked to express his opinion on the state of trade.
Commercial depression in the Philippines had never been so marked,
and the position of affairs was made known to the King in a petition,
which elicited the Royal Decree dated April 8, 1734. It provided
that the value of exports should thenceforth not exceed P500,000,
and the amount permitted to return was also raised to P1,000,000
(always on the supposition that 100 per cent. over cost laid down
would be realized). The dues and taxes paid in Acapulco on arrival,
and the dues paid in Manila on starting, amounted to 17 per cent. of
the million expected to return. [116] This covered the whole cost
of maintenance of ships, salaries, freight, and charges of all kinds
which were paid by Government in the first instance, and then recovered
from the _Consulado_.
The fixed number of merchants was to be decided by the merchants
themselves without Government intervention. Licence was granted
to allow those of Cavite to be of the number, and both Spaniards
and natives were eligible. Military and other professional men,
except ecclesiastics, could thenceforth be of the number. Foreigners
were strictly excluded. The right to ship (_boleta_) was not to be
transferable, except to _poor widows_. A sworn invoice of the shipment
was to be sent to the royal officials and magistrate of the Supreme
Court of Mexico for the value to be verified. The official in charge,
or supercargo, was ordered to make a book containing a list of the
goods and their respective owners, and to hand this to the commander of
the fortress in Acapulco, with a copy of the same for the Viceroy. The
Viceroy was to send his copy to the Audit Office to be again copied,
and the last copy was to be forwarded to the Royal Indian Council.
Every soldier, sailor, and officer was at liberty to disembark with a
box containing goods of which the Philippine value should not exceed
P30, in addition to his private effects. All hidden goods were to be
confiscated, one-half to the Royal Treasury, one-fourth to the Judge
intervening, and one-fourth to the informer; but, if such confiscated
goods amounted to P50,000 in value, the Viceroy and Mexican Council
were to determine the sum to be awarded to the Judge and the informer.
If the shipment met a good market and realized more than 1,000,000
pesos, only 1,000,000 could be remitted in money, and the excess
in duty-paid Mexican merchandise. If the shipment failed to fetch
1,000,000, the difference could not be sent in money for making new
purchases. (The same restriction as in the decree of 1720.)
The object of these measures was to prevent Mexicans supplying
trading capital to the Philippines instead of purchasing Peninsula
manufactures. It was especially enacted that all goods sent to Mexico
from the Philippines should have been purchased with the capital
of the Philippine shippers, and be their exclusive property without
lien. If it were discovered that on the return journey of the galleon
merchandise was carried to the Philippines belonging to the Mexicans,
it was to be confiscated, and a fine imposed on the interested parties
of three times the value, payable to the Royal Treasury, on the first
conviction. The second conviction entailed confiscation of all the
culprits' goods and banishment from Mexico for 10 years.
The weights and measures of the goods shipped were to be Philippine,
and, above all, wax was to be sent in pieces of precisely the same
weight and size as by custom established.
The Council for freight allotment in Manila was to comprise the
Governor, the senior Magistrate, and, failing this latter, the
Minister of the Supreme Court next below him; also the Archbishop, or
in his stead the Dean of the Cathedral; an ordinary Judge, a Municipal
Councillor, and _one merchant_ as Commissioner in representation of
the eight who formed the _Consulado_ of merchants.
The expulsion of the non-christian Chinese in 1755 (_vide_
p. 111) caused a deficit in the taxes of P30,000 per annum. The
only exports of Philippine produce at this date were cacao, sugar,
wax, and sapanwood. Trade, and consequently the Treasury, were in a
deplorable state. To remedy matters, and to make up the above P30,000,
the Government proposed to levy an export duty which was to be applied
to the cost of armaments fitted out against pirates. Before the tax
was approved of by the King some friars loaded a vessel with export
merchandise, and absolutely refused to pay the impost, alleging
immunity. The Governor argued that there could be no religious
immunity in trade concerns. The friars appealed to Spain, and the
tax was disapproved of; meantime, most of the goods and the vessel
itself rotted pending the solution of the question by the Royal
Indian Council.
There have been three or four periods during which no galleon arrived
at the Philippines for two or three consecutive years, and coin became
very scarce, giving rise to rebellion on the part of the Chinese
and misery to the Filipinos. After the capture of the _Covadonga_ by
the British, six years elapsed before a galleon brought the subsidy;
then the _Rosario_ arrived with 5,000 gold ounces (nominally P80,000).
However, besides the subsidy, the Colony had certain other sources
of public revenue, as will be seen by the following:--
PHILIPPINE BUDGET FOR THE YEAR 1757
Income.
P cts.
Stamped Paper 12,199 87 1/2
Port and Anchorage Dues 25,938 00
Sale of Offices, such as Notaries, Public
Scribes, Secretaryships, etc. 5,839 12 1/2
Offices hired out 4,718 75
Taxes farmed out 28,500 00
Excise duties 4,195 00
Sale of _Encomiendas_, and 22 provincial
govts. hired out 263,588 00
Divers taxes, fines, pardons, etc. 18,156 00
Tribute, direct tax 4,477 00
Sudsidy from Mexico 250,000 00
Deficit 79,844 00
------- --
P 697,455 75
Expenditure.
P cts.
Supreme Court 34,219 75
Treasury and Audit Office 12,092 00
University 800 00
Cost of the annual Galleon 23,465 00
Clergy 103,751 00
Land and sea forces all over the Philippines
including offensive and defensive operations
against Moros--Staff and Material 312,864 00
Salaries, Hospital and Divers Expenses 70,158 00
Remittance in Merchandise to Mexico on account
of the Subsidy 140,106 00
------- --
P 697,455 75
When the merchant citizens of Manila were in clover, they made
donations to the Government to cover the deficits, and loans were
raised amongst them to defray extraordinary disbursements, such as
expeditions against the Mahometans, etc. In the good years, too, the
valuation of the merchandise shipped and the corresponding returns were
underrated in the sworn declarations, so that an immensely profitable
trade was done on a larger scale than was legally permitted. Between
1754 and 1759, in view of the reduced profits, due to the circumstances
already mentioned, the Manila merchants prayed the King for a reduction
of the royal dues, which had been originally fixed on the basis of
the gross returns being equal to double the cost of the merchandise
laid down in Acapulco. To meet the case, another Royal Decree was
issued confirming the fixed rate of royal dues and disbursements, but
in compensation the cargo was thenceforth permitted to include 4,000
pieces of fine linen, without restriction as to measure or value; the
sworn value was abolished, and the maximum return value of the whole
shipment was raised to one-and-a-half millions of pesos. Hence the
total dues and disbursements became equal to 11 1/3 per cent. instead
of 17 per cent., as heretofore, on the anticipated return value.
In 1763 the Subsidy, together with the _Consulado_ shippers' returns,
amounted in one voyage to two-and-a-half millions of pesos (_vide_
p. 88). After the independence of Mexico (1819), tribute in kind
(tobacco) was, until recently, shipped direct to Spain, and Peninsula
coin began to circulate in these Islands (_vide_ Currency).
Consequent on the banishment of the non-christian Chinese in 1755,
trade became stagnant. The Philippines now experienced what Spain had
felt since the reign of Phillip III., when the expulsion of 900,000
Moorish agriculturists and artisans crippled her home industries,
which needed a century and a half to revive. The Acapulco trade was
fast on the wane, and the Manila Spanish merchants were anxious to get
the local trade into their own hands. Every Chinese shop was closed
by Government order, and a joint-stock trading company of Spaniards
and half-breeds was formed with a capital of P76,500, in shares of
P500 each. Stores were opened in the business quarter, each under the
control of two Spaniards or half-breeds, the total number of shopmen
being 21. The object of the company was to purchase clothing and
staple goods of all kinds required in the Islands, and to sell the
same at 30 per cent. over cost price. Out of the 30 per cent. were to
be paid an 8 per cent. tax, a dividend of 10 per cent. per annum to
the shareholders, and the remainder was to cover salaries and form a
reserve fund for new investments. The company found it impossible to
make the same bargains with the Chinese sellers as the Chinese buyers
had done, and a large portion of the capital was soon lost. The
funds at that date in the _Obras Pias_ amounted to P159,000, and
the trustees were applied to by the company for financial support,
which they refused. The Governor was petitioned; theologians and
magistrates were consulted on the subject. The theological objections
were overruled by the judicial arguments, and the Governor ordered
that P130,000 of the _Obras Pias_ funds should be loaned to the
company on debentures; nevertheless, within a year the company failed.
A commercial company, known as the "_Compañia Guipuzcoana de
Carácas_," was then created under royal sanction, and obtained
certain privileges. During the term of its existence, it almost
monopolized the Philippine-American trade, which was yet carried on
exclusively in the State galleons. On the expiration of its charter,
about the year 1783, a petition was presented to the Home Government,
praying for a renewal of monopolies and privileges in favour of a new
trading corporation, to be founded on a modified basis. Consequently,
a charter (_Real cédula_) was granted on March 10, 1785, to a company,
bearing the style and title of the "_Real Compañia de Filipinas_." Its
capital was P8,000,000, in 32,000 shares of P250 each. King Charles
III. took up 4,000 shares; another 3,000 shares were reserved for the
friars and the Manila Spanish or native residents, and the balance
was allotted in the Peninsula.
The defunct company had engaged solely in the American trade, employing
the galleons; its successor left that sphere of commerce and proposed
to trade with the East and Europe.
[117] "To the '_Real Compañia de Filipinas_' was conceded the
exclusive privilege of trade between Spain and the Archipelago,
with the exception of the traffic between Manila and Acapulco. Its
ships could fly the Royal Standard, with a signal to distinguish them
from war-vessels. It was allowed two years, counting from the date of
charter, to acquire foreign-built vessels and register them under the
Spanish flag, free of fees. It could import, duty free, any goods for
the fitting out of its ships, or ships' use. It could take into its
service royal naval officers, and, whilst these were so employed,
their seniority would continue to count, and in all respects they
would enjoy the same rights as if they were serving in the navy. It
could engage foreign sailors and officers, always provided that the
captain and chief officer were Spaniards. All existing Royal Decrees
and Orders, forbidding the importation into the Peninsula of stuffs
and manufactured articles from India, China, and Japan were abrogated
in favour of this company. Philippine produce, too, shipped to Spain
by the company, could enter duty free. The prohibition on direct
traffic with China and India was thenceforth abolished in favour of all
Manila merchants, and the company's ships in particular could call at
Chinese ports. The company undertook to support Philippine agriculture,
and to spend, with this object, 4 per cent, of its nett profits."
In order to protect the company's interests, foreign ships were not
allowed to bring goods from Europe to the Philippines, although they
could land Chinese and Indian wares.
By the Treaties of Tordesillas and Antwerp (q.v.), the Spaniards
had agreed that to reach their Oriental possessions they would
take only the Western route, which would be _viá_ Mexico or round
Cape Horn. These treaties, however, were virtually quashed by
King Charles III. on the establishment of the "_Real Compañia de
Filipinas_." Holland only lodged a nominal protest when the company's
ships were authorized to sail to the Philippines _viá_ the Cape of
Good Hope, for the Spaniards' ability to compete had, meanwhile,
vastly diminished.
With such important immunities, and the credit which ought to have
been procurable by a company with P8,000,000 paid-up capital, its
operations might have been relatively vast. However, its balance
sheet, closed to October 31, 1790 (five-and-a-half years after it
started), shows the total nominal assets to be only P10,700,194,
largely in unrecoverable advances to tillers. The working account is
not set out. Although it was never, in itself, a flourishing concern,
it brought immense benefit to the Philippines (at the expense of its
shareholders) by opening the way for the Colony's future commercial
prosperity. This advantage operated in two ways. (1) It gave great
impulse to agriculture, which thenceforth began to make important
strides. By large sums of money, distributed in anticipation of the
4 per cent, on nett profit, and expended in the rural districts, it
imparted life, vigour and development to those germs of husbandry--such
as the cultivation of sugar-cane, tobacco, cotton, indigo, pepper,
etc.--which, for a long time had been, and to a certain extent are
still, the staple dependence of many provinces. (2) It opened the
road to final extinction of all those vexatious prohibitions of trade
with the Eastern ports and the Peninsula which had checked the energy
of the Manila merchants. It was the precursor of free trade--the
stepping-stone to commercial liberty in these regions.
The causes of its decline are not difficult to trace. Established as
it was on a semi-official basis, all kinds of intrigues were resorted
to--all manner of favouritism was besought--to secure appointments,
more or less lucrative, in the _Great Company_. Influential incapacity
prevailed over knowledge and ability, and the men intrusted with the
direction of the company's operations proved themselves inexperienced
and quite unfit to cope with unshackled competition from the outer
world. Their very exclusiveness was an irresistible temptation to
contrabandists. Manila private merchants, viewing with displeasure
monopoly in any form, lost no opportunity of putting obstacles in
the way of the company. Again, the willing concurrence of native
labourers in an enterprise of magnitude was as impossible to secure
then as it is now. The native had a high time at the expense of the
company, revelling in the enjoyment of cash advances, for which some
gave little, others nothing. Success could only have been achieved
by forced labour, and this right was not included in the charter.
In 1825 the company was on the point of collapse, when, to support
the tottering fabric, its capital was increased by P12,500,000 under
_Real Cédula_ of that year, dated June 22. King Charles IV. took
15,772 (P250) shares of this new issue. But nothing could save the
wreck, and finally it was decreed, by _Real Cédula_ of May 28, 1830,
that the privileges conceded to the "_Real Compañia de Filipinas_"
had expired--and Manila was then opened to Free Trade with the whole
world. It marked an epoch in Philippine affairs.
In 1820 the declared independence of Mexico, acknowledged subsequently
by the European Powers, forced Spain to a decision, and direct trade
between the Philippines and the mother country became a reluctant
necessity. No restrictions were placed on the export to Spain of
colonial produce, but value limitations were fixed with regard to
Chinese goods. The export from the Philippines to Acapulco, Callao,
and other South American ports was limited to P750,000 at that date. In
the same year (1820) permission was granted for trade between Manila
and the Asiatic ports. Twenty-two years afterwards one-third of all
the Manila export trade was done with China.
When the galleons fell into disuse, communication was definitely
established with Spain by merchant sailing ships _viâ_ the Cape of
Good Hope, whilst the opening of the Suez Canal (1869) brought the
Philippines within 32 days' journey by steamer from Barcelona.
The voyage _viâ_ the Cape of Good Hope occupied from three to six
months; the sailings were less frequent than at the present day, and
the journey was invariably attended with innumerable discomforts. It
was interesting to hear the few old Spanish residents, in my time,
compare their privations when they came by the Cape with the luxurious
facilities of later times. What is to-day a pleasure was then a
hardship, consequently the number of Spaniards in the Islands was
small; their movements were always known. It was hardly possible for
a Spaniard to acquire a sum of money and migrate secretly from one
island to another, and still less easy was it for him to leave the
Colony clandestinely.
The Spaniard of that day who settled in the Colony usually became
well known during the period of the service which brought him to
the Far East. If, after his retirement from public duty, on the
conclusion of his tenure of office, he decided to remain in the
Colony, it was often due to his being able to count on the pecuniary
support and moral protection of the priests. The idea grew, so that
needy Spaniards in the Philippines, in the course of time, came
to entertain a kind of socialistic notion that those who had means
ought to aid and set up those who had nothing, without guarantee of
any kind: "_Si hubiera quien me proteja!_" was the common sigh--the
outcome of Cæsarism nurtured by a Government which discountenanced
individual effort. Later on, too, many natives seemed to think that
the foreign firms, and others employing large capital, might well
become philanthropic institutions, paternally assisting them with
unsecured capital. The natives were bred in this moral bondage:
they had seen trading companies, established under royal sanction,
benefit the few and collapse; they had witnessed extensive works,
undertaken _por viâ de administracion_ miscarry in their ostensible
objects but prosper in their real intent, namely, the providing of
berths for those who lived by their wits.
The patriarchal system was essayed by a wealthy firm of American
merchants (Russell & Sturgis) with very disastrous results to
themselves. They distributed capital all over the Colony, and the
natives abused their support in a most abominable manner. A native,
alleging that he had opened up a plantation, would call on the firm
and procure advances against future crops after scant inquiry. Having
once advanced, it was necessary to continue doing so to save the
first loans.
Under the auspices of the late Mr. Nicholas Loney, great impulse was
given to the commerce of Yloilo, and, due to his efforts, the Island
of Negros was first opened up. His memory is still revered, and he is
often spoken of as the original benefactor to the trading community
of that district. Russell & Sturgis subsequently extended their
operations to that locality. The result was that they were deceived in
every direction by the natives, who, instead of bringing in produce
to pay off advances, sent their sons to college, built fine houses,
bought pianos, jewellery, etc., and in a hundred ways satisfied their
pride and love for outward show in a manner never known before, at
the expense of the American capitalists. As bankers, the firm enjoyed
the unlimited confidence of those classes who had something to lose as
well as to gain; hence it is said that, the original partners having
withdrawn their money interest, the firm endeavoured to continue
the business with a working capital chiefly derived from the funds
deposited by private persons at 8 per cent, per annum. All might
have gone well but for the rascality of the native agriculturists,
who brought about the failure of the house in 1875 by taking loans
and delivering no produce. The news amazed everybody. Trade was,
for the moment, completely paralyzed. The great firm, which for years
had been the mainspring of all Philippine mercantile enterprise, had
failed! But whilst many individuals suffered (principally depositors
at interest), fifty times as many families to-day owe their financial
position to the generosity of the big firm; and I could mention the
names of half a dozen real-estate owners in Yloilo Province who,
having started with nothing, somehow found themselves possessing
comparatively large fortunes at the time of the liquidation.
Consequent on the smash, a reaction set in which soon proved beneficial
to the Colony at large. Foreign and Spanish houses of minor importance,
which had laboured in the shade during the existence of the great
firm, were now able to extend their operations in branches of trade
which had hitherto been practically monopolized.
Before Manila was opened to foreign trade, even in a restricted form,
special concessions appear to have been granted to a few traders. One
writer mentions that a French mercantile house was founded in Manila
many years prior to 1787, and that an English firm obtained permission
to establish itself in 1809. In 1789 a foreign ship was allowed to
enter the port of Manila and to discharge a cargo. This would appear
to have been the first. In olden times the demand for ordinary foreign
commodities was supplied by the Chinese traders and a few Americans
and Persians. During the latter half of the 18th century a Spanish
man-of-war occasionally arrived, bringing European manufactures for
sale, and loaded a return cargo of Oriental goods.
The Philippine Islands were but little known in the foreign markets
and commercial centres of Europe before the middle of the 19th
century. Notwithstanding the special trading concessions granted to
one foreigner and another from the beginning of last century, it was
not until the port of Manila was unrestrictedly opened to resident
foreign merchants in 1834 that a regular export trade with the whole
mercantile world gradually came into existence.
It is said that whilst the charter of the "_Real Compañia
de Filipinas_" was still in force (1785-1830) a Mr. Butler [118]
solicited permission to reside in and open up a trade between Manila
and foreign ports; but his petition was held to be monstrous and
grievously dangerous to the political security of the Colony; hence it
was rejected. The Spaniards had had very good reason to doubt foreign
intercourse after their experience of 1738, when they preferred a
war with England to a gross abuse of the _Asiento_ contract entered
into under the Treaty of Utrecht. [119] Subsequently the American firm
already mentioned, Russell & Sturgis, made a request to be allowed to
trade, which, having the support of the Gov.-General of the day, was
granted; and Mr. Butler, taking advantage of this recent precedent,
also succeeded in founding a commercial house in Manila. To these
foreigners is due the initiation of the traffic in those products
which became the staple trade of the Colony and paved the way for the
bulk of the business being, as it is to-day, in the hands of European
and American merchants.
The distrustful sentiment of olden times (justifiable in the 18th
century) pervaded the Spaniards' commercial and colonial policy up to
their last day. Proposed reforms and solicitations for permission
to introduce modern improvements were by no means welcomed. In
the provinces clerical opposition was often cast against liberal
innovations, and in the Government bureaux they were encompassed with
obstructive formalities, objections, and delays. [120]
By Royal Ordinance of 1844 strangers were excluded from the interior;
in 1857 unrepealed decrees were brought forward to urge the prohibition
of foreigners to establish themselves in the Colony; and, as late
as 1886, their trading here was declared to be "prejudicial to the
material interests of the country." [121]
The support of the friars referred to in p. 255 became a thing of
the past. Colonists had increased tenfold, the means of communication
and of exit were too ample for the security of the lenders, who, as
members of religious communities, could not seek redress at law, and,
moreover, those "lucky hits" which were made by penniless Europeans
in former times by pecuniary help "just in the nick of time" were
no longer possible, for every known channel of lucrative transaction
was in time taken up by capitalists.
It was the capital brought originally to the Philippines through
foreign channels which developed the modern commerce of the Colony,
and much of the present wealth of the inhabitants engaged in trade
and agriculture is indirectly due to foreign enterprise. Negros Island
was entirely opened up by foreign capital. In Manila, the fathers of
many of the half-castes and pure natives who at this day figure as
men of position and standing, commenced their careers as messengers,
warehouse-keepers, clerks, etc., of the foreign houses.
There were a great many well-to-do Spaniards in trade, but few whose
funds on starting were brought by them from the Peninsula. The first
Spanish steamer-owner in the Colony, a baker by trade, owed his
prosperity to the support of Russell & Sturgis. One of the richest
Spanish merchants (who died in 1894) once kept a little grocer's shop,
and after the failure of Russell & Sturgis he developed into a merchant
and shipowner whose firm became, in time, the largest Spanish house
operating in hemp and other produce.
About 14 Spanish firms of a certain importance were established in
Manila, Yloilo, and Cebú, in addition to the Europeans trading here
and there on the coasts of the Islands. In Manila there were (and
are still) two foreign bank branches [122] (one with a sub-branch in
Yloilo), three bank agencies, and the Philippine private banking-house
of J. M. Tuason & Co.; also the "Banco Español-Filipino," which was
instituted in 1852, with a capital of P400,000, in 2,000 shares of
P200 each. The capital was subsequently increased to P600.000. [123]
Authorized by charter, it issued notes payable to bearer on demand from
P10 upwards. The legal maximum limit of note issue was P1,200,000,
whilst the actual circulation was about P100,000 short of that
figure. This bank did a very limited amount of very secure business,
and it has paid dividends of 12 to 15 per cent.; hence the shares were
always at a premium. In 1888, when 12 per cent, dividend was paid,
this stock was quoted at P420; in 1895 it rose to P435. The _Obras
Pias_ funds (_vide_ p. 245) constituted the orginal capital of the
bank. The new position of this institution, under the (American)
Insular Government since 1905, is explained in Chapter xxxi.
The first Philippine bank was opened in Manila by a certain Francisco
Rodriguez about the year 1830.
From the conquest up to the year 1857 there was no Philippine
coinage. Mexican dollars were the only currency, and in default of
subsidiary money these dollars, called _pesos_, were cut. In 1764 cut
money was prohibited, and small Spanish silver and copper coins came
to the Islands. In 1799 the Gov.-General forbade the exportation of
money, and fixed the peso at 8 _reales fuertes_ and the _real_ at
17 _cuartos._ Shortly afterwards gold came to the Islands, and was
plentiful until 1882. In 1837 other copper coins came from Spain,
and the _real fuerte_ was fixed at 20 _cuartos_. In 1857 the Manila
mint was established, _pesetas_ were introduced, five being equal to
one peso, and 32 cuartos being equal to one peseta. Contemporaneously
the coinage in Spain was 34 cuartos to one peseta and 5 pesetas to
one _duro_--the coin nominally equivalent to the peso--but the duro
being subdivided into 20 _reales vellon_, the colonial real fuerte
came to be equivalent to 2 1/2 reales vellon. The evident intention
was to have one common nominal basis (peso and duro), but subdivided
in a manner to limit the currency of the colonial coinage to its own
locality. With pesos, reales, cuartos, maravedis, and ounces of gold,
bookkeeping was somewhat complicated; however, the Government accounts
were rendered easy by a decree dated January 17, 1857, which fixed
pesos and cents for official reckoning. Merchants then adopted this
standard. Up to 1860 gold was so abundant that as much as 10 per cent,
was paid to exchange an _onza_ of gold (P16) for silver. In 1878 gold
and silver were worth their nominal relative values. Gold, however,
has gradually disappeared from the Colony, large quantities having
been exported to China. In 1881 the current premium for purchasing
gold was 2 per cent., and at the beginning of 1885 as much as 10 per
cent. premium was paid for Philippine gold of the Isabella II or
any previous coinage. The gold currency of Alfonso XII. (1875-85)
was always of less intrinsic value than the coin of earlier date,
the difference averaging about 2 per cent. At the present day gold
could only be obtained in very limited quantities at about the same
rate as sight drafts on Europe. Philippine gold pieces are rare.
In 1883 Mexican dollars of a later coinage than 1877 were called
in, and a term was fixed after which they would cease to be legal
tender. In 1885 decimal bronze coins were introduced. In July, 1886,
a decree was published calling in all foreign and Chinese chop dollars
[124] within six months, after which date the introducer of such coin
into the Colony would be subject to the penalty of a fine equal to
20 per cent. of the value imported, the obligation to immediately
re-export the coin, and civil action for the misdemeanour. At the
expiration of the six months the Treasury was not in a position to
effect the conversion of the foreign medium in private hands prior
to the publication of the decree. The term was extended, but in time
the measure became practically void, so far as the legal tender was
concerned. However, the importation of Mexican dollars was still
prohibited; but, as they remained current in Manila at par value,
whilst in Hong-Kong and Singapore they could be bought for 8 to 12
per cent, (and in 1894 25 per cent.) less than Manila dollars, large
quantities were smuggled into the Colony. It is estimated that in the
year 1887 the clandestine introduction of Mexican dollars into Manila
averaged about P150,000 per month. I remember a Chinaman was caught in
September, 1887, with P164,000, imported in cases declared to contain
matches. In 1890 there was a "boom" in the silver market. Owing to
the action of the American Silverites, the Washington Treasury called
for a monthly supply of 4,000,000 of silver dollars; consequently
sight rate on London in Hong-Kong touched 3s. 10 1/4d., and in Manila
rose to 3s. 10 1/2d., but a rapid reaction set in when the Treasury
demand ceased. In 1895 we heard in Manila that the Government were
about to coin Philippine pesos and absolutely demonetize Mexicans
as a medium in the Islands. But this measure was never carried out,
probably because the Government had not the necessary cash with
which to effect the conversion. Some few Philippine peso pieces were,
however, put into circulation concurrently with the Mexican pesos.
In June, 1903, the ss. _Don Juan_, owned by Francisco L. Rojas, of
Manila, took on board in Hong-Kong about $400,000 Mexicans (i.e.,
pesos) for the purpose of smuggling them into Manila. On board there
were also, as passengers, a Señor Rodoreda and a crowd of Chinese
coolies. The vessel caught fire off the west coast of Luzon. The
captain, the crew, and the Spanish passenger abandoned the ship in
boats, leaving the Chinese to their awful fate. A steam launch was
sent alongside and saved a few dollars, whilst the despairing Chinese
became victims to the flames and sharks. The ship's burnt-out hull
was towed to Manila Bay. The remaining dollars were confiscated,
and the captain and chief engineer were prosecuted.
The universal monetary crisis due to the depreciation of silver was
experienced here, and the Government made matters still worse by
coining half-pesos and 20-cent pieces, which had not the intrinsic
value expressed, and exchange consequently fell still lower. In
September, 1887, a Madrid periodical, _Correo de España_, stated that
the bastard Philippine 50-cent pieces were rejected in Madrid even by
money-changers. In May, 1888, the peso was quoted at 3s.2 3/4d. (over
19 per cent. below nominal value), and shippers to the Colony, who
had already suffered considerably by the loss on exchange, had their
interests still further impaired by this action of the Treasury. For
Exchange Fluctuations _vide_ Chap, xxxi., "Trade Statistics."
A Custom-house was established and port opened in Zamboanga (Mindanao
Is.) for direct communication with abroad in 1831; those of Sual
(Pangasinán) and Yloilo (Panay Is.) in 1855, and that of Cebú in
1863. The Custom-house of Sual was subsequently abolished, and the
port having been closed to direct foreign trade, the place has lost
its former importance, and lapsed into the state of a lifeless village.
Special permission could be obtained for ships to load in and sail
direct from harbours where no Custom-houses were established, on a
sum of money being lodged beforehand at the _Caja de Depósitos _in
Manila, to cover duties, dues, etc., to be assessed.
After the opening of the port of Yloilo, three years elapsed before a
cargo of produce sailed thence to a foreign port. Since then it has
gradually become the shipping centre for the crops (chiefly sugar
and sapanwood) raised in the islands of Panay and Negros. From
about the year 1882 to 1897 it attracted a portion of what was
formerly the Cebú trade. Since then the importance of Yloilo has
diminished. Its development as a port was entirely due to foreigners,
and considerably aided agriculture in the Visayas Islands. Heretofore
the small output of sugar (which had never reached 1,000 tons in
any year) had to be sent up to Manila. The expense of local freight,
brokerages, and double loading and discharging left so little profit
to the planters that the results were then quite discouraging. None
but wooden sugar-cane mills were employed at that time, but since
then many small steam-power factories have been erected (_vide_
Sugar). The produce shipped in Yloilo [125] was principally carried
to the United States in American sailing-ships.
For figures relating to Chief Exports from the various ports, _vide_
Chap. xxxi., "Trade Statistics."
Most of the carrying Import trade was in the hands of subsidized
Spanish steamer-owners, whilst the larger portion of the Exports was
conveyed in foreign vessels, which arrived in ballast from Eastern
ports where they had left cargoes.
Smuggling was carried on to a considerable extent for years, and in
1891 a fresh stimulus was given to contraband by the introduction of a
Protectionist Tariff, which came into force on April 1 of that year,
and under which Spanish goods brought in Spanish ships were allowed
to enter free of duty. [126]
In order to evade the payment of the Manila Port Works Tax (q.v.), for
which no value was given, large quantities of piece-goods for Manila
were shipped from Europe to Yloilo, passed through the Custom-house
there and re-shipped in inter-island steamers to Manila. In 1890 some
two-thirds of the Yloilo foreign imports were for re-shipment.
The circumstances which directly led to the opening of Zamboanga (in
1831) as a commercial port are interesting when it is remembered that
Mindanao Island is still quasi-independent in the interior--inhabited
by races unconquered by the Spaniards, and where agriculture by
civilized settlers is as yet nascent. It appears that the Port of Joló
(Sulu Is.) had been, for a long time, frequented by foreign ships,
whose owners or officers (chiefly British) unscrupulously supplied the
Sulus with sundry manufactured goods, including _arms of warfare_,
much to the detriment of Spanish interests there, in exchange for
mother-of-pearl, pearls, gums, etc. The Spaniards claimed suzerain
rights over the island, but were not strong enough to establish and
protect a Custom-house, so they imposed the regulation that ships
loading in Joló should put in at Zamboanga for clearance to foreign
ports. The foreigners who carried on this illicit traffic protested
against a sailing-ship being required to go out of her homeward
course about one hundred and twenty miles for the mere formality
of customs clearance. A British ship (and perhaps many before her)
sailed straight away from Joló, in defiance of the Spaniards, and
the matter was then brought to the notice of the British Government,
who intimated that either Joló must be declared a free port or a
Custom-house must be established there. The former alternative was
chosen by the Spaniards, but Zamboanga remained an open port for
foreign trade which very rarely came.
The supreme control of merchant shipping and naval forces was
vested in the same high official. No foreigner was permitted to own
a vessel trading between Spain and her colonies, or between one
Spanish colony and another, or doing a coasting trade within the
Colony. This difficulty was however readily overcome, and reduced to
a mere ineffective formality, by foreigners employing Spaniards to
become nominal owners of their vessels. Thus a very large portion of
the inter-island steamer carrying-trade was virtually conducted by
foreigners, chiefly British.
Mail-steamers, subsidized by the Government, left the capital every
fortnight for the different islands, and there was a quarterly Pacific
Mail Service to the Ladrone Islands. [127] Regular mails arrived from,
and left for, Europe every fortnight, but as there were intermediate
opportunities of remitting and receiving correspondence, really
about three mails were received and three despatched every month. The
mail-route for Europe is _viâ_ Singapore, but there were some seven
or eight sailings of steamers per month between Manila and Hong-Kong
(the nearest foreign colony--640 miles), whence mails were forwarded
to Europe, Australia, Japan, the United States, etc.
Between the capital and several ports in the adjacent provinces there
was a daily service of passenger and light cargo-steamers.
Between Yloilo and the adjoining Province of Antique, the District
of Concepcion and the Islands of Negros and Cebú, there were some
half-dozen small steamers, belonging to Filipinos and Spaniards,
running regularly with passengers and merchandise, whilst in the
sugar-producing season--from January to May--they were fully freighted
with cargoes of this staple article.
The carrying-trade in sailing craft between the Islands was chiefly
in the hands of natives and half-castes. There were also a few Spanish
sailing-ship owners, and in the Port of Yloilo a few schooners (called
_lorchas_), loading from 40 to 100 tons of sugar, were the property
of foreigners, under the nominal ownership of Spanish subjects,
for the reasons mentioned in the preceding page.
The principal exporters employ middlemen for the collecting of produce,
and usually require their guarantee for sales at credit to the
provincial purchasers of imports. These middlemen are always persons
of means, born in the Colony, and, understanding both the intricacies
of the native character and the European mode of transacting business,
they serve as very useful--almost indispensable--intermediaries.
It was only when the crisis in the Sugar trade affected the whole
world, and began to be felt in the Philippines in 1884, that the
majority of the natives engaged in that industry slowly began to
understand that the current price of produce fluctuated according
to supply and demand. Before transactions were so thoroughly in the
hands of middlemen, small producers used to take their samples to the
purchasers, "to see how much they cared to pay" as they expressed
it--the term "market price" seldom being used or understood in the
provinces, because of the belief that prices rose or fell according
to the caprice or generosity of the foreign buyer. Accustomed to
deal, during the first centuries of the Spanish occupation, with the
Chinese, the natives, even among themselves, rarely have fixed prices
in retail dealings, and nearly every quotation in small traffic is
taken only as a fancy price, subject to considerable rebate before
closing. The Chinese understand the native pretty well; they study his
likings, and they so fix their prices that an enormous reduction can
be made for his satisfaction. He goes away quite contented, whilst
the Chinaman chuckles over having got the best of the bargain. Even
the import houses, when they advertise their goods for sale, seldom
state the prices; it seems as if all regarded the question of price
as a shifty one.
The system of giving credit in the retail trade of Manila, and a few
provincial towns, was the ruin of many shopkeepers. There were few
retailers who had fixed prices; most of them fluctuated according to
the race, or nationality, of the intending customer. The Chinese dealer
made no secret about his price being merely nominal. If on the first
offer the hesitating purchaser were about to move away, he would call
after him and politely invite him to haggle over the bargain. [128]
The only real basis of wealth in the Colony is the raw material
obtained by Agriculture, and Forest produce. Nothing was done by the
conquerors to foster the Industrial Arts, and the Manufacturing Trades
were of insignificant importance. Cigars were the only _manufactured_
export staple, whilst perfumes, a little cordage, and occasionally
a parcel of straw or finely-split bamboo hats were shipped.
In the Provinces of Bulacan and Pampanga, split-cane and Nito
(_lygodium_) hats, straw mats, and cigar-cases are made. Some of
the finest worked cigar-cases require so much time for making that
they cost up to P20 each. Hats can only be obtained in quantities by
shippers through native middlemen.
In Yloilo Province a rough cloth called _Sinamay_ is woven [129]
from selected hemp fibre. Also in this province and that of Antique
(Panay Is.), _Piña_ muslin of pure pine-leaf fibre and _Husi_ of mixed
pine-leaf and hemp filament are made. Ilocos Province has a reputation
in these Islands for its woollen and dyed cotton fabrics. Taal
(Batangas) also produces a special make of cotton stuffs. Pasig,
on the river of that name, and Sulípan (Pampanga), are locally known
for their rough pottery, and Cápiz and Romblon for their sugar-bags.
Paete, at the extreme east of the Laguna de Bay, is the centre for
white-wood furniture and wood-carving. In Mariquina, near Manila,
wooden clogs and native leather shoes are made. Santa Cruz (Manila)
is the gold and silver-workers' quarter. The native women in nearly
all the civilized provinces produce some very handsome specimens of
embroidery on European patterns. Mats to sleep upon (_petates_) straw
bags (_bayones_), baskets (_tampipes_), alcohol, bamboo furniture,
buffalo-hide leather, wax candles, soap, etc., have their centres of
manufacture on a small scale. The first Philippine brewery was opened
October 4, 1890, in San Miguel (Manila) by Don Enrique Barretto,
to whom was granted a monopoly by the Spanish Government for twenty
years. It is now chiefly owned by a Philippine half-caste, Don Pedro
P. Rojas (resident in Paris), who formed it into a company which has
become a very flourishing concern. Philippine capital alone supports
these manufactures. The traffic and consumption being entirely local,
the consequent increase of wealth to the Colony is the economized
difference between them and imported articles. These industries bring
no fresh capital to the Colony, by way of profits, but they contribute
to check its egress by the returns of agriculture changing hands to
the local manufacturer instead of to the foreign merchant.
Want of cheap means of land-transport has, so far, been the chief
drawback to Philippine manufactures, which are of small importance
in the total trade of the Colony.
Philippine railways were first officially projected in 1875,
when a Royal Decree of that year, dated August 6, determined the
legislative basis for works of that nature. The Inspector of Public
Works was instructed to form a general plan of a railway system
in Luzon Island. The projected system included (1) a line running
north from Manila through the Provinces of Bulacan, Pampanga, and
Pangasinán. (2) A line running south from Manila, along the Laguna
de Bay shore and eastwards through Tayabas, Camarines, and Albay
Provinces. (3) A branch from this line on the Laguna de Bay shore to
run almost due south to Batangas. The lines to be constructed were
classed under two heads, viz.:--(1) Those of general public utility
to be laid down either by the State or by subsidized companies, the
concession in this case being given by the Home Government; and (2)
those of private interest, for the construction of which concessions
could be granted by the Gov.-General.
In 1885 the Government solicited tenders for the laying of the
first line of railway from Manila to Dagúpan--a port on the Gulf
of Lingayen, and the only practicable outlet for produce from the
Province of Pangasinán and Tárlac District. The distance by sea
is 216 miles--the railway line 196 kilometres (say 120 miles). The
subsidy offered by the Government amounted to about P7,650 per mile,
but on three occasions no tender was forthcoming either from Madrid
or in Manila, where it was simultaneously solicited. Subsequently
a modified offer was made of a guaranteed annual interest of 8 per
cent, on a maximum outlay of P4,964,473.65, and the news was received
in Manila in October, 1886, that the contract had been taken up by
a London firm of contractors. The prospectus of "The Manila Railway
Co., Ltd," was issued in February, 1888. The line was to be completed
within four years from July 21, 1887, and at the end of ninety-nine
years the railway and rolling-stock were to revert to the Spanish
Government without compensation. The rails, locomotives (36 tons and
12 tons each), tenders, coaches, waggons, and ironwork for bridges all
came from England. The first stone of the Central Station in Manila
(Bilibid Road, Tondo) was laid by Gov.-General Emilio Terrero on July
31, 1887. In 1890 the original contractors failed, and only the first
section of 28 miles was opened to traffic on March 24, 1891.
Many other circumstances, however, contributed to delay the opening
of the whole line. Compensation claims were very slowly agreed to;
the Government engineers slightly altered the plans; the company's
engineers could not find a hard strata in the bed of the Calumpit
River [130] (a branch of the Rio Grande de Pampanga) on which to
build the piers of the bridge; and lastly the Spanish authorities,
who had direct intervention in the work, found all sorts of excuses
for postponing the opening of the line. When the Civil Director was
applied to, he calmly replied that he was going to the baths, and
would think about it. Finally, on appeal to the highest authority,
Gov.-General Despujols himself went up to Tárlac, and in an energetic
speech, reflecting on the dilatoriness of his subordinates, he declared
the first Philippine railway open to traffic on November 23, 1892. For
about a year and a half passengers and goods were ferried across the
Calumpit River in pontoons. Large caissons had to be sunk in the river
in which to build the piers for the iron bridge, which cost an enormous
sum of money in excess of the estimate. Later on heavy rains caused
a partial inundation of the line, the embankment of which yielded to
the accumulated mass of water, and traffic to Dagúpan was temporarily
suspended. The total outlay on the line far exceeded the company's
original calculation, and to avert a financial collapse fresh capital
had to be raised by the issue of 6 per cent. Prior Lien Mortgage Bonds,
ranking before the debenture stock. The following official quotations
on the London Stock Exchange will show the public appreciation of
the Manila Railway Company's shares and bonds:--
OFFICIAL QUOTATIONS.
December.
| 7% Cum. Pref. £10 Shares.
| | 6% Deb. £100 Stock.
| | | 6% Prior Lien Mort. Bonds,
| | | Series A., £100.
| | | | 6% Prior Lien Mort. Bonds,
| | | | Series B., £100.
£ £ £ £
1893 2 49 98 87
1894 1 32 104 91
1895 1/2 29 107 85
1896 1/4 22 96 64
1897 1/4 19 101 75
1898 1 3/4 45 110 98
1899 1 3/4 33 1/2 101 1/2 87 1/2
1900 1 1/2 42 103 1/2 97
1901 2 55 108 102
1902 1 1/2 52 109 102
1903 1 1/2 58 108 104
1904 3 1/2 83 110 107
1905 4 3/4 117 110 106
Up to July 1, 1905, the interest has been regularly paid on the
Prior Lien Bonds. No interest has been paid on the debentures (up to
December, 1905) since July 1, 1891, nor on the 7 per cent. Cumulative
Preference Shares since July 1, 1890. On January 26, 1895, these
shares were officially quoted, for sellers, 0.
Including the termini in Manila (Tondo) and Dagúpan, there are 29
stations and 16 bridges along the main line, over which the journey
occupies eight hours. There are two branch lines, viz.:--from Bigaá
to Cabanatúan (Nueva Ecija), and from Angeles (Pampanga) to Camp
Stotsenberg. From the Manila terminus there is a short line (about a
mile) running down to the quay in Binondo for goods traffic only. The
country through which this line passes is flat, and has large natural
resources, the development of which--without a railway--had not been
feasible owing to the ranges of mountains--chiefly the Cordillera of
Zambales--which run parallel to the coast.
The railway is ably managed, but when I travelled on it in 1904 much
of the rolling-stock needed renewal.
In 1890, under Royal Order No. 508, dated June 11 of that year, a 99
years' concession was granted to a British commercial firm in Manila
to lay a 21-mile line of railway, without subsidy, from Manila to
Antipolo, to be called the "Centre of Luzon Railway." The work was to
be commenced within one year and finished within two years. The basis
of the anticipated traffic was the conveyance of pilgrims to the Shrine
of Our Lady of Good Voyage and Peace (_vide_ p. 184); but, moreover,
the proposed line connected the parishes of Dilao (then 4,380 pop.),
Santa Ana (then 2,115 pop.), Mariquina (then 10,000 pop.), Cainta
(then 2,300 pop.), and Taytay (then 6,500 pop.)--branching to Pasig
and Angono--with Antipolo (then 3,800; now 2,800 pop.). The estimated
outlay was about P1,000,000, but the concession was abandoned. The
project has since been revived under American auspices.
Under Spanish government there was a land Telegraph Service from Manila
to all civilized parts of Luzon Island--also in Panay Island from Cápiz
to Yloilo, and in Cebú Island from the city of Cebú across the Island
and up the west coast as far north as Tuburan. There was a land-line
from Manila to Bolinao (Zambales), from which point a submarine cable
was laid in April, 1880, by the Eastern Extension Australasia and
China Telegraph Company, Ltd., whereby Manila was placed in direct
telegraphic communication with the rest of the world. For this
service the Spanish Government paid the company P4,000 a month for
a period of 10 years, which expired in June, 1890. In April, 1898,
the same company detached the cable from Bolinao and carried it on
to Manila in the s.s. _Sherard Osborn_, 207 nautical miles having
been added to the cable for the purpose. In return for this service
the Spanish Government gave the company certain exclusive rights and
valuable concessions. In May, 1898, the American Admiral Dewey ordered
the Manila-Hong-Kong cable to be cut, but the connection was made
good again after the Preliminaries of Peace with Spain were signed
(August 12, 1898). Cable communication was suspended, therefore,
from May 2 until August 21 of that year.
In 1897 another submarine cable was laid by the above company,
under contract with the Spanish Government, connecting Manila with
the Southern Islands of Panay and Cebú (Tuburan). The Manila-Panay
cable was also cut by order of Admiral Dewey (May 23, 1898), but after
August 12, under an arrangement made between the American and Spanish
Governments, it was re-opened on a neutral basis, and the company's
own staff worked it direct with the Manila public, instead of through
the medium of Spanish officials.
Since the American occupation a new cable connecting the Islands
with the United States has been laid (opened July 4, 1903), whilst a
network of submarine and land-wires has been established throughout
the Archipelago.
Owing to their geographical position, none of the Philippine ports
are on the line of the regular mail and passenger steamers _en route_
elsewhere; hence, unlike Hong-Kong, Singapore, and other Eastern ports,
there is little profit to be derived from a cosmopolitan floating
population. Due, probably, to the tedious Customs regulations--the
obligation of every person to procure, and carry on his person, a
document of identification--the requirement of a passport to enter
the Islands, and complicated formalities to recover it on leaving--the
absence of railroads and hotels in the interior and the difficulties of
travelling--this Colony, during the Spanish _régime_, was apparently
outside the region of tourists and "globe-trotters." Indeed the
Philippine Archipelago formed an isolated settlement in the Far East
which traders or pleasure-seekers rarely visited _en passant_ to
explore and reveal to the world its natural wealth and beauty. It was
a Colony comparatively so little known that, forty years ago, fairly
educated people in England used to refer to it as "The Manillas,"
whilst up to the end of Spanish rule old residents, on visiting
Singapore and Hong-Kong, were often highly amused by the extravagant
notions which prevailed, even there, concerning the Philippines. But
the regulations above referred to were an advantage to the respectable
resident, for they had the desirable effect of excluding many of those
nondescript wanderers and social outcasts who invade other colonies.
Since the Revolution there has been a large influx of American tourists
to the Islands, arriving in the army-transports, passage free, to see
"the new possession," as the Archipelago is popularly called in the
United States.
CHAPTER XVI
Agriculture
In years gone by, before so many colonies were opened up all over
the world, the few who, in the Philippines, had the courage to face
the obstacles to agriculture in a primitive country made fairly large
fortunes in the main staple products--sugar and hemp. Prices were then
treble what they have since been, labour was cheaper, because the needs
of the labouring-class were fewer, and, owing to the limited demand
and the rarity of epidemic cattle-disease, buffaloes for tilling were
worth one-eighth of what they cost at the present day. Although the
amount of trade was vastly less, those natives engaged in it were in
sounder positions than the same class generally is now.
Within the last few years there are hundreds who have embarked in
agricultural enterprises with only one-tenth of the capital necessary
to make them successful. A man would start planting with only a few
hundred pesos and a tract of cleared land, without title-deeds, and
consequently of no negotiable value. In the first year he inevitably
fell into the hands of money-lenders, who reasonably stipulated for a
very high rate of interest in view of the absence of guarantees. The
rates of interest on loans under such circumstances varied as a rule
from 12 to 24 per cent. I know a Visayo native who, by way of interest,
commission, and charges, demanded as much as 30 per cent. I need not
refer to the isolated cases which have come to my knowledge of over
100 per cent. being charged. As at the present day agriculture in
the Philippines does not yield 30 per cent. nett profit, it naturally
follows that the money-lender at this rate has to attach the estate
upon which he has made loans, and finally becomes owner of it. In
the meantime, the tiller who has directed the labour of converting a
tract of land into a plantation, simply gets a living out of it. Some
few were able to disencumber their property by paying, year by year,
not only the whole of the nett returns from the plantation, but also
the profits on small traffic in which they may have speculated. It
seldom happened, however, that the native planter was sufficiently
loyal to his financial supporter to do this: on the contrary, although
he might owe thousands of pesos, he would spend money in feasts, and
undertake fresh obligations of a most worthless nature. He would buy
on credit, to be paid for after the next crop, a quantity of paltry
jewellery from the first hawker who passed his way, or let the cash
slip out of his hands at the cock-pit or the gambling-table.
Even the most provident seemed to make no reserve for a bad year, and
the consequence was that in 1887 I think I may safely assert that if
all the Philippine planters had had to liquidate within twelve months,
certainly 50 per cent. of them would have been insolvent. One of
the most hazardous businesses in the Colony is that of advancing to
the native planters, unless it be done with the express intention of
eventually becoming owner of an estate, which is really often the case.
The conditions of land-tenure in Luzon Island under Spanish rule
stood briefly thus:--The owners either held the lands by virtue of
undisturbed possession or by transferable State grant. The tenants--the
actual tillers--were one degree advanced beyond the state of slave
cultivators, inasmuch as they could accumulate property and were free
to transfer their services. They corresponded to that class of farmers
known in France as _métayers_ and amongst the Romans of old as _Coloni
Partiarii_, with no right in the land, but entitled to one-half of its
produce. Like the ancients, they had to perform a number of services
to the proprietor which were not specified in writing, but enforced
by usage. Tenants of this kind recently subsisted--and perhaps
still do--in Scotland (_vide_ "Wealth of Nations," by Adam Smith,
edition of 1886, p. 160). Leases for long periods were exceptional,
and I never heard of compensation being granted for improvements of
Philippine estates. The conditions in Visayas are explained on p. 274.
The value of land suitable for _Sugar-cane_ growing varies
considerably, being dependent on proximity to a port, or sugar-market,
and on quality, facilities for drainage, transport, site, boundaries,
etc.
In the Province of Bulacan, land which in a great measure is exhausted
and yields only an average of 21 tons of cane per acre, was valued
(prior to the American occupation), on account of its nearness to
the capital, at P115 per acre. In Pampanga Province, a little further
north, the average value of land, yielding, say, 30 tons of cane per
acre, was P75 per acre. Still further north, in the Province of Nueva
Ecija, whence transport to the sugar-market is difficult and can only
be economically effected in the wet season by river, land producing
an average of 35 tons of cane per acre would hardly fetch more than
P30 per acre. Railroads will no doubt eventually level these values.
In reality, Bulacan land is priced higher than its intrinsic value as
ascertained by yield and economy of produce-transport. The natives
are, everywhere in the Colony, more or less averse to alienating
real estate inherited from their forefathers, and as Bulacan is one
of the first provinces where lands were taken up, centuries ago, an
attachment to the soil is particularly noticeable. In that province,
as a rule, only genuine necessity, or a fancy price far in excess of
producing-worth, would induce an owner to sell his land.
Land grants were obtainable from the Spanish Government by proving
priority of claim, but the concession was only given after wearisome
delay, and sometimes it took years to obtain the title-deeds. Then
large capital was requisite to utilize the property, the clearance
often costing more than the virgin tract, whilst the eviction of
squatters was a most difficult undertaking: "_J'y suis et j'y reste_,"
thought the squatter, and the grantee had no speedy redress at law. On
the other hand, the soil is so wonderfully rich and fertile that the
study of geoponics and artificial manuring was never thought essential.
The finest sugar-cane producing island in the Archipelago is Negros,
in the Visaya district, between N. latitudes 9° and 11°. The area
of the Island is about equal to that of Porto Rico, but for want of
capital is only about one-half opened up. Nevertheless, it sent to
the Yloilo market in 1892 over 115,000 tons of raw sugar--the largest
crop it has yet produced. In 1850 the Negros sugar yield was 625 tons.
The price of uncleared land there, suitable for sugar-cane cultivation,
in accessible spots, was, say, P35 per acre, and cleared land might
be considered worth about P70 per acre. The yield of sugar-cane may
be estimated at 40 tons per acre on the estates opened up within the
last ten years, whilst the older estates produce per acre nearly 30
tons of cane, but of a quality which gives such a high-class sugar
that it compensates for the decrease in quantity, taking also into
account the economy of manipulating and transporting less bulk.
Otaheiti cane (yellow) is generally planted in Luzon, whilst Java cane
(red) is most common in the southern islands. _Tubo_ is the Tagálog
generic name for sugar-cane.
The following equivalents of Philippine land-measures may be useful,
viz.:--
1 Quiñon = 40,000 square varas = 10,000 square brazas.
= 5 cabans = 6.9444 acres = 2.795 hectares.
1 Balita = 4,000 square varas = 1,000 square brazas.
= .69444 acre = .2795 hectare.
1 Loan = 400 square varas = 100 square brazas.
= .06944 acre = .02795 hectare.
1 Square Braza = 3.3611 square English yards.
= 4,355.98 square English inches.
1 Square Vara = .8402 square English yards.
= 1,088.89 square English inches.
1 Acre = 5,760 square varas = 1.44 balitas.
= .72 caban = .404671 hectare.
The average yield of sugar per acre is about as follows, viz.:--
Pampanga Province,
say @ 6 1/2% extraction = 1.95 Tons of Sugar.
Other Northern provinces,
say @ 5 1/2% extraction = 1.65 Tons of Sugar.
Negros Island (with almost exclusively European mills),
say @ 7 1/2% extraction = 2.75 Tons of Sugar.
From Yloilo the sugar is chiefly exported to the United States,
where there is a demand for raw material only from the Philippines
for the purpose of refining, whilst from Manila a certain
quantity of crystal-grain sugar is sent, ready for consumption,
to Spain. Consequently, in the Island of Luzon, a higher class of
machinery is employed. In 1890 there were five private estates, with
vacuum-pans erected, and one refinery, near Manila, (at Malabón). Also
in 1885 the Government acquired a sugar-machinery plant with vacuum-pan
for their model estate at San Ramon in the Province of Zamboanga; the
sugar turned out at the trial of the plant in my presence was equal
to 21 D. S. of that year. Convict labour was employed. During the
Rebellion half the machinery on this estate was destroyed or stolen.
It is a rare thing to see other than European mills in the Island of
Negros, whilst in every other sugar-producing province roughly-made
vertical cattle-mills of wood, or stone (wood in the south and stone
in the north), as introduced by the Chinese, are still in use. With
one exception (at Cabanatúan, Nueva Ecija), which was a failure,
the triple-effect refining-plant is altogether unknown in this Colony.
The sugar-estates generally are small. There are not a dozen estates
in the whole Colony which produce over 1,000 tons of raw sugar each
per season. An estate turning out 500 tons of sugar is considered a
large one. I know of one estate which yielded 1,500 tons, and another
1,900 tons in a good season. In the Island of Negros there is no port
suitable for loading ships of large tonnage, and the crops have to
be carried to the Yloilo market, in small schooners loading from 40
to 100 tons (_vide_ p. 263). From the estates to the coast there are
neither canals nor railroads, and the transport is by buffalo-cart.
The highest tablelands are used for cane-planting, which imperatively
requires a good system of drainage. In Luzon Island the output of sugar
would be far greater if more attention were paid to the seasons. The
cane should be cut in December, and the milling should never last over
ten weeks. The new cane-point setting should be commenced a fortnight
after the milling begins, and the whole operation of manufacture
and planting for the new crop should be finished by the middle of
March. A deal of sugar is lost by delay in each branch of the field
labour. In the West Indies the planters set the canes out widely,
leaving plenty of space for the development of the roots, and the
ratoons serve up to from five to twenty years. In the Philippines
the setting of cane points is renewed each year, with few exceptions,
and the planting is comparatively close.
Bulacan sugar-land, being more exhausted than Pampanga land, will
not admit of such close planting, hence Bulacan land can only find
nourishment for 14,300 points per acre, whilst Pampanga land takes
17,800 points on average computation.
In Negros, current sugar is raised from new lands (among the best) and
from lands which are hardly considered suitable for cane-planting. Good
lands are called "new" for three crops in Negros, and during that
period the planting is close, to choke the cane and prevent it becoming
aqueous by too rapid development.
In the Northern Philippines "clayed" sugar (Spanish, _Azúcar de pilon_)
is made. The _massecuite_, when drawn from the pans, is turned into
earthenware conic pots containing about 150 lb. weight. When the mass
has set, the pot is placed over a jar (Tagalog, _oya_) into which the
molasses drains. In six months, if allowed to remain over the jar,
it will drain about 20 per cent, of its original weight, but it is
usually sold before that time, if prices are favourable.
The molasses is sold to the distilleries for making Alcohol,
[131] whilst there is a certain demand for it for mixing with the
drinking-water given to Philippine ponies, although this custom is
now falling into disuse, in Manila at least, because molasses is
never given to the American imported horses.
From nine tests which I made with steam machinery, of small capacity,
in different places in the northern provinces, without interfering
with the customary system of manipulating the cane or the adjustment
of the mill rolls, I found the--
Average juice extraction to be 56.37%
Average moisture in the megass on leaving the mill 23.27%
Average amount of dry megass [132] 20.36%
100.00%
The average density of juice in the cane worked off as above was 10
3/4° Beaumé.
In Negros the process is very different. The juice is evaporated
in the pan-battery to a higher point of concentration, so that the
molasses becomes incorporated with the saccharine grain. It is then
turned out into a wooden trough, about 8 feet long by 4 feet wide,
and stirred about with shovels, until it has cooled so far as to be
unable to form into a solid mass, or lumps. When quite cold, the few
lumps visible are pounded, and the whole is packed in grass bags
(_bayones_). Sugar packed in this way is deliverable to shippers,
whereas "clayed" sugar can only be sold to the assorters and packers
(_farderos_), who sun-dry it on mats and then bag it after making up
the colour and quality to exporter's sample (_vide_ p. 173).
The Labour system in the Northern Philippines is quite distinct
from that adopted in the South. The plantations in the North are
worked on the co-operative principle (_sistema de inquilinos_). The
landowner divides his estate into tenements (_aparcerias_), each tenant
(_aparcero_) being provided with a buffalo and agricultural implements
to work up the plot, plant, and attend to the cane-growth as if it
were his own property. Wherever the native goes to work he carries the
indispensable bowie-knife (Tagálog, _guloc_; Spanish, _bolo_). When
the cutting-season arrives, one tenant at a time brings in his cane
to the mill, and when the sugar is worked off, usually one-third,
but often as much as one-half of the output, according to arrangement,
belongs to the tenant. The tenant provides the hands required for the
operations of cane-crushing and sugar-making; the cost of machinery
and factory establishment is for the account of the landowner, who
also has to take the entire risk of typhoons, inundations, drought,
locusts, [133] etc.
During the year, whilst the cane is maturing, the tenants receive
advances against their estimated share, some even beyond the real
value, so that, in nearly every case, the full crop remains in the
hands of the estate-owner. In the general working of the plantation
hired day-labour is not required, the tenants, in fact, being
regarded, in every sense, as servants of the owner, who employs them
for whatever service he may need. Interest at 10 to 12 per cent. per
annum is charged upon the advances made in money, rice, stuffs, etc.,
during the year; and on taking over the tenant's share of output,
as against these advances, a rebate on current price of the sugar is
often agreed to.
In the South, plantations are worked on the daily-wages system,
(_sistema de jornal_), and the labourer will frequently exact his
pay for several weeks in advance. Great vigilance is requisite,
and on estates exceeding certain dimensions it is often necessary to
subdivide the management, apportioning it off to overseers, or limited
partners, called "Axas." Both on European and native owners' estates
these _axas_ were often Spaniards. The _axas'_ interest varies on
different properties, but, generally speaking, he is either credited
with one-third of the product and supplied with necessary capital,
or he receives two-thirds of the yield of the land under his care and
finds his own working capital for its tilth, whilst the sunk capital in
land, machinery, sheds, stores, etc., is for the account of the owner.
In 1877 a British company--the "Yengarie"--was started with a large
capital for the purpose of acquiring cane-juice all over the Colony
and extracting from it highly-refined sugar. The works, fitted with
vacuum-pans and all the latest improvements connected with this class
of apparatus, were established at Mandaloyan, about three miles from
Manila up the Pasig River. From certain parts of Luzon Island the
juice was to be conveyed to the factory in tubes, and the promoter,
who visited Cebú Island, proposed to send schooners there fitted with
tanks, to bring the defecated liquid to Mandaloyan. The project was
an entire failure from the beginning (for the ordinary shareholders
at least), and in 1880 the machinery plant was being realized and
the company wound up.
The classification of sugar in the South differs from that in the
North. In the former market it is ranked as Nos. 0, 1, 2, 3 Superior
and Current. For the American market these qualities are blended,
to make up what is called "Assorted Sugar," in the proportion
of one-eighth of No. 1, two-eighths of No. 2, and five-eighths
of No. 3. In the North the quality is determined on the Dutch
standard. The New York and London markets fix the prices, which are
cabled daily to the foreign merchants in Manila.
From a series of estimates compiled by me I find that to produce
7,000 to 10,000 piculs, the cost laid down in Yloilo would be, say,
P2.00 per picul (P32.00 per ton); the smaller the output the larger
is the prime cost, and _vice-versa._
Fortunes have been made in this Colony in cane-sugar, and until the
end of 1883 sugar-planting paid the capitalist and left something to
the borrowing planter; now it pays only interest on capital. From
the year 1884 the subsidized beet-root sugar manufacturers on the
continent of Europe turned out such enormous quantities of this article
that the total yield of sugar exceeded the world's requirements. The
consequence was that the cane-sugar manufacture declined almost at
the same ratio as that of beet-root advanced, as will be seen from
the subjoined figures:--
Tons.
The world's production in 1880; cane sugar 3,285,714
The world's production in 1880; beet sugar 1,443,349
=========
4,729,063
Tons.
The world's production in 1887, cane sugar 2,333,004
The world's production in 1887, beet sugar 2,492,610
=========
4,825,614
Tons.
Beet sugar Increase 1,049,261
Cane sugar Decrease 952,710
The world's output was Increased 96,551
Since the above date, however, the output of Beet Sugar has become
about double that of Cane Sugar, as will be seen from the following
figures, viz.:--
World's Production. Season of 1899-1900. Season of 1900-1901.
Tons. Tons.
Cane sugar 2,867,041 3,425,022
Beet sugar 5,607,944 6,096,858
========= =========
8,474,985 9,521,880
On estates already established at old prices, cane-sugar production
pays an interest on capital, but the capitalist is not necessarily the
planter and nominal owner, as has been explained. Since the American
occupation the cost of labour, living, material, live-stock, and all
that the planter or his estate need, has increased so enormously that
the colonist should ponder well before opening up a new estate for
cane-growing in world-wide competition. For figures of Sugar Shipments
_vide_ Chap, xxxi., "Trade Statistics."
_Rice_ (_Oryza_) being the staple food of the Filipinos, it is
cultivated more or less largely in every province of the Colony. Its
market value fluctuates considerably according to the stocks in
hand and the season of the year. It appears to be the only branch
of agriculture in which the lower classes of natives take a visible
pleasure and which they understand thoroughly. In 1897 about 80,000
tons were raised.
The natives measure and sell rice (Tagálog, _bigas_) and paddy
(Tagálog, _palay_) by the caban and its fractions; the caban dry
measure is as follows, viz:--
4 Apatans = 1 Chupa; 8 Chupas = 1 Ganta; 25 Gantas = 1 Caban,
the equivalent of which in English measure is thus, viz:--
1 Atapan = .16875 of a pint.
1 Chupa = .675 of a pint.
1 Ganta = 2 quarts, 1 2/5 pints.
1 Caban = 16 gallons, 3 quarts, 1 pint.
Rice of foreign importation is weighed and quoted by the picul of
133 1/3 lbs. avoirdupois, subdivided as follows, viz.:--
16 Taels = 1 Catty; 10 Catties = 1 Chinanta; 10 Chinantas = 1 Picul.
Thirty years ago rice was exported from the Philippines, but now not
even sufficient is produced for home consumption, hence this commodity
is imported in large quantities from Siam, Lower Burmah, and Cochin
China to supply the deficiency. In 1897 nearly 65,000 tons of rice
were brought from those countries, and since the American occupation
the annual receipts of foreign rice have increased to fivefold. Sual
(Pangasinán), on the Gulf of Lingayen, was, thirty-five years ago,
a port of importance, whence rice was shipped to China (_vide_
p. 261). This falling off of rice-production did not, however,
imply a loss to the population in Spanish times when imported rice
was sold cheaply, because, in many provinces, land formerly used for
rice-growing was turned to better account for raising other crops
which paid better in a fairly good market.
The natives everywhere continue to employ the primitive method of
treating rice-paddy for domestic and local use. The grain is generally
husked by them in a large mortar hewn from a block of _molave_,
or other hardwood, in which it is beaten by a pestle. Sometimes
two or three men or women with wooden pestles work at the same
mortar. This mortar is termed, in Tagálog dialect, _Luzon_, the name
given to the largest island of the group. However, I have seen in
the towns of Candava (Pampanga), Pagsanján (La Laguna), near Calamba
in the same province, in Naig (Cavite), in Camarines Province, and
a few other places, an attempt to improve upon the current system
by employing an ingenious wooden mechanical apparatus worked by
buffaloes. It consisted of a vertical shaft on which was keyed a
bevel-wheel revolving horizontally and geared into a bevel pinion
fixed upon a horizontal shaft. In this shaft were adjusted pins,
which, at each revolution, caught the corresponding pins in vertical
sliding columns. These columns (five or six)--being thereby raised
and allowed to fall of their own weight when the raising-pins had
passed on--acted as pounders, or pestles, in the mortars placed below
them. Subsequently, notable progress was made in Camarines Province
by Spaniards, who, in 1888, employed steam power, whilst in Pagsanján
(La Laguna) animal motive power was substituted by that of steam. Also,
near Calamba, in the same province, water power was eventually employed
to advantage. In Negros, near the village of Candaguit, there was
one small rice-machinery plant worked by steam power, brought by a
Spaniard from Valencia in Spain. Presumably it was not a success,
as it remained only a short time in use.
Finally the Manila-Dagúpan Railway gave a great stimulus to
the rice-husking and pearling industry, which was taken up by
foreigners. There are now important rice steam-power mills established
at Calumpit, Gerona, Moncada, Bayambang, and other places along the
line from Calumpit towards Dagúpan, which supply large quantities of
cleaned rice to Manila and other provinces, where it is invariably
more highly appreciated than the imported article. Also, at Nueva
Cáceres (Camarines), in 1896, a large steam-power rice mill was being
worked by Don Manuel Pardo, who had a steamer specially constructed
in Hong-Kong for the transport of his output to the provincial markets.
The average yield of cleaned rice from the paddy is 50 per cent.,
whilst no special use is found for the remaining 50 per cent. of coarse
paddy-bran. The fine bran, almost dust (called in Tagálog _Tiki Tiki_),
serves, however, for several purposes on the farm. The rice grain
which is broken in the husking is known as _Pináua_ in Tagálog.
The customary charge for husking and winnowing a caban of paddy is
12 1/2 cents, so that as two cabans of paddy give one caban of rice,
the cost of this labour would be 25 cents per caban of rice.
The average amount of rice consumed by a working man per day is
estimated at four chupas, or, say, close upon eight cabans per annum,
which, on the old reckoning--that is to say in Spanish times, taking
an average price of 1 peso per caban of paddy = 2 pesos per caban
of rice, plus 25 cents for cleaning = 2.25 pesos per caban of clean
rice--amounts to 18 pesos per annum. A native's further necessities
are fish, an occasional piece of buffalo, betel-nut, tobacco, six
yards of cotton print-stuff, and payment of taxes, all of which
(including rice) amounted to say P50 in the year, so that a man
earning 20 cents per day during 300 days lived well, provided he had
no unforeseen misfortunes. Cock-fighting and gambling of course upset
the calculation.
There are, it is said, over 20 different kinds of rice-paddy. These
are comprised in two common groups--the one is called _Macan_ rice
(Spanish, _Arroz de Semillero_) which is raised on alluvial soil
on the lowlands capable of being flooded conveniently with water,
and the other has the general denomination (in Luzon Is.) of _Paga_
or _Dumali_ (Spanish, _Arroz de Secano_) and is cultivated on high
lands and slopes where inundation is impracticable.
The _Macan_, or low-land rice, is much the finer quality, the grain
being usually very white, although _Macan_ rice is to be found
containing up to 25 per cent. of red grain, known in Tagálog as
_Tangi_, or _Malagcquit_. The white grain is that most esteemed. The
yield of grain varies according to the quality of the soil. In the
north of Bulacan Province the average crop of _Macan_ rice may be
taken at 80 cabans of grain for one caban of seed. In the south of
the same province the return reaches only one-half of that. In the
east of Pampanga Province, in the neighbourhood of Aráyat, Magálang,
and Candava villages, the yield is still higher, giving, in a good
year, as much as 100 cabans for one of seed. In Negros a return of
50 cabans to one may be taken as a fair average.
_Paga_ rice always shows a large proportion of red grain, and the
return is, at the most, half that of _Macan_ yield, but whilst rarely
more than one crop per annum is obtained from low-lands (_Macan_
rice)--taking the average throughout the Islands--in most places up
to three crops of _Paga_ rice can be obtained.
Besides the ordinary agricultural risks to which rice cultivation is
exposed, a special danger often presents itself. The _Paga_ rice is
frequently attacked by flies (Tagálog, _Alutangia_), which suck the
flower just before seeding, and the person in charge of the plantation
has to stroll in the evenings and mornings among the setting to whisk
off these insects with a bunch of straws on the end of a stick, or
catch them with a net to save the grain. Both _Macan_ and _Paga_
are sometimes damaged by an insect, known in Ilocos Province as
_Talibatab_, which eats through the stalk of the plant before maturity,
causing the head, or flower, to droop over and wither, but this does
not happen every season.
To plant _Macan_ rice the grain or seed is sown in the month of June
on a piece of land called the "seeding-plot," where, in six weeks,
it attains a height of about one foot, and, provided the rains have
not failed, it is then pulled up by the roots and transplanted, stem
by stem, in the flooded fields. Each field is embanked with earth
(Tagálog, _pilápil_) so that the water shall not run off, and just
before the setting is commenced, the plough is passed for the last
time. Then men, women, and children go into the inundated fields
with their bundles of rice-plant and stick the stalks in the soft
mud one by one. It would seem a tedious operation, but the natives
are so used to it that they quickly cover a large field. In four
months from the transplanting the rice is ripe, but as at the end of
November there is still a risk of rain falling, the harvest is usually
commenced at the end of December, after the grain has hardened and
the dry season has fairly set in. If, at such an abnormal period, the
rains were to return (and such a thing has been known), the sheaves,
which are heaped for about a month to dry, would be greatly exposed
to mildew owing to the damp atmosphere. After the heaping--at the
end of January--the paddy, still in the straw, is made into stacks
(Tagálog, _Mandalá_). In six weeks more the grain is separated from
the straw, and this operation has to be concluded before the next
wet season begins--say about the end of April. On the Pacific coast
(Camarines and Albay), where the seasons are reversed (_vide_ p. 22),
rice is planted out in September and reaped in February.
The separation of the grain is effected in several ways. Some beat
it out with their feet, others flail it, whilst in Cavite Province
it is a common practice to spread the sheaves in a circular enclosure
within which a number of ponies and foals are trotted.
In Negros Island there is what is termed _Ami_ rice--a small crop
which spontaneously rises in succession to the regular crop after
the first ploughing.
It seldom happens that a "seeding-plot" has to be allowed to run to
seed for want of rain for transplanting, but in such an event it is
said to yield at the most tenfold.
Nothing in Nature is more lovely than a valley of green half-ripened
rice-paddy, surrounded by verdant hills. Rice harvest-time is a lively
one among the poor tenants in Luzon, who, as a rule, are practically
the landowner's partners working for half the crop, against which they
receive advances during the year. Therefore, cost of labour may be
taken at 50 per cent. plus 10 per cent. stolen from the owner's share.
Paddy-planting is not a lucrative commercial undertaking, and few
take it up on a large scale. None of the large millers employing
steam power are, at the same time, grain cultivators. There is this
advantage about the business, that the grower is less likely to be
confronted with the labour difficulty, for the work of planting out
and gathering in the crop is, to the native and his family, a congenial
occupation. Rice-cultivation is, indeed, such a poor business for the
capitalist that perhaps a fortune has never been made in that sole
occupation, but it gives a sufficient return to the actual tiller
of his own land. The native woman is often quite as clever as her
husband in managing the estate hands, for her tongue is usually as
effective as his rattan. I venture to say there are not six white
men living who, without Philippine wives, have made fortunes solely
in agriculture in these Islands.
CHAPTER XVII
Manila Hemp--Coffee--Tobacco
_Hemp_ (_Musa textilis_)--referred to by some scientific
writers as _M. troglodytarum_--is a wild species of the plantain
(_M. paradisiaca_) found growing in many parts of the Philippine
Islands. It so closely resembles the _M. paradisiaca,_ which bears
the well-known and agreeable fruit--the edible banana, that only
connoisseurs can perceive the difference in the density of colour and
size of the green leaves--those of the hemp-plant being of a somewhat
darker hue, and shorter. The fibre of a number of species of _Musa_
is used for weaving, cordage, etc., in tropical countries.
This herbaceous plant seems to thrive best on an inclined plane,
for nearly all the wild hemp which I have seen has been found on
mountain slopes, even far away down the ravines. Although requiring a
considerable amount of moisture, hemp will not thrive in swampy land,
and to attain any great height it must be well shaded by other trees
more capable of bearing the sun's rays. A great depth of soil is not
indispensable for its development, as it is to be seen flourishing
in its natural state on the slopes of volcanic formation. In Albay
Province it grows on the declivities of the Mayon Volcano.
The hemp-tree in the Philippines reaches an average height of 10
feet. It is an endogenous plant, the stem of which is enclosed in
layers of half-round petioles. The hemp-fibre is extracted from these
petioles, which, when cut down, are separated into strips, five to six
inches wide, and drawn under a knife attached at one end by a hinge to
a block of wood, whilst the other end is suspended to the extremity
of a flexible stick. The bow tends to raise the knife, and a cord,
attached to the same end of the knife, and a treadle are so arranged
that by a movement of the foot the operator can bring the knife to
work on the hemp petiole with the pressure he chooses. The bast is
drawn through between the knife and the block, the operator twisting
the fibre, at each pull, around a stick of wood or his arm, whilst the
parenchymatous pulp remains on the other side of the knife. There is
no use for the pulp. The knife should be without teeth or indentations,
but nearly everywhere in Capis Province I have seen it with a slightly
serrated edge. The fibre is then spread out to dry, and afterwards
tightly packed in bales with iron or rattan hoops for shipment.
A finer fibre than the ordinary hemp is sometimes obtained in
small quantities from the specially-selected edges of the petiole,
and this material is used by the natives for weaving. The quantity
procurable is limited, and the difficulty in obtaining it consists
in the frequent breakage of the fibre whilst being drawn, due to
its comparative fragility. Its commercial value is about double
that of ordinary first-class cordage hemp. The stuff made from this
fine fibre (in Bicol dialect, _Lúpis_) suits admirably for ladies'
dresses. Ordinary hemp fibre is used for the manufacture of coarse
native stuff, known in Manila as _Sinamay_, much worn by the poorer
classes of natives; large quantities of it come from Yloilo. In Panay
Island a kind of texture called _Husi_ is made of a mixture of fine
hemp (_lúpis_) and pine-apple leaf fibre. Sometimes this fabric is
palmed off on foreigners as pure _piña_ stuff, but a connoisseur
can easily detect the hemp filament by the touch of the material,
there being in the hemp-fibre, as in horsehair, a certain amount of
stiffness and a tendency to spring back which, when compressed into a
ball in the hand, prevents the stuff from retaining that shape. _Piña_
fibre is soft and yielding.
Many attempts have been made to draw the hemp fibre by machinery,
but in spite of all strenuous efforts, no one has hitherto succeeded
in introducing into the hemp districts a satisfactory mechanical
apparatus. If the entire length of fibre in a strip of bast could
bear the strain of full tension, instead of having to wind it
around a cylinder (which would take the place of the operator's
hand and stick under the present system), then a machine could be
contrived to accomplish the work. Machines with cylinders to reduce
the tension have been constructed, the result being admirable so
far as the extraction of the fibre is concerned, but the cylinder
upon which the fibre coiled, as it came from under the knife, always
discoloured the material. A trial was made with a glass cylinder,
but the same inconvenience was experienced. On another occasion the
cylinder was dispensed with, and a reciprocating-motion clutch drew
the bast, running to and fro the whole length of the fibre frame,
the fibre being gripped by a pair of steel parallel bars on its
passage in one or two places, as might be necessary, to lessen the
tension. These steel bars, however, always left a transversal black
line on the filament, and diminished its marketable value. What is
desired is a machine which could be worked by one man and turn out
at least as much clean fibre as the old apparatus could with two
men. Also that the whole appliance should be portable by one man.
In 1886 the most perfect mechanical contrivance hitherto brought out
was tried in Manila by its Spanish inventor, Don Abelardo Cuesta;
it worked to the satisfaction of those who saw it, but the saving
of manual labour was so inconsiderable that the greater bulk of hemp
shipped is still extracted by the primitive process.
In September, 1905, Fray Mateo Atienza, of the Franciscan Order,
exhibited in Manila a hemp-fibre-drawing machine of his own invention,
the practical worth of which has yet to be ascertained. It is alleged
that this machine, manipulated by one man, can, in a given time, turn
out 104 per cent. more clean fibre than the old-fashioned apparatus
worked by two men.
_Musa textilis_ has been planted in British India as an experiment,
with unsatisfactory result, evidently owing to a want of knowledge
of the essential conditions of the fibre-extraction. One report
[134] says--
"The first trial at extracting the fibre failed on account of our
having no proper machine to _bruise_ the stems. We extemporized
a two-roller mill; but as it had no cog-gearing to cause both
rollers to turn together, the only one on which the handle or
crank was fixed turned, with, the result of grinding the stems
to pulp instead of simply _bruising_ them."
In the Philippines one is careful _not_ to bruise the stems, as this
would weaken the fibre and discolour it.
Another statement from British India shows that Manila hemp requires
a very special treatment. It runs thus:--
"The mode of extraction was the same as practised in the locality
with _Ambadi_ (brown hemp) and _sunn_ hemp, with the exception that
the stems were, in the first place, passed through a sugar-cane
mill which got rid of sap averaging 50 per cent. of the whole. The
stems were next rotted in water for 10 to 12 days, and afterwards
washed by hand and sun-dried. The out-turn of fibre was 1 3/4
lbs. per 100 lbs. of fresh stem, a percentage considerably higher
than the average shown in the Saidápet experiments; it was however
of bad colour and defective in strength."
If treated in the same manner in the Philippines, a similar bad result
would ensue; the pressure of mill rollers would discolour the fibre,
and the soaking with 48 per cent. of pulp, before being sun-dried,
would weaken it.
Dr. Ure, in his "Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures and Mines," p. 1,
thus describes Manila Hemp:--
"A species of fibre obtained in the Philippine Islands in
abundance. Some authorities refer these fibres to the palm-tree
known as the _Abacá_ or _Anisa textilis_. There seem indeed to be
several well-known varieties of fibre included under this name,
some so fine that they are used in the most delicate and costly
textures, mixed with fibres of the pine-apple, forming _piña_
muslins and textures equal to the best muslins of Bengal. [135]
"Of the coarser fibres, mats, cordage and sail-cloth are
made. M. Duchesne states that the well-known fibrous manufactures
of Manila have led to the manufacture of the fibres themselves,
at Paris, into many articles of furniture and dress. Their
brilliancy and strength give remarkable fitness for bonnets,
tapestry, carpets, network, hammocks, etc. The only manufactured
articles exported from the Philippine Islands, enumerated by
Thomas de Comyn, Madrid, 1820 (translated by Walton), besides a
few tanned buffalo-hides and skins, are 8,000 to 12,000 pieces
of light sail-cloth and 200,000 lbs. of assorted _Abacá_ cordage."
Manila-hemp rope is very durable; it is equally applicable to
cables and to ships' standing and running rigging, but wanting in
flexibility. [136]
Hemp-growing, with ample capital, appears to be the most lucrative
and least troublesome of all agricultural enterprises in staple
export produce in the Colony, whilst it is quite independent of the
seasons. The plant is neither affected by disease nor do insects
attack it, and the only ordinary risks appear to be hurricanes,
drought, insufficient weeding, and the ravages of the wild boar.
Planted in virgin soil, each shoot occupies, at first, a space of
20 English square feet. In the course of time, this regularity of
distribution disappears as the original plant is felled and the
suckers come up anywhere, spontaneously, from its root. The plant
requires three years to arrive at cutting maturity, or four years if
raised from the seed; most planters, however, transplant the six-month
suckers, instead of the seed, when forming a new plantation. The stem
should be cut for fibre-drawing at the flowering maturity; in no case
should it be allowed to bear fruit, as the fibre is thereby weakened,
and there is sometimes even a waste of material in the drawing,
as the accumulation of fibre with the sap at the knife is greater.
The average weight of dry fibre extracted from one plant equals
10 ounces, or say 2 per cent, of the total weight of the stem and
petioles; but as in practice there is a certain loss of petioles,
by cutting out of maturity, whilst others are allowed to rot through
negligence, the average output from a carefully-managed estate does
not exceed 3-60 cwt. per acre, or say 4 piculs per caban of land.
The length of the _bast_, ready for manipulation at the knife,
averages in Albay 6 feet 6 inches.
The weight of moisture in the wet fibre, immediately it is drawn
from the bast, averages 56 per cent. To sun-dry the fibre thoroughly,
an exposure of five hours is necessary.
The first petioles forming the outer covering, and the slender central
stem itself around which they cluster, are thrown away. Due to the
inefficient method of fibre-drawing, or rather the want of mechanical
appliances to effect the same, the waste of fibre probably amounts
to as much as 30 per cent. of the whole contained in the bast.
In sugar-cane planting, the poorer the soil is the wider the cane is
planted, whilst the hemp-plant is set out at greater space on virgin
land than on old, worked land, the reason being that the hemp-plant
in rich soil throws out a great number of shoots from the same root,
which require nourishment and serve for replanting. If space were
not left for their development, the main stem would flower before
it had reached its full height and circumference, whereas sugar-cane
is purposely choked in virgin soil to check its running too high and
dispersing the saccharine matter whilst becoming ligneous.
A great advantage to the colonist, in starting hemp-growing in virgin
forest-land, consists in the clearance requiring to be only partial,
whilst newly opened up land is preferable, as on it the young plants
will sometimes throw up as many as thirty suckers. The largest
forest-trees are intentionally left to shade the plants and young
shoots, so that only light rooting is imperatively necessary. In
cane-planting, quite the reverse is the case, ploughing and sunshine
being needful.
The great drawback to the beginner with limited capital is the
impossibility of recouping himself for his labour and recovering
profit on outlay before three years at least. After that period the
risk is small, drought being the chief calamity to be feared. The
plants being set out on high land are extremely seldom inundated, and
a conflagration could not spread far amongst green leaves and sappy
petioles. There is no special cropping season as there is in the case
of sugar-cane, which, if neglected, brings a total loss of crop; the
plants naturally do not all mature at precisely the same time, and the
fibre-extraction can be performed with little precipitation, and more
or less all the year round, although the dry season is preferable for
the sun-bleaching. If, at times, the stage of maturity be overlooked,
it only represents a percentage of loss, whilst a whole plantation
of ripe sugar-cane must all be cut with the least possible delay. No
ploughing is necessary, although the plant thrives better when weeding
is carefully attended to; no costly machinery has to be purchased
and either left to the mercy of inexperienced hands or placed under
the care of highly-paid Europeans, whilst there are few agricultural
implements and no live-stock to be maintained for field labour.
The hemp-fibre, when dry, runs a greater risk of fire than sugar,
but upon the whole, the comparative advantages of hemp cultivation
over sugar-cane planting appear to be very great.
Hemp-fibre is classified by the large provincial dealers and Manila
firms as of first, second, and third qualities. The dealers, or
_acopiadores_, in treating with the small native collectors, or
their own workpeople, take delivery of hemp under two classes only,
viz.:--first quality (_corriente_) and second quality (_colorada_),
the former being the whiter, with a beautiful silky gloss.
The difficulties with which the European hemp-cultivator has to
contend all centre to the same origin--the indolence of the native;
hence there is a continual struggle between capitalist and labourer
in the endeavour to counterbalance the native's inconstancy and
antipathy to systematic work. Left to himself, the native cuts the
plant at any period of its maturity. When he is hard pressed for a
peso or two he strips a few petioles, leaving them for days exposed
to the rain and atmosphere to soften and render easier the drawing
of the fibre, in which putrefaction has commenced. The result is
prejudicial to the dealer and the plantation owner, because the
fibre discolours. Then he passes the bast under a _toothed_ knife,
which is easy to work, and goes down to the village with his bundle of
discoloured coarse fibre with a certain amount of dried sap on it to
increase the weight. He chooses night-time for the delivery, so that
the _acopiador_ may be deceived in the colour upon which depends the
selection of quality, and in order that the fibre, absorbing the dew,
may weigh heavier. These are the tricks of the trade well known to
the native. The large dealers and plantation owners use every effort
to enforce the use of knives without teeth, so that the fibre may be
fine, perfectly clean and white, to rate as first-class; the native
opposes this on the ground that he loses in weight, whilst he is too
dull to appreciate his gain in higher value. For instance, presuming
the first quality to be quoted in Manila at a certain figure per picul
and the third quality at two pesos less, even though the first-class
basis price remained firm, the third-class price would fall as the
percentage of third-class quality in the supplies went on increasing.
Here and there are to be found hemp-plants which give a whiter fibre
than others, whilst some assert that there are three or four kinds of
hemp-plant; but in general all will yield commercial first-class hemp
(_Abacá corriente_), and if the native could be coerced to cut the
plant at maturity--draw the fibre under a toothless knife during the
same day of stripping the petioles--lodge the fibre as drawn on a clean
place, and sun-dry it on the first opportunity, then (the proprietors
and dealers positively assert) the output of third-quality need not
exceed 5 to 6 per cent. of the whole produced. In short, the question
of quality in _Abacá_ has vastly less relation to the species of the
plant than to the care taken in its extraction and manipulation.
The Chinese very actively collect parcels of hemp from the smallest
class of native owners, but they also enter into contracts which
bring discredit to the reputation of a province as a hemp-producing
district. For a small sum in cash a Chinaman acquires from a native
the right to work his plantation during a short period. Having no
proprietary interest at stake, and looking only to his immediate
gain, he indiscriminately strips plants, regardless of maturity,
and the property reverts to the small owner in a sorely dilapidated
condition. The market result is that, although the fibre drawn may be
white, it is weak, therefore dealings with the Chinese require special
scrutiny. Under the native system each labourer on an "estate" (called
in Albay Province _laté_) is remunerated by receiving one-half of all
the fibre he draws; the other half belongs to the _laté_ owner. The
share corresponding to the labourer is almost invariably delivered
at the same time to the employer, who purchases it at the current
local value--often at much less.
In sugar-planting, as no sugar can be hoped for until the fixed
grinding-season of the year, planters have to advance to their
workpeople during the whole twelve months in Luzon, under the
_aparcero_ system. If, after so advancing during six or eight months,
he loses half or more of his crop by natural causes, he stands a poor
chance of recovering his advances of that year. There is no such risk
in the case of hemp; when a man wants money he can work for it, and
bring in his bundle of fibre and receive his half-share value. The
few foreigners engaged in hemp-planting usually employ wage labour.
In Manila the export-houses estimate the prices of second and third
qualities by a rebate from first-class quality price. These rates
necessarily fluctuate. When the deliveries of second and third
qualities go on increasing in their proportion to the quantity of
first-class sent to the market, the rebate for lower qualities on
the basis price (first-class) is consequently augmented. If the total
supplies to Manila began to show an extraordinarily large proportionate
increase of lower qualities, these differences of prices would be made
wider, and in this manner indirect pressure is brought to bear upon the
provincial shippers to send as much first-class quality as possible.
The labour of young plant-setting in Albay Province in Spanish times
was calculated at 3 pesos per 1,000 plants; the cost of shoots 2 feet
high, for planting out, was from 50 cents to one peso per 100. However,
as proprietors were frequently cheated by natives who, having agreed
to plant out the land, did not dig holes sufficiently deep, or set
plants without roots, it became customary in Luzon to pay 10 pesos
per 100 live plants, to be counted at the time of full growth, or
say in three years, in lieu of paying for shoots and labour at the
prices stated above. The contractor, of course, lived on the estate.
In virgin soil, 2,500 plants would be set in one _pisoson_ of land
(_vide_ Albay land measure), or say 720 to each acre.
A hemp-press employing 60 men and boys should turn out 230 bales per
day. Freight by mail steamer to Manila in the year 1890 from Albay
ports beyond the San Bernardino Straits, was 50 cents per bale;
from ports west of the Straits, 37 1/2 cents per bale.
In the extraction of the fibre the natives work in couples; one man
strips the bast, whilst his companion draws it under the knife. A fair
week's work for a couple, including selection of the mature plants
and felling, would be about 300 lbs. However, the labourer is not
able to give his entire attention to fibre-drawing, for occasionally
a day has to be spent in weeding and brushwood clearance, but his
half-share interest covers this duty.
The finest quality of hemp is produced in the Islands of Leyte and
Marinduque, and in the Province of Sorsogón, especially Gúbat, in
Luzon Island.
Previous to the year 1825, the quantity of hemp produced in these
Islands was insignificant; in 1840 it is said to have exceeded 8,500
tons. The _average annual_ shipment of hemp during the 20 years
preceding the American occupation, i.e., 1879-98, was 72,815 tons,
produced (annual average over that period) approximately as follows,
viz.:--in Albay and Sorsogón, 32,000 tons; in Leyte, 16,000 tons; in
Sámar, 9,000 tons; in Camarines, 4,500 tons; in Mindanao, 4,000 tons;
in Cebú, 2,500 tons; in all the other districts together, 4,815 tons.
Albay Province is still the leading hemp district in the Islands. A
small quantity of low-quality hemp is produced in Cápis Province
(Panay Is.); collections are also made along the south-east coast of
Negros Island from Dumaguete northwards and in the district of Maúban
[137] on the Pacific coast of Tayabas Province (Luzon Is). For figures
of Hemp Shipments, _vide_ Chap. xxxi., "Trade Statistics."
The highest Manila quotation for first-quality hemp (_corriente_)
during the years 1882 to 1896 inclusive was P17.21 1/2 per picul,
and the lowest in the same period P6.00 per picul (16 piculs = 1 ton;
2 piculs = 1 bale), whilst specially selected lots from Sorsogón and
Marinduque fetched a certain advance on these figures.
_Albay Province (local) Land Measure_
1 Topon = 16 square Brazas = 53.776 English square yards.
312 1/2 Topones = 1 Pisoson = 5,000 square Brazas.
312 1/2 Topones = 1/2 of Quiñon = 2 1/2 Cabanes = 3.472 acres.
During the decade prior to the commercial depression of 1884, enormous
sums of money were lent by foreign firms and wealthy hemp-staplers to
the small producers against deliveries to be effected. But experience
proved that lending to native producers was a bad business, for,
on delivery of the produce, they expected to be again paid the full
value and pass over the sums long due. Hence, capital which might
have been employed to the mutual advantage of all concerned, was
partially withheld, and the natives complained then, as they do now,
that there is no money.
Fortunately for the Philippines, the fibre known as Manila hemp is a
speciality of the Colony, and the prospect of over-production, almost
annihilating profits to producers--as in the sugar colonies--is
at present remote, although the competition with other fibre is
severe. The chief fibre-producing countries, besides this colony,
are New Zealand, Mauritius, East Indies, Italy, Russia, North America
(sisal) and Mexico (henequen).
In 1881 the _Abacá_ plants presented to the Saigon Botanical Gardens
were flourishing during the management of Mons. Coroy, but happily for
this Colony the experiment, which was to precede the introduction
of "Manila Hemp" into French Cochin China, was abandoned, the
plants having been removed by that gentleman's successor. In 1890
"Manila Hemp" was cultivated in British North Borneo by the Labuk
Planting Company, Limited, and the fibre raised on their estates was
satisfactorily reported on by the Rope Works in Hong-Kong.
In view of the present scarcity of live-stock, hemp, which needs
no buffalo tillage, would seem to be the most hopeful crop of
the future. It will probably advance as fast as sugar cultivation
is receding, and command a good remunerative price. Moreover, as
already explained, not being distinctly a season crop as sugar is,
nor requiring expensive machinery to produce it, its cultivation is
the most recommendable to American colonists.
_Coffee_ _(Coffea arabica)_ planting was commenced in the Colony
early in the last century. Up to 1889 plantation-owners in the
Province of Batangas assured me that the trees possessed by their
grandfathers were still flourishing, whilst it is well known
that in many coffee-producing colonies the tree bears profitably
only up to the twenty-fifth year, and at the thirtieth year it is
quite exhausted. Unless something be done to revive this branch of
agriculture it seems as if coffee would soon cease to be an article
of export from these Islands. In the year 1891 the crops in Luzon
began to fall off very considerably, in a small measure due to the
trees having lost their vigour, but chiefly owing to the ravages
of a worm in the stems. In 1892-93 the best and oldest-established
plantations were almost annihilated. Nothing could be done to stop
the scourge, and several of the wealthiest coffee-owners around Lipa,
personally known to me, ploughed up their land and started sugar-cane
growing in place of coffee. In 1883 7,451 tons of coffee were shipped,
whilst in 1903 the total export did not reach four tons.
The best Philippine Coffee comes from the Provinces of Batangas,
La Laguna and Cavite (Luzon Is.), and includes a large proportion of
_caracolillo_, which is the nearest shape to the Mocha bean and the
most esteemed. The temperate mountain regions of Benguet, Bontoc,
and Lepanto (N.W. Luzon) also yield good coffee.
The most inferior Philippine coffee is produced in Mindanao Island,
and is sent up to Manila sometimes containing a quantity of rotten
beans. It consequently always fetches a lower price than Manila (i.e.,
Luzon) coffee, which is highly prized in the market.
MANILA QUOTATIONS FOR THE TWO QUALITIES
Average Prices throughout the Years
Per Picul of 133 1/3 Eng. lbs.
Manila (Luzon) Coffee
1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1890 1891
P.cts. P.cts. P.cts. P.cts. P.cts. P.cts. P.cts. P.cts. P.cts.
10.25 12.00 12.68 12.00 12.17 26.14 21.47 31.00 30.50
Mindanao Coffee
1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1890 1891
P.cts. P.cts. P.cts. P.cts. P.cts. P.cts. P.cts. P.cts. P.cts.
9.30 10.00 12.00 9.87 9.56 19.50 20.34 25.80 24.40
_nom._
Quotations later than 1891 would serve no practical purpose in the
above table of comparison, as, due to the extremely small quantity
produced, almost fancy prices have ruled since that date. In 1896,
for instance, the market price ran up to P35 per picul, whilst some
small parcels exchanged hands at a figure so capriciously high that
it cannot be taken as a quotation. For figures of Coffee Shipments,
_vide_ Chap, xxxi., "Trade Statistics."
I investigated the system of coffee-growing and trading in all the
Luzon districts, and found it impossible to draw up a correct general
estimate showing the nett cost laid down in Manila market. The manner
of acquiring the produce and the conditions of purchase varied so
greatly, and were subject to so many peculiar local circumstances,
that only an approximate computation could be arrived at.
Some of the provincial collectors had plantations of their own; others
had not, whilst none of them depended entirely upon the produce of
their own trees for fulfilling the contracts in the capital.
Coffee was a much more fluctuating concern than hemp, as the
purchase-rate (although perhaps low) was determined out of season
several months before it was seen how the market would stand for the
sale of that coffee; in hemp transactions (there being practically no
season for hemp) the purchase-money need only be paid on delivery of
the produce by the labourer at rates proportionate to Manila prices,
unless the dealer be simply a speculator, in which case, having
contracted in Manila to deliver at a price, he must advance to secure
deliveries to fulfil his contract. Therefore, in coffee, a provincial
collector might lose something on the total year's transactions or he
might make an enormous profit, if he worked with his own capital. If
he borrowed the capital from Manila dealers--middlemen--as was often
the case, then he might make a fortune for his Manila friends, or he
might lose another year's interest on the borrowed funds.
In Cavite Province districts there was another way of negotiating
coffee speculations. The dealer with capital advanced at, say, 6 or 7
pesos per picul "on joint account up to Manila." The planter then bound
himself to deliver so many piculs of coffee of the next gathering,
and the difference between the advance rate and the sale price in
Manila was shared between the two, after the capitalist had deducted
the charges for transport, packing, commission in Manila, etc. All
the risk was, of course, on the part of the capitalist, for if the
crop failed the small planter had no means of refunding the advance.
On a carefully-managed plantation, a caban of land (8,000 square
Spanish yards) was calculated to yield 10.40 piculs (= 12 1/2
cwt.) of clean coffee, or, say, 9 cwt. per acre. The selling value
of a plantation, in full growth, was about P250 per caban, or, say,
P180 per acre. After 1896 this land value was merely nominal.
The trees begin to give marketable coffee in the fourth year of
growth, and flourish best in hilly districts and on highlands, where
the roots can be kept dry, and where the average temperature does
not exceed 70° Fahr. _Caracolillo_ is found in greater quantities on
the highest declivities facing east, where the morning sun evaporates
the superfluous moisture of the previous night's dew.
In the Province of Cavite there appeared to be very little system in
the culture of the coffee-tree. Little care was taken in the selection
of shading-trees, and pruning was much neglected. Nevertheless,
very fine coffee was brought from the neighbourhood of Indan, Silan,
Alfonso, and Amadeo. The Batangas bean had the best reputation in
Manila; hence the Indan product was sometimes brought to that market
and sold as Batangas coffee.
In Batangas the coffee-plant is usually shaded by a tree called
_Madrecacao_ (_Gliricidia maculata_)--Tagálog, _Galedupa pungam_. On
starting a plantation this tree is placed in rows, each trunk occupying
one Spanish yard, and when it has attained two or three feet in height
the coffee-shoot is planted at each angle. Between the third and
eighth years of growth every alternate shading-tree and coffee-plant
is removed, as more space for development becomes necessary. The
coffee-plants are pruned from time to time, and on no account should
the branches be allowed to hang over and meet. Around the wealthy town
of Lipa some of the many coffee-estates were extremely well kept up,
with avenues crossing the plantations in different directions.
At the end of eight years, more or less, according to how the
quality of soil and the situation have influenced the development,
there would remain, say, about 2,400 plants in each caban of land,
or 1,728 plants per acre. Comparing this with the yield per acre,
each tree would therefore give 9.33 ounces of marketable coffee,
whilst in Peru, where the coffee-tree is planted at an elevation of
5,000 to 6,000 feet above sea-level, each tree is said to yield one
pound weight of beans.
In the Philippines the fresh ripe berries, when thoroughly sun-dried,
lose an average weight of 52 per cent. moisture.
The sun-dried berries ready for pounding (husking) give an average
of 33.70 of their weight in marketable coffee-beans.
It takes _eight_ cabanes measure (_vide_ p. 276) of fresh-picked ripe
berries to turn out _one_ picul weight of clean beans.
Owing to the fact that one year in every five gives a short crop,
due either to the nature of the plant or to climatic variations,
it pays better to collect coffee from the very small growers rather
than sink capital in large estates on the _aparcero_ system (q.v.).
The coffee-plant imperatively requires shade and moisture, and
over-pruning is prejudicial. If allowed to run to its natural height
it would grow up to 15 to 25 feet high, but it is usually kept
at 7 to 10 feet. The leaves are evergreen, very shining, oblong,
leathery, and much resemble those of the common laurel. The flowers
are small, and cluster in the axils of the leaves. They are somewhat
similar to the Spanish jasmine, and being snow-white, the effect
of a coffee plantation in bloom is delightful, whilst the odour is
fragrant. The fruit, when ripe, is of a dark scarlet colour, and the
ordinary coffee-berry contains two semi-elliptic seeds of a horny or
cartilaginous nature glued together and enveloped in a coriaceous
membrane; when this is removed each seed is found covered with a
silver-grey pellicle.
The _Caracolillo_ coffee-berry contains only one seed, with a furrow
in the direction of the long axis, which gives it the appearance of
being a geminous seed with an inclination to open out on one side.
In Arabia Felix, where coffee was first planted in the 15th century,
and its cultivation is still extensive, the collection of the fruit
is effected by spreading cloths under the trees, from which, on being
violently shaken, the ripe berries fall, and are then placed upon
mats to dry, after which the beans are pressed under a heavy roller.
In the Philippines, women and children--sometimes men--go into the
plantations with baskets and pick the berries. The fruit is then
heaped, and, in a few days, washed, so that a great portion of the
pulp is got rid of. Then the berries are dried and pounded in a mortar
to separate the inner membrane and pellicle; these are winnowed from
the clean bean, which constitutes the coffee of commerce and is sent
in bags to Manila for sale.
The Philippine plantations give only one crop yearly, whilst in the
West Indies beans of unequal ripeness are to be found during eight
months of the twelve, and in Brazil there are three annual gatherings.
The seed of the _Tobacco-plant_ (_Nicotiana tabacum_) was among the
many novelties introduced into the Philippines from Mexico by Spanish
missionaries, soon after the possession of the Colony by the Spaniards
was an accomplished fact. From this Colony it is said to have been
taken in the 16th or 17th century into the south of China, where
its use was so much abused that the sale of this so-called noxious
article was, for a long time, prohibited under penalty of death.
During the first two centuries of Spanish dominion but little direct
attention was paid to the tobacco question by the Government, who only
nominally held, but did not assert, the exclusive right of traffic in
this article. At length, in the year 1781, during the Gov.-Generalship
of José Basco y Vargas (a naval officer), the cultivation and sale
of tobacco was formally decreed a State monopoly, which lasted up
to the end of the year 1882. In the meantime, it became an important
item of public revenue. In 1882 the profits of the Tobacco Monopoly
amounted to half the Colony's Budget expenditure.
A few years before that date a foreign company offered to guarantee the
Budget (then about P15,000,000), in exchange for the Tobacco Monopoly,
but the proposal was not entertained, although in the same year the
Treasury deficit amounted to P2,000,000.
By Royal Decree of July 1, 1844, a contract was entered into with
the firm of O'Shea & Co., renting to them the Monopoly, but it was
suddenly rescinded. The annual profits from tobacco to the Government
at that date were about P2,500,000.
GOVERNMENT PROFIT
1840 P2,123,505
1845 2,570,679
1850 3,036,611
1855 3,721,168
1859 4,932,463
1860 over 5,000,000
1869 5,230,581
A bale of tobacco contains 4,000 leaves in 40 bundles (_manos_),
of 100 leaves each.
The classification of the deliveries depended on the districts where
the crop was raised and the length of the leaf.
The tobacco trade being also a Government concern in Spain, this
Colony was required to supply the Peninsula State Factories with
90,000 quintals (of 100 Span, lbs.) of tobacco-leaf per annum.
Government Monopoly was in force in Luzon Island only. The tobacco
districts of that island were Cagayán Valley (which comprises La
Isabela), La Union, El Abra, Ilocos Sur y Norte and Nueva Ecija. In no
other part of Luzon was tobacco-planting allowed, except for a short
period on the Caraballo range, inhabited by undomesticated mountain
tribes, upon whom prohibition would have been difficult to enforce. In
1842 the Igorrotes were allowed to plant, and, in the year 1853,
the Government collection from this source amounted to 25,000 bales
of excellent quality. The total population of these districts was,
in 1882 (the last year of Monopoly), about 785,000.
The Visayas Islands were never under the Monopoly system. The natives
there were free to raise tobacco or other crops on their land. It was
not until 1840 that tobacco-planting attracted general attention in
Visayas. Government factories or collecting-centres were established
there for classifying and storing such tobacco as the Visayos cared
to bring in for sale to the State, but they were at liberty to sell
their produce privately or in the public markets. They also disposed
of large quantities by contraband to the Luzon Island Provinces. [138]
Antique Province never yielded more tobacco than could be consumed
locally. In 1841 the Antique tobacco crop was valued at P80,000. But,
in the hope of obtaining higher prices, the enthusiastic Provincial
Governor, Manuel Iturriaga, encouraged the growers, in 1843, to
send a trial parcel to the Government collectors; it was, however,
unclassed and rejected.
Mindoro, Lucban, and Marinduque Islands produced tobacco about sixty
years ago, and in 1846 the Government established a collecting-centre
in Mindoro; but the abuses and cruelty of the officials towards the
natives, to force them to bring in their crops, almost extinguished
this class of husbandry.
During the period of Monopoly in the Luzon districts, the
production was very carefully regulated by the Home Government, by
enactments revised from time to time, called "General Instructions
for the Direction, Administration and Control of the Government
Monopolies." [139] Compulsory labour was authorized, and those natives
in the northern provinces of Luzon Island who wished to till the land
(the property of the State)--for title-deeds were almost unknown and
never applied for by the natives--were compelled to give preference to
tobacco. In fact, no other crops were allowed to be raised. Moreover,
they were not permitted peacefully to indulge their indolent nature--to
scrape up the earth and plant when and where they liked for a mere
subsistence. Each family was coerced into contracting with the
Government to raise 4,000 plants per annum, subject to a fine in the
event of failure. The planter had to deliver into the State stores
all the tobacco of his crop--not a single leaf could he reserve for
his private consumption.
Lands left uncultivated could be appropriated by the Government, who
put their own nominees to work them, and he who had come to consider
himself owner, by mere undisturbed possession, lost the usufruct and
all other rights for three years. His right to the land, in fact,
was not freehold, but tenure by villein socage.
Emigrants were sent north from the west coast Provinces of North and
South Ilocos. The first time I went up to Cagayán about 200 emigrant
families were taken on board our vessel at North Ilocos, _en route_
for the tobacco districts, and appeared to be as happy as other
natives in general. They were well supplied with food and clothing,
and comfortably lodged on their arrival at the Port of Aparri.
In the Government Regulations referred to, the old law of Charles
III., which enacted that a native could not be responsible at law
for a debt exceeding P5, was revived, and those emigrants who had
debts were only required to liquidate them out of their earnings in
the tobacco district up to that legal maximum value.
As soon as the native growers were settled on their lands their
condition was by no means an enviable one. A Nueva Ecija landowner
and tobacco-grower, in a letter to _El Liberal_ (Madrid) in 1880,
depicts the situation in the following terms:--The planter, he
says, was only allowed to smoke tobacco of his own crop inside the
aërating-sheds which were usually erected on the fields under tilth. If
he happened to be caught by a carabineer only a few steps outside the
shed with a cigar in his mouth he was fined 2 pesos--if a cigarette,
50 cents--and adding to these sums the costs of the conviction,
a cigar of his own crop came to cost him P7.37 1/2, and a cigarette
P1.87 1/2. The fines in Nueva Ecija amounted to an annual average of
P7,000 on a population of 170,000. From sunrise to sunset the native
grower was subject to domiciliary search for concealed tobacco--his
trunks, furniture, and every nook and corner of his dwelling were
ransacked. He and all his family--wife and daughters--were personally
examined: and often an irate husband, father, or brother, goaded to
indignation by the indecent humiliation of his kinswoman, would lay
hands on his bowie-knife and bring matters to a bloody crisis with
his wanton persecutors... The leaves were carefully selected, and
only such as came under classification were paid for. The rejected
bundles were not returned to the grower, but burnt--a despairing
sacrifice to the toiler! The _Cabezas de Barangay_ (_vide_ p. 223)
had, under penalty of arrest and hard labour, to see that the families
fulfilled their onerous contract. Corporal punishment, imprisonment,
and amercement resulted; of frequent occurrence were those fearful
scenes which culminated in riots such as those of Ilocos in 1807 and
1814, when many Spaniards fell victims to the natives' resentment of
their oppression.
Palpable injustice, too, was imposed by the Government with respect
to the payments. The Treasury paid loyally for many years, but as
generation succeeded generation, and the native growers' families
came to feel themselves attached to the soil they cultivated, the
Treasury, reposing on the security of this constancy, no longer
kept to the compact. The officials failed to pay with punctuality
to the growers the contracted value of the deliveries to the State
stores. They required exactitude from the native--the Government set
the example of remissness. The consequence was appalling. Instead of
money Treasury notes were given them, and speculators of the lowest
type used to scour the tobacco-growing districts to buy up this paper
at an enormous discount. The misery of the natives was so distressing,
the distrust of the Government so radicate, and the want of means of
existence so urgent, that they were wont to yield their claims for an
insignificant relative specie value. The speculators held the bonds for
realization some day; the total amount due by the Government at one
time exceeded P1,500,000. Once the Treasury was so hard-pressed for
funds that the tobacco ready in Manila for shipment to Spain had to
be sold on the spot and the 90,000 quintals could not be sent--hence
purchases of Philippine tobacco had to be made by tender in London
for the Spanish Government cigar factories.
At length, during the government of General Domingo Moriones (1877-80),
it was resolved to listen to the overwhelming complaints from the
North, and pay up to date in coin. But, to do this, Spain, always in
a state of chronic insolvency, had to resort to an abominable measure
of disloyalty. The funds of the Deposit Bank (_Caja de Depósitos_)
were arbitrarily appropriated, and the deposit-notes, bearing 8 per
cent. interest per annum, held by private persons, most of whom were
Government clerks, etc., were dishonoured at due date. This gave rise
to great clamour on the part of those individuals whose term of service
had ceased (_cesantes_), and who, on their return to Spain, naturally
wished to take their accumulated savings with them. The Gov.-General
had no other recourse open to him but to reinstate them in their old
positions, on his own responsibility, pending the financial crisis
and the receipt of instructions from the Government at Madrid.
For a long time the question of abolishing the Monopoly had
been debated, and by Royal Order of May 20, 1879, a commission
was appointed to inquire into the convenience of farming out the
tobacco traffic. The natives were firmly opposed to it; they dreaded
the prospect of the provinces being overrun by a band of licensed
persecutors, and of the two evils they preferred State to private
Monopoly. Warm discussions arose for and against it through the medium
of the Manila newspapers. The "Consejo de Filipinas," in Madrid,
had given a favourable report dated May 12, 1879, and published in
the _Gaceta de Madrid_ of July 13, 1879. The clergy defeated the
proposal by the Corporations of Friars jointly presenting a Memorial
against it--and it was thenceforth abandoned. The Tobacco Monopoly
was the largest source of public revenue, hence the doubt as to the
policy of free trade and the delay in granting it. There existed a
possibility of the Treasury sustaining an immense and irretrievable
loss, for a return to Monopoly, after free trade had been allowed,
could not for a moment be thought of. It was then a safe income to
the Government, and it was feared by many that the industry, by free
labour, would considerably fall off.
As already stated, the Government Monopoly ceased on December 31,
1882, when the tobacco cultivation and trade were handed over to
private enterprise. At that date there were five Government Cigar and
Cigarette Factories, viz.:--Malabon, Arroceros, Meisig, El Fortin,
and Cavite, giving employment to about 20,000 operatives.
Up to within a year of the abolition of Monopoly, a very good smokeable
cigar could be purchased in the _estancos_ [140] from one half-penny
and upwards, but as soon as the free trade project was definitely
decided upon, the Government factories, in order to work off their
old stocks of inferior leaf, filled the _estancos_ with cigars of
the worst quality.
The Colonial Treasurer-General at the time of this reform entertained
very sanguine hopes respecting the rush which would be made for the
Government brands, and the general public were led to believe that
a scarcity of manufactured tobacco would, for some months, at least,
follow the establishment of free trade in this article. With this idea
in view, Government stocks sold at auction aroused competition and
fetched unusually high prices at the close of 1882 and the first month
of the following year, in some cases as much as 23/- per cwt. being
realized over the upset prices. However, the Treasurer-General was
carried too far in his expectations. He was unfortunately induced to
hold a large amount of Government manufactured tobacco in anticipation
of high offers, the result being an immense loss to the Treasury,
as only a part was placed, with difficulty, at low prices, and the
remainder shipped to Spain. In January, 1883, the stock of tobacco in
Government hands amounted to about 100 tons of 1881 crop, besides the
whole crop of 1882. Little by little the upset prices had to be lowered
to draw buyers. The tobacco shipped during the first six months of the
year 1883 was limited to that sold by auction out of the Government
stocks, for the Government found themselves in a dilemma with their
stores of this article, and the free export only commenced half a year
after free production was granted. On December 29, 1883, a Government
sale by auction was announced at 50 per cent. reduction on their
already low prices, but the demand was still very meagre. Finally,
in the course of 1884, the Government got rid of the bulk of their
stock, the balance being shipped to the mother country. The colonial
authorities continued to pay the ancient tobacco-tribute to Spain,
and the first contract, with this object, was made during that year
with a private company for the supply of about 2,750 tons.
During the first year of Free Trade, cigar and cigarette factories were
rapidly started in Manila and the provinces, but up to 1897 only some
eight or ten factories had improved the quality of the manufactured
article, whilst prices rose so considerably that the general public
probably lost by the reform. Cigars, like those sold in the _estancos_
in 1881, could never again be got so good for the same price, but at
higher prices much better brands were offered.
A small tax on the cigar and tobacco-leaf trade, officially announced
in August, 1883, had the beneficial effect of causing the closure of
some of the very small manufactories, and reduced the probability of
a large over-supply of an almost worthless article.
Export-houses continued to make large shipments of leaf-tobacco and
cigars until the foreign markets were glutted with Philippine tobacco
in 1883, and in the following years the export somewhat decreased. For
figures of Tobacco Leaf and Cigar Shipments, _vide_ Chap, xxxi.,
"Trade Statistics."
As to the relative quality of Philippine tobacco, there are very
divided opinions. Decidedly the best Manila cigars cannot compare
with those made from the famous leaf of the Vuelta de Abajo (Cuba),
and in the European markets they have very justly failed to meet with
the same favourable reception as the Cuban cigars generally.
During my first journey up the Cagayán River, I was told that some
years ago the Government made earnest efforts to improve the quality of
the plant by the introduction of seed from Cuba, but unfortunately it
became mixed up with that usually planted in the Philippine provinces,
and the object in view failed completely. On my renewed visit to the
tobacco districts, immediately after the abolition of monopoly, the
importance of properly manipulating the green leaf did not appear to
be thoroughly appreciated. The exact degree of fermentation was not
ascertained with the skill and perseverance necessary to turn out a
well-prepared article. Some piles which I tested were over-heated
(taking the Java system as my standard), whilst larger quantities
had been aërated so long in the shed, after cutting, that they had
lost their finest aroma.
There are many risks in tobacco-leaf trading. The leaf, during its
growth, is exposed to perforation by a worm which, if not brushed off
every morning, may spread over the whole field. Through the indolence
of the native cultivator this misfortune happens so frequently that
rarely does the Cagayán Valley tobacco contain (in the total crop of
the season) more than 10 per cent. of perfect, undamaged leaves. In
the aërating-sheds another kind of worm appears in the leaf; and,
again, after the leaves are baled or the cigars boxed, an insect
drills little holes through them--locally, it is said to be "picado."
Often in the dry season (the winter months) the tobacco-leaf,
for want of a little moisture, matures narrow, thick and gummy,
and contains an excess of nicotine, in which case it can only be
used after several years' storage. Too much rain entirely spoils
the leaf. Another obstacle to Philippine cigar manufacture is the
increasing universal demand for cigars with light-coloured wrappers,
for which hardly two per cent. of the Philippine leaf is suitable in
world competition, whilst the operative cannot handle with economy the
delicate light-coloured Sumatra wrapper. The difficulties of transport
are so great that it costs more to bring the finest tobacco-leaf from
the field to the Manila factory than it would to send it from Manila
to Europe in large parcels. The labour question is also an important
consideration, for it takes several years of daily practice for a
Filipino to turn out a first-class marketable cigar; the most skilful
operatives can earn up to P50 a month.
The best quality of Philippine tobacco is produced in the northern
provinces of Luzon Island, the choicest selections coming from Cagayán
and La Isabela. The Provinces of Nueva Vizcaya, Ilocos Sur y Norte,
La Union, Nueva Ecija, and even Pampanga, yield tobacco.
In the Visayas, tobacco is cultivated in Panay Island and on the east
coast of Negros Island (district of Escalante) and Cebú Island--also to
a limited extent in Mindanao. The Visaya leaf generally is inferior
in quality, particularly that of Yloilo Province, some of which,
in fact, is such rubbish that it is difficult to understand how a
profit can be expected from its cultivation. The Escalante (Negros,
E. coast) and the Barili (Cebú W. coast) tobacco seemed to me to be
the fullest flavoured and most agreeable leaf in all the Visayas.
A tobacco plantation is about as pretty as a cabbage-field.
In 1883 a company, styled The General Philippine Tobacco Company
("Compañia General de Tabacos de Filipinas"), formed in Spain and
financially supported by French capitalists, was established in
this Colony with a capital of £3,000,000. It gave great impulse
to the trade by soon starting with five factories and purchasing
four estates ("San Antonio," "Santa Isabel," "San Luis," and "La
Concepcion"), with buying-agents in every tobacco district. Up to
1898 the baled tobacco-leaf trade was chiefly in the hands of this
company. Little by little the company launched out into other branches
of produce-purchasing, and lost considerable sums of money in the
provinces in its unsuccessful attempt to compete with the shrewd
foreign merchants, but it is still a good going concern.
PRICES AND WEIGHTS OF SOME OF THE BEST CIGARS MANUFACTURED IN
MANILA PACKED IN BOXES READY FOR USE OR SHIPMENT.
Per Thousand. In Boxes of Per Thousand. In Boxes of
lbs. Pesos lbs. Pesos
30 500 10 17 45 50
30 200 25 17 40 50
17 150 25 12 30 50
25 125 25 16 24 50
23 70 25 12 20 100
17 60 50 16 18 100
18 50 50 4 1/2 13 100
Cigars and cigarettes are now offered for sale in every town, village,
and hamlet of the Islands, and their manufacture for the immense home
consumption (which, of cigars, is about one-third of the whole output),
and to supply the demand for export, constitutes an important branch
of trade, giving employment to thousands of operatives.
CHAPTER XVIII
Sundry Forest and Farm Produce
Maize--Cacao--Coprah, Etc.
Maize (_Zea mays_), or "Indian Corn," forms the staple article of
food in lieu of rice in a limited number of districts, particularly
in the South, although as a rule this latter cereal is preferred.
Many agriculturists alternate their crops with that of maize, which, it
is said, does not impoverish the land to any appreciable extent. There
is no great demand for this grain, and it is generally cultivated
rather as an article for consumption in the grower's household than
for trade. Planted in good land it gives about 200-fold, and two crops
in the year = 400-fold per annum; but the setting out of one caban of
maize grain occupies five times the surface required for the planting
of the same measure of rice grain. An ordinary caban of land is 8,000
square Spanish yards (_vide_ Land Measure, p. 271), and this superficie
derives its denomination from the fact that it is the average area
occupied by the planting out of one caban measure of rice grain. The
maize caban of land is quite a special measure, and is equal to 5 rice
cabans. Estimating, therefore, the average yield of rice-paddy to be
50 cabanes measure per ordinary caban of land, the same superficie,
were it suitable for maize-raising, would give one-fifth of 400-fold
per annum = 80 cabanes measure of maize per rice caban of land.
The current price of maize, taking the average in several provinces,
is rarely above that of paddy for the same measure, whilst it is often
lower, according to the demand, which is influenced by the custom of
the natives in the vicinity where it is offered for sale.
It is eaten after being pulverized between stone or hardwood slabs with
the surfaces set horizontally, the upper one being caused to revolve
on the lower one, which is stationary. In many village market-places
one sees heads of maize roasted and exposed for sale. This is of
a special quality, grown in alluvial soil--the intervals of rivers
which overflow at certain seasons of the year. Three crops per annum
are obtainable on land of this kind, so that the supply is constant
all the year round. Before the American occupation, the price of the
raw maize-heads to the market-sellers was about 60 cuartos per 100,
which they retailed out roasted at one cuarto each (3 1/2 cuartos
equal about one penny); the profit was therefore proportionately
large when local festivities created a demand.
The _Cacao-tree_--(_Theobroma cacao_, or "Food of the gods," as Linnæus
called it)--a native of Central America, flourishes in these Islands
in the hot and damp districts.
It is said to have been imported into the Philippines towards the end
of the 17th century from Mexico, where it has been in very ancient
use. Gaspar de San Agustin records the following [141]:--"In the year
1670 a navigator, Pedro Brabo de Lagunas, brought from Acapulco a pot
containing a cacao-plant which he gave to his brother, Bartolomé Brabo,
a priest in Camarines, from whom it was stolen by a Lipa native,
Juan del Aguila, who hid it and took care of it, and from it was
propagated all the original Philippine stock."
Outside the tropics the tree will grow in some places, but gives no
fruit. The Philippine quality is very good, and compares favourably
with that of other countries, the best being produced between latitudes
11° and 12° N.
The cultivation of cacao is an extremely risky and delicate business,
as, often when the planter's hopes are about to be realized, a slight
storm will throw down the almost-ripened fruit in a day. A disease
sometimes attacks the roots and spreads through a plantation. It
would be imprudent, therefore, to devote one's time exclusively to
the cultivation of this product at the risk of almost instantaneous
ruin. Usually, the Philippine agriculturist rightly regards cacao
only as a useful adjunct to his other crops. In the aspect of a cacao
plantation there is nothing specially attractive. The tree itself
is not pretty. The natives who grow the fruit usually make their own
chocolate at home by roasting the beans over a slow fire, and after
separating them from their husks (like almond-skins), they pound
them with wet sugar, etc., into a paste, using a kind of rolling-pin
on a concave block of wood. The roasted beans should be made into
chocolate at once, as by exposure to the air they lose flavour. Small
quantities of cacao are sent to Spain, but the consumption in the
Colony, when made into chocolate [142] by adding sugar, vanilla,
cinnamon, etc., to counteract the natural bitterness of the bean,
is considerable. In making the paste, a large quantity of sugar is
added, varying from one-third of its weight to equal parts, whilst
one pod of vanilla is sufficient for 1 1/2 lbs. of cacao. Chocolate
is often adulterated with roasted rice and _Pili_ nuts. The roasted
_Pili_ nut alone has a very agreeable almond taste. As a beverage,
chocolate is in great favour with the Spaniards and half-castes and
the better class of natives. In every household of any pretensions
the afternoon caller is invited to "merendar con chocolate," which
corresponds to the English "5 o'clock tea."
The cacao-beans or kernels lie in a fruit something like a gherkin,
about 5 inches long and 3 inches in diameter, and of a dark reddish
colour when ripe. The tree bears its fruit on the main branches, or
on the trunk itself, but never on twigs or thin branches. The fruit
contains from 15 to 25 beans, in regular rows, with pulpy divisions
between them like a water-melon. The kernels are about the size,
shape, and colour of almonds, obtuse at one end, and contain a fatty
or oily matter to the extent of one-half their weight. In order to make
"soluble cocoa" as sold in Europe this fatty substance is extracted.
The beans are planted out at short distances in orchards, or in the
garden surrounding the owner's dwelling. The tree, in this Colony,
does not attain a great height--usually up to 10 feet--whereas in its
natural soil it grows up to 30 feet at least. Like coffee, it bears
fruit in the fourth year, and reaches maturity in the sixth year. The
fair annual yield of a tree, if not damaged by storms or insects,
would be about three pints measure of beans, which always find a ready
sale. The tree is most delicate; a slight laceration of the root,
or stagnant water near it, may kill it; it needs a moisture-laden
sultry air, which, however, must not exceed 75° Fahr.
If all went well with the crop, large profits might accrue to the
cacao-planter, but it rarely happens (perhaps never) during the six
months of fruit-ripening that losses are not sustained by hurricanes,
disease in the tree, the depredations of parrots, monkeys, rats,
and other vermin, etc. Practically speaking, cacao-planting should
only be undertaken in this Colony by agriculturists who have spare
capital and can afford to lose a crop one year to make up for it in
the next. The venture pays handsomely in fortunate seasons, but it
is not the line of planting to be taken up by hand-to-mouth colonists
who must seek immediate returns, nor as a sole occupation.
_Castor Oil_ is obtained in a few places from the seeds of the _Palma
Christi_ or _Ricinus communis_, but the plant is not cultivated,
and the oil has not yet become an article of current trade.
_Gogo_ (_Entada pursætha_), sometimes called _Bayogo_ in Tagálog,
is a useful forest product in general demand, on sale at every
market-place and native general shop. It is a fibrous bark, taken
in strips of 3 or 4 feet long. It looks exactly like cocoa-nut coir,
except that its colour is a little lighter and brighter. It is used
for cleansing the hair, for which purpose a handful is put to soak
in a basin of water overnight, and the next morning it will saponify
when rubbed between the hands. The soap which issues therefrom is then
rubbed in the hair at the time of bathing. It is in common use among
the natives of both sexes and many Europeans. An infusion of _Gogo_ is
a purgative. If placed dry in the _tinaja_ jars (Tagálog, _Tapayan_),
containing cacao-beans, the insects will not attack the beans.
_Camote_ (_Convolvulus batatas_) is the sweet potato or Yam, the
foliage of which quickly spreads out like a carpet over the soil and
forms tubers, like the common potato. It is a favourite article of
food among the natives, and in nearly every island it is also found
wild. In kitchen-gardens it is planted like the potato, the tuber being
cut in pieces. Sometimes it is dried (Tagálog, _Pacúmbong camote_). It
is also preserved whole in molasses (Tagálog, _Palúbog na camote_).
_Gabi_ (_Caladium_) is another kind of esculent root, palatable to
the natives, similar to the turnip, and throws up stalks from 1 to 3
feet high, at the end of which is an almost round leaf, dark green,
from 3 to 5 inches diameter at maturity.
_Potatoes_ are grown in Cebú Island, but they are rarely any larger
than walnuts. With very special care a larger size has been raised
in Negros Island; also potatoes of excellent flavour and of a pinkish
colour are cultivated in the district of Benguet; in Manila there is
a certain demand for this last kind.
_Mani_ (_Arachis hypogæa_), commonly called the "Pea-nut," is a
creeping plant, which grows wild in many places. It is much cultivated,
however, partly for the sake of the nut or fruit, but principally
for the leaves and stalks, which, when dried, even months old, serve
as an excellent and nutritious fodder for ponies. It contains a large
quantity of oil, and in some districts it is preferred to the fresh-cut
_zacate_ grass, with which the ponies and cattle are fed in Manila.
The Philippine pea-nut is about as large as that seen in England. In
1904 the American Bureau of Agriculture brought to the Islands for
seed a quantity of New Orleans pea-nuts two to three times larger.
_Areca Palm_ (_Areca calechu_) (Tagálog, _Bonga_), the nut of which
is used to make up the chewing betel when split into slices about
one-eighth of an inch thick. This is one of the most beautiful
palms. The nuts cluster on stalks under the tuft of leaves at
the top of the tall slender stem. It is said that one tree will
produce, according to age, situation, and culture, from 200 to 800
nuts yearly. The nut itself is enveloped in a fibrous shell, like
the cocoa-nut. In Europe a favourite dentifrice is prepared from
the areca-nut.
_Buyo_ (_Piper betle_) (Tagálog, _Igmô_), is cultivated with much
care in every province, as its leaf, when coated with lime made from
oyster-shells and folded up, is used to coil round the areca-nut,
the whole forming the _buyo_ (betel), which the natives of these
Islands, as in British India, are in the habit of chewing. To the
chew a quid of tobacco is sometimes added. A native can go a great
number of hours without food if he has his betel; it is said to be
stomachical. After many years of habit in chewing this nut and leaf
it becomes almost a necessity, as is the case with opium, and it is
believed that its use cannot, with safety, be suddenly abandoned. To
the newly-arrived European, it is very displeasing to have to converse
with a native betel-eater, whose teeth and lips appear to be smeared
with blood. The _buyo_ plant is set out on raised beds and trained
(like hops) straight up on sticks, on which it grows to a height of
about 6 feet. The leaf is of a bright green colour, and only slightly
pointed. In all market-places, including those of Manila, there is
a great sale of this leaf, which is brought fresh every day.
_Cocoanut_ (_Cocos nucifera_) plantations pay very well, and there is a
certain demand for the fruit for export to China, besides the constant
local sales in the _tianguis_. [143] _Niog_ is the Tagálog name for
the cocoanut palm. Some tap the tree by making an incision in the
flowering (or fruit-bearing) stalk, under which a bamboo vessel, called
a _bombon_, is hung to receive the sap. This liquid, known as _tuba_,
is a favourite beverage among the natives. As many as four stalks of
the same trunk can be so drained simultaneously without injury to the
tree. In the bottom of the _bombon_ is placed about as much as a desert
spoonful of pulverized _Tongo_ bark (_Rhizophora longissima_) to give a
stronger taste and bright colour to the _tuba_. The incision--renewed
each time the _bombon_ is replaced--is made with a very sharp knife,
to which a keen edge is given by rubbing it on wood (_Erythrina_)
covered with a paste of ashes and oil. The sap-drawing of a stalk
continues incessantly for about two months, when the stalk ceases to
yield and dries up. The _bombons_ containing the liquid are removed,
empty ones being put in their place every twelve hours, about sunrise
and sunset, and the seller hastens round to his clients with the
morning and evening draught, concluding his trade at the market-place
or other known centres of sale. If the _tuba_ is allowed to ferment,
it is not so palatable, and becomes an intoxicating drink. From the
fermented juice the distilleries manufacture a spirituous liquor,
known locally as cocoa-wine. The trees set apart for _tuba_ extraction
do not produce nuts, as the fruit-forming elements are taken away.
The man who gets down the _tuba_ has to climb the first tree, on the
trunk of which notches are cut to place his toes in. From under the
tuft of leaves two bamboos are fastened, leading to the next nearest
tree, and so on around the group which is thus connected. The bottom
bamboo serves as a bridge, and the top one as a handrail. Occasionally
a man falls from the top of a trunk 70 or 80 feet high, and breaks his
neck. The occupation of _tuba_ drawing is one of the most dangerous.
When the tree is allowed to produce fruit, instead of yielding _tuba_,
the nuts are collected about every four months. They are brought
down either by a sickle-shaped knife lashed on to the end of a long
pole, or by climbing the tree with the knife in hand. When they are
collected for oil-extraction, they are carted on a kind of sleigh,
[144] unless there be a river or creek providing a water-way, in which
latter case they are tied together, stalk to stalk, and floated in
a compact mass, like a raft, upon which the man in charge stands.
The water or milk found inside a cocoanut is very refreshing to the
traveller, and has this advantage over fresh water, that it serves
to quench the thirst of a person who is perspiring, or whose blood
is highly heated, without doing him any harm.
Well-to-do owners of cocoanut-palm plantations usually farm out to
the poorer people the right to extract the _tuba_, allotting to each
family a certain number of trees. Others allow the trees to bear fruit,
and although the returns are, theoretically, not so good, it pays the
owner about the same, as he is less exposed to robbery, being able
more closely to watch his own interests. The trees bear fruit in the
fifth year, but, meanwhile, care must be taken to defend them from
the browsing of cattle. If they survive that period they will live
for a century. At seven years' growth the cocoanut palm-tree seldom
fails to yield an unvarying average crop of a score of large nuts,
giving a nett profit of about one peso per annum.
The cocoanut is largely used for culinary purposes in the Islands. It
is an ingredient in the native "curry" (of no resemblance to Indian
curry), and is preserved in several ways, the most common being the
_Bocayo_, a sort of cocoanut toffee, and the _Matamis na macapuno_,
which is the soft, immature nut preserved in molasses.
In the Provinces of Tayabas, La Laguna, E. Batangas and district of La
Infanta, the cocoanut-palm is extensively cultivated, solely for the
purpose of extracting the oil from the nut. The cocoanut-oil factories
are very rough, primitive establishments, usually consisting of eight
or ten posts supporting a nipa palm-leaf roof, and closed in at all
sides with split bamboos. The nuts are heaped for a while to dry and
concentrate the oil in the fruit. Then they are chopped, more or less,
in half. A man sits on a board with his feet on a treadle, from which a
rope is passed over, and works to and fro a cylindrical block, in the
end of which is fixed an iron scraper. He picks up the half-nuts one
at a time, and on applying them to the scraper in motion, the white
fruit, or pith, falls out into a vessel underneath. These scrapings
are then pressed between huge blocks of wood to express the oil, and
the mass is afterwards put into cast-iron cauldrons, of Chinese make,
with water, which is allowed to simmer and draw out the remaining
fatty particles, which are skimmed off the surface. When cold, it
is sent off to market in small, straight-sided kegs, on ponies which
carry two kegs--one slung on each side. The average estimated yield of
the cocoanuts, by the native process, is as follows, viz.:--250 large
nuts give one cwt. of dried coprah, yielding, say, 10 gallons of oil.
Small quantities of Cocoanut Oil (Tagálog, _Languis ng niog_)
are shipped from the Philippines, but in the Colony itself it is
an important article of consumption. Every dwelling, rich or poor,
consumes a certain amount of this oil nightly for lighting. For this
purpose it is poured into a glass half full of water, on which it
floats, and a wick, made of pith, called _tinsin_, introduced by
the Chinese, is suspended in the centre of the oil by a strip of
tin. As the oil is consumed, the wick is lowered by slightly bending
the tin downwards. There are few dwelling-houses, or huts, without a
light of some kind burning during the whole night in expectation of
a possible earthquake, and the vast majority use cocoanut oil because
of the economy.
It is also in use for cooking in some out-of-the-way places, and
is not unpalatable when quite fresh. It is largely employed as a
lubricant for machinery, for which purpose, however, it is very
inferior. Occasionally it finds a medicinal application, and the
natives commonly use it as hair-oil. In Europe, cocoa-nut oil is
a white solid, and is used in the manufacture of soap and candles;
in the tropics it is seldom seen otherwise than in a liquid state,
as it fuses a little above 70° Fahr.
It is only in the last few years that Coprah has acquired importance as
an article of export. There are large cocoanut plantations on all the
principal islands, whence supplies are furnished to meet the foreign
demand, which is likely to increase considerably.
For figures of _Coprah_ Shipments, _vide_ Chap. xxxi., "Trade
Statistics."
Uses are also found for the hard Shell of the nut (Tagálog, _Baoo_). In
native dwellings these shells serve the poor for cups (_tabo _) and a
variety of other useful domestic utensils, whilst by all classes they
are converted into ladles with wooden handles. Also, when carbonized,
the shell gives a black, used for dyeing straw hats.
Very little use is made of the Coir (Tagálog, _Bunot_), or outer
fibrous skin, which in other countries serves for the manufacture
of cocoanut matting, coarse brushes, hawsers, etc. It is said that
coir rots in fresh water, whereas salt water strengthens it. It
would therefore be unsuitable for running rigging, but for ships'
cables it cannot be surpassed in its qualities of lightness and
elasticity. As it floats on water, it ought to be of great value
on ships, whilst of late years its employment in the manufacture of
light ocean telegraph cables has been seriously considered, showing,
as it does, an advantage over other materials by taking a convex curve
to the water surface--an important condition in cable-laying. [145]
The Spaniards call this product _Banote_. In this Colony it often
serves for cleaning floors and ships' decks, when the nut is cut into
two equal parts across the grain of the coir covering, and with it
a very high polish can be put on to hardwoods.
The stem of the Cocoanut Palm is attacked by a very large beetle
with a single horn at the top of its head. It bores through the bark
and slightly injures the tree, but I never heard that any had died
in consequence. In some countries this insect is described as the
rhinoceros beetle, and is said to belong to the _Dynastidæ_ species.
In the Philippines, the poorest soil seems to give nourishment to the
cocoanut-palm; indeed, it thrives best on, or near, the sea-shore,
as close to the sea as where the beach is fringed by the surf at high
tide. The common cocoanut-palm attains a height of about sixty feet,
but there is also a dwarf palm with the stem sometimes no taller
than four feet at full growth, which also bears fruit, although less
plentifully. A grove of these is a pretty sight.
Sir Emerson Tennent, referring to these trees in Ceylon, is reported
to have stated [146] that the cocoanut-palm "acts as a conductor
in protecting houses from lightning. As many as 500 of these trees
were struck in a single _pattoo_ near Pattalam during a succession
of thunderstorms in April 1859."--_Colombo Observer_.
_Nipa Palm_ (_Nipa fruticans_) is found in mangrove swamps and flooded
marshy lands. It has the appearance of a gigantic fern, and thrives
best in those lands which are covered by the sea at high tide. In the
same manner as the cocoanut-palm, the sap is extracted by incision made
in the fruit-bearing stalk, and is used for distilling a liquid known
as nipa wine, which, however, should properly be termed a spirit. The
leaves, which are very long, and about three to five inches wide,
are of immense value in the country for thatched roofs. Nipa is not
to be found everywhere; one may go many miles without seeing it, in
districts devoid of marshes and swampy lowlands. In El Abra district
(Luzon Is.) nipa is said to be unknown. In such places, another
material supplies its want for thatching, viz.:--
_Cogon_ (_Saccharum koenigii_), a sort of tall jungle grass with a
very sharp edge, plentifully abundant precisely where nipa cannot be
expected to grow. I have ridden through cogon five feet high, but a
fair average would be about three to four feet. It has simply to be
cut and sun-dried and is ready for roof thatching.
The _Cotton-tree_ (_Gossypium herbaceum_, Linn. ?), (Tagálog,
_Bulac_), is found growing in an uncultivated state in many islands
of the Archipelago. Long-staple cotton was formerly extensively
cultivated in the Province of Ilocos Norte, whence, many years ago,
large quantities of good cotton-stuffs were exported. This industry
still exists. The cultivation of this staple was, however, discouraged
by the local governors, in order to urge the planting of tobacco for
the Government supplies. It has since become difficult to revive the
cotton production, although an essay, in pamphlet form (for which
a prize was awarded in Madrid), was gratuitously distributed over
the Colony in 1888 with that object. Nevertheless, cotton spinning
and weaving are still carried on, on a reduced scale, in the Ilocos
provinces (Luzon west coast).
Wild cotton is practically useless for spinning, as the staple is
extremely short, but perhaps by hybridization and careful attention its
culture might become valuable to the Colony. The pod is elliptical,
and the cotton which bursts from it at maturity is snow-white. It
is used for stuffing pillows and mattresses. It was a common thing,
before the American occupation, to see (wild) cotton-trees planted
along the highroad to serve as telegraph-posts; by the time the seed
is fully ripe, every leaf has fallen, and nothing but the bursting
pods remain hanging to the branches.
The _Buri Palm_ is a handsome species, of tall growth, with fan-like
leaves. Its juice serves as a beverage resembling _tuba_. The trunk
yields a sago flour. The leaves are beaten on boulder stones to extract
a fibre for rope-making, of great strength and in constant demand.
The _Ditá Tree_, said to be of the family of the _Apocynese_ and
known to botanists as _Alstonia scholaris_, is possibly a species of
cinchona. The pulverized bark has a bitter taste like quinine, and
is successfully used by the natives to allay fever. A Manila chemist
once extracted from the bark a substance which he called _ditaïne_,
the yield of crystallizable alkaloid being 2 per cent.
_Palma Brava_ (_Coripha minor_) (Tagálog, _Banga_), [147] is a species
of palm, the trunk of which is of great local value. It is immensely
strong, and will resist the action of water for years. These trees are
employed as piles for quay and pier making--for bridges, stockades,
and in any works where strength, elasticity, and resistance to water
are required in combination. When split, a fibrous pith is found
in the centre much resembling cocoanut coir, but the ligneous shell
of the stem still retains its qualities of strength and flexibility,
and is used for vehicle-shafts, coolies' carrying-poles, and a variety
of other purposes.
_Bambusa_ (_Bambusa arundinacea_) is a graminifolious plant--one of the
most charmingly picturesque and useful adornments of Nature bestowed
exuberantly on the Philippine Islands. It grows in thick tufts in
the woods and on the banks of rivers. Its uses are innumerable, and
it has not only become one of the articles of primary necessity to
the native, but of incalculable value to all in the Colony.
There are many kinds of bamboos, distinct in formation and size. The
Tagálog generic name for knotted bamboo is _Cauáyan_; the Spanish
name is _Caña espina_. The most common species grows to a height of
about 60 feet, with a diameter varying up to eight inches, and is of
wonderful strength, due to its round shape and the regularity of its
joints. Each joint is strengthened by a web inside. It is singularly
flexible, light, elastic, and of matchless floating power. The fibre
is tough, but being perfectly straight, it is easy to split. It has a
smooth glazed surface, a perfectly straight grain, and when split on
any surface, it takes a high polish by simple friction. Three cuts
with the bowie-knife are sufficient to hew down the largest bamboo
of this kind, and the green leaves, in case of extreme necessity,
serve for horses' fodder.
There is another variety also hollow, but not so large as that just
described. It is covered with a natural varnish as hard as steel. It
is also used for native cabin-building and many other purposes.
A third species, seldom found more than five inches in diameter, is
much more solid, having no cavity in the centre divided by webs. It
cannot be applied to so many purposes as the first, but where great
strength is required it is incomparable.
When the bamboo-plant is cultivated with the view of rendering it
annually productive, the shoots are pruned in the dry season at a
height of about seven feet from the ground. In the following wet
season, out of the clump germinate a number of young shoots, which,
in the course of six or eight months, will have reached their normal
height, and will be fit for cutting when required. Bamboo should be
felled in the dry season before the sap begins to ascend by capillary
attraction. If cut out of season it is prematurely consumed by grub
(_gojo_), but this is not much heeded when wanted in haste.
The northern native builds his hut entirely of bamboo with nipa
palm-leaf or cogon thatching; in the Province of Yloilo I have seen
hundreds of huts made entirely of bamboo, including the roofing. To
make bamboo roofing, the hollow canes are split longitudinally, and,
after the webbed joints inside have been cut away, they are laid on
the bamboo frame-work, and fit into each other, the one convexly,
the next one concavely, and so on alternately. In frame-work, no
joiner's skill is needed; two-thirds of the bamboo are notched out on
one side, and the other third is bent to rectangle. A rural bungalow
can be erected in a week. When Don Manuel Montuno, the late Governor
of Mórong, came with his suite to stay at my up-country bungalow for
a shooting expedition, I had a wing added in three days, perfectly
roofed and finished.
No nails are ever used, the whole being bound with _bejuco_. The walls
of the cabin are made by splitting the bamboo, and, after removing
the webbed joints, each half is beaten out flat. Even in houses of
certain pretensions I have often seen split-bamboo flooring, which is
highly effective, as it is always clean and takes a beautiful polish
when rubbed over a few times with plantain-leaves. In the parish
church of Las Piñas, near Manila, there was an organ made of bamboo,
of excellent tone, extant up to the year of the Revolution.
When the poor village native wants to put up his house he calls
a _bayanin_, and his neighbours assemble to give him a hand. The
bowie-knife is the only indispensable tool. One cuts the bamboo to
lengths, another splits it, a third fits it for making the frame-work,
another threads the dried nipa-leaves for the roofing, and thus a
modest _bahay_ is erected in a week. The most practicable dwelling
is the bamboo and nipa house, the only serious drawback being the
risk of fire.
Rafts, furniture of all kinds, scaffolding, spoons, carts, baskets,
sledges, fishing-traps, fleams, water-pipes, hats, dry and liquid
measures, cups, fencing, canoe-fittings, bridges, carrying-poles for
any purpose, pitchforks, and a thousand other articles are made of
this unexcelled material. Here it serves all the purposes to which the
osier is applied in Europe. It floats in water, serves for fuel, and
ropes made of it are immensely strong. Bamboo salad is prepared from
the very young shoots, cut as soon as they sprout from the root. The
value of bamboo in Manila varies according to the season of the year
and length of the bamboo, the diameter of course being proportionate.
_Bojo_ (Tagálog, _Buho_) is a kind of cane, somewhat resembling the
bamboo in appearance only. It has very few knots; is brittle, perfectly
smooth on the outer and inner surfaces--hollow, and grows to about
25 feet high by 2 inches diameter, and is not nearly so useful as
the bamboo. It is used for making light fences, musical instruments,
fishing-rods, inner walls of huts, fishing-traps, torches, etc.
_Bejuco_, or Rattan-cane, belonging to the _Calamus_ family
(Tagálog, _Hiantoc_, also _Dit-án_), is a forest product commonly
found in lengths of, say, 100 feet, with a maximum diameter of
half-an-inch. It is of enormous strength and pliancy. Its uses are
innumerable. When split longitudinally it takes the place of rope
for lashing anything together; indeed, it is just as useful in the
regions of its native habitat as cordage is in Europe. It serves for
furniture and bedstead-making, and it is a substitute for nails and
bolts. Hemp-bales, sugar-bags, parcels of all kinds are tied up with
it, and hats are made of it. The ring through a buffalo's nose is
made of whole rattan, to which is often attached a split strip for
a guiding-rein. Every joint in a native's hut, his canoe, his fence,
his cart, woodwork of any kind--indeed, everything to be made fast,
from a bundle of sticks to a broken-down carriage, is lashed together
with this split material, which must, when so employed, be bent with
the shiny skin outside, otherwise it will infallibly snap. The demand
for this article is very large.
_Bush-rope_ (_Calamus maximus_) (Tagálog, _Palásan_) is also a forest
product, growing to lengths of about 100 feet, with a maximum diameter
of one inch and a quarter. It is immensely strong. It is used for raft
cables for crossing rivers, stays for bamboo suspension-bridges, and a
few other purposes. It is sometimes found with knots as far apart as 30
feet. It is a species quite distinct from the _Walking-stick Palasan_
(_Calamus gracilis_) (Tagálog, _Tabola_) the appreciated feature of
which is the proximity of the knots. I have before me a specimen 34
inches long with 26 knots.
_Gum Mastic_ (_Almáciga_) is an article of minor importance in the
Philippine exports, the supply being very limited. It is said that
large quantities exist; but as it is only procurable in almost
inaccessible mountainous and uncivilized districts, first-hand
collectors in the provinces, principally Chinese, have to depend
upon the services and goodwill of unsubdued tribes. It is chiefly
obtained by barter, and is not a trade which can be worked up
systematically. The exports of this product fluctuate considerably
in consequence. For figures of _Gum Mastic_ shipments, _vide_ Chap,
xxxi., "Trade Statistics."
_Gutta-percha_ was formerly a more important article of trade in these
Islands until the Chinese drove it out of the market by adulteration. A
little is shipped from Zamboanga.
_Wax_ (Tagálog, _patquit_) and cinnamon are to be found in much the
same way as gum mastic. There is a large consumption of wax in the
Islands for candles used at the numerous religious feasts. The cinnamon
is very inferior in quality. It is abundant in Mindanao Island, but,
like gum mastic, it can only be procured in small quantities, depending
on the caprice or necessities of the mountain-tribes. Going along the
seashore in Zamboanga Province, on one occasion, I met a mountaineer
carrying a bundle of cinnamon to Zamboanga Port--many miles distant--to
sell the bark to the Chinese at [Peso}8 per picul. I bought his load,
the half of which I sent to Spain, requesting a friend there to
satisfy my curiosity by procuring a quotation for the sample in the
Barcelona market. He reported that the quality was so low that only
a nominal price could be quoted, and that it stood nowhere compared
with the carefully cultivated Ceylon product.
_Edible Bird's Nest_ (_Collocalia troglodytes--Coll. nodifica
esculenta_ Bonap.) is an article of trade with the Chinese, who readily
purchase it at high prices. It is made by a kind of sea-swallow, and
in appearance resembles vermicelli, variegated with blood-coloured
spots. The nests are found in high cliffs by the sea, and the natives
engaged in their collection reach them by climbing up bush-rope
or bamboos with the branch-knots left on to support themselves with
their toes. It is a very dangerous occupation, as the nests are always
built high in almost inaccessible places. The Filipino risks his life
in collecting them, whilst the Chinaman does the safe and profitable
business of trading in the article. In the Philippines the collection
begins in December, and the birds deprived of their nests have then
to build a second nest for laying their eggs. These second nests are
gathered about the end of January, and so on up to about the fourth
collection. Each successive nest decreases in commercial value, and
the last one is hardly worth the risk of taking. Even though there
might be venturesome collectors who would dislodge the last nests,
the wet season fortunately sets in and prevents their being reached,
hence the bird is at length able to continue propagation. Bird's-nest
soup is a delicacy in great demand in China.
These nests are chiefly found in the Calamities group of islands,
particularly in Busuanga Island. The Sulu Archipelago and Palaúan
Island also furnish a small quantity of edible birds'-nests.
_Balate_, or Trepang, is a species of sea-slug, for which the natives
find a ready sale to the Chinese at good prices. The fish is preserved
by being gutted, cooked, and sun-dried, and has a shrimp taste. It
is found in greatest quantities off the Calamianes and Palaúan Islands.
_Sapan-wood_ (_Caesalpina sappan_) (Tagálog, _Sibucao_, or _Sápang_),
of an inferior quality compared with the Pernambuco wood, is a
Philippine product found in most of the large islands. It is a short,
unattractive tree, with epigeous branches spreading out in a straggling
manner. The leaves are small and sparse. The wood is hard, heavy,
crooked, and full of knots. It sinks in water, and is susceptible
of a fine polish. It is whitish when fresh cut, but assumes a deep
red colour on exposure to the air. The only valuable portion is the
heart of the branch, from which is taken a dye known in the trade as
"false crimson," to distinguish it from the more permanent cochineal
dye. The whole of the colouring-matter can be extracted with boiling
water. It is usually shipped from Manila and Yloilo as dunnage,
a small quantity coming also from Cebú. For figures of _Sapan-wood_
shipments, _vide_ Chap, xxxi., "Trade Statistics."
The _Saps_ of certain Philippine trees serve to give a polished
coating to the smoothed surface of other woods. The kind which I
have experimented with most successfully is that of the _Ipil_ tree
(_Eperna decandria_). This gives a glazed covering very similar to
Japan-ware varnish. It takes better to the wood in a cold climate than
in the tropics. I have tried it both in the Philippines and in Europe.
_Dye Saps_ are also numerous--for instance, that of the species
_Marsedenia_, called in Bicol dialect _Payanguit_ and _Aringuit_,
with which hemp can be dyed blue; the juice of the skin of a root,
known in Bicol as _Morinda_, is used for dyeing hemp red; the sap
of the _Talisay_ tree (_Terminalia mauritiana_) gives a black dye,
and that of the _Calumpit_ tree (_Terminalia edulis_) is a good
straw-coloured dye.
_Hardwoods_.--These Islands are remarkably rich in valuable
timber-trees. For some of the details which I will give of the
properties and applicability of the varieties in general demand,
I am indebted to Mr. H. G. Brown (of H. G. Brown & Co. Limited,
[148] steam saw-mill proprietors in Tayabas Province), admitted to
be the most experienced person in this branch of Philippine trade.
_Aranga_ (_Homalium_) gives logs up to 75 feet long by 24 inches
square. It is specially used for sea piling and all kinds of marine
work which is subject to the attacks of sea-worm (_Teredo navalis_).
_Acle_ (_Mimosa acle)_ gives logs up to 32 feet by 28 inches square. It
is strong, tenacious, and durable, whilst it has the speciality
of being difficult to burn, and is much used in house-building; it
polishes well, and is much prized by the natives. It is supposed to
be identical with the _Payengadu_ of Burmah.
_Anagap_ (_Pithecolobium montanum_, Benth.) gives logs up to 18 feet
long by 16 inches square. It is sometimes used for house furniture
and fittings and for other purposes where a light durable wood is
wanted and is not exposed to sun and rain.
_Apiton_ (_Dipterocarpus griffithi_, Miq.) gives logs up to 70 feet
long by 24 inches square. It contains a gum of which incense is made,
is light when seasoned, works well, and will serve for furniture and
general joiner's purposes.
_Antipolo_ (_Artocarpus incisa_) is much esteemed for vessels' outside
planking, keels, etc. It is light, very strong, resists sea-worm
(_Teredo navalis_) entirely, and effects of climate. It does not warp
when once seasoned, and is a most valuable wood.
_Anobing_ (_Artocarpus ovata)_ is said to resist damp as well as
_Molave_ does, but it is not appreciated as a good hardwood. It is
plentiful, especially in the district of Laguna de Bay.
_Betis_ (_Azaola--Payena betis?_) gives logs up to 65 feet long by
20 inches square. It is proof against sea-worm, is used for salt or
fresh water piling, piers, wharves, etc.; also for keels and many other
parts of ship-building, and where a first-class wood is indispensably
necessary. It is somewhat scarce.
_Batitinan_ (_Lagerstroemia batitinan_) gives logs up to 40 feet long
by 18 inches square. Is very strong, tough, and elastic; generally
used for ships' outside planking above water. It stands the climate
well when properly seasoned; is a wood of the first quality, and can
be used for any purpose except those involving interment in the ground
or exposure to ravages of sea-worm. This wood is very much stronger
than Teak, and could be used to advantage in its place for almost
all purposes. It makes a good substitute for Black Walnut in furniture.
_Banaba_ (_Munchaustia speciosa--Lagerstremis speciosa?_)--a strong
and useful wood much used in house- and ship-building; it is thoroughly
reliable when seasoned, otherwise it shrinks and warps considerably.
_Bansalague_ (_Mimusops elengi_, Linn.) gives logs up to 45 feet long
by 18 inches square. It seems to be known in Europe as bullet-tree
wood. It can be driven like a bolt, and from this fact and its
durability it is frequently used for treenails in ship-building
in Manila, etc. It is also used for axe and other tool-handles,
belaying-pins, etc., and on account of its compact, close grain it
is admirably adapted for turning purposes; it lasts well in the ground.
_Bancal_ (_Nauclea gluberrima)_ gives logs up to 24 feet long by
16 inches square. This wood is of a yellow colour and very easy to
work. It is used for general joiner's work in house-building, etc.
_Cedar_ (_Cedrela odorata_), of the same natural order as Mahogany
(Linn.), gives logs up to 40 feet long by 35 inches square, and
is used principally for cigar-boxes. In the Colony it is known as
_Calantás_. It makes very handsome inside house-fittings.
_Camagon_ or _Mabolo_ (a variety of _Diospyros philoshantera_) is
procured in roughly rounded logs of 9 feet and upwards in length,
by up to 12 inches in diameter. It is a close-grained, brittle wood,
and takes a good polish; its colour is black with yellow streaks,
and it is used for furniture-making. It might be termed the Philippine
Coromandel wood, and is sometimes referred to as "false ebony."
_Dúngon_ (a variety of _Herculia ambiformis--Sterculia cymbiformis_,
Blanco) grows up to 50 feet long, giving logs up to 20 inches
square. It is sometimes called _Ironwood_, is very hard and durable,
and specially strong in resisting great transverse pressure,
or carrying such weight as a heavy roof. It is used for keels on
account of its great strength--it does not resist the sea-worm; it is
applied to all purposes in Manila where more than ordinary strength
is required when _Molave_ cannot be procured in sufficiently great
lengths and _Ipil_ is unattainable.
_Dinglas_ (_Decandria--Bucida comintana_) gives logs up to 30 feet
by 16 inches square--occasionally even larger sizes. This will also
serve as a substitute for Black Walnut in furniture; it is very strong,
hard, and durable.
_Ebony_ (_Diospyros nigra_) is also found in very limited quantities.
_Guijo_ (_Dipterocarpus guijo_) gives logs up to 75 feet long by 24
inches square--is very strong, tough and elastic. In Manila this wood
is invariably used for carriage wheels and shafts. In Hong-Kong it
is used, amongst other purposes, for wharf-decks or flooring.
_Ipil_ (_Eperna decandria_) gives logs up to 50 feet long by 26 inches
square. It has all the good qualities of _Molave_, except resistance to
sea-worm (in which respect it is the same as Teak), and may be as much
relied on for duration under ground; for sleepers it equals _Molave_.
_Lanete_ (_Anaser laneti_) gives logs up to 25 feet long by 18 inches
square. It is useful for sculpture, musical instruments, decoration,
turning, and cabinet purposes.
_Laúan_ (_Dipterocarpus thurifera_) is obtained in sizes the same as
_Guijo_. It is a light, useful wood, and easily worked. It is said
that the outside planks of the old Philippine-Mexican galleons were
of this wood because it did not split with shot.
_Molave_ (_Vitex geniculata_) (Tagalog, _Molauin_), gives logs up to 35
feet long by 24 inches square. It resists sea-worm (_Teredo navalis_),
white ants (_Termes_), and action of climate, and consequently
is specially valuable for work on the surface of or under ground,
and generally for all purposes where an extra strong and durable
wood is required. Often growing crooked, it is commonly used (where
produced and in adjacent countries) for frames of vessels. Owing to
its imperviousness to ligniperdous insects and climate, it cannot
possibly be surpassed for such purposes as railway-sleepers. This wood
is practically everlasting, and is deservedly called by the natives,
"Queen of the Woods." It pays better to sell _Molave_ in baulks or
logs, rather than sawn to specification, because this tree has the
great defect of being subject to heart-cup.
Mr. Thomas Laslett, in his work on timber, [149] says, in reference to
_Molave_, "It can be recommended to notice as being fit to supplement
any of the hardwoods in present use for constructive purposes." From
the same work I have extracted the following record of experiments
made by Mr. Laslett with this wood:--
TENSILE EXPERIMENTS.--AVERAGE OF FIVE SPECIMENS
Dimensions of each piece. 2'' × 2'' × 30''
Specific gravity. 1021.6
Weight the piece broke with. 31,248 lbs.
Direct cohesion one square inch. 7,812
TRANSVERSE EXPERIMENTS.--AVERAGE OF THREE SPECIMENS
_Deflections_.
Total weight required to break each piece. 1.25 lbs.
Specific gravity. .166
Weight reduced to specific gravity 1,000. 5.166
Weight required to break one square inch. 1,243.3 lbs.
With the apparatus weighing 390 lbs. 1013
After the weight was removed 1231
At the crisis of breaking. 310.83
N.B.--It breaks on test with a scarf-like fracture.
_Mangachapuy_ (_Dipterocarpus mangachapuy--Vatica apteranthera_) gives
logs up to 55 feet long by 20 inches square. It is very elastic and
withstands the climate, when seasoned, as well as Teak. It is used
in Manila for masts and decks of vessels and for all work exposed to
sun and rain. It is much esteemed and in great demand by those who
know its good qualities.
_Macasin_ can be used for interior house work and floors. It is
somewhat inferior to _Banaba_, but supplies its place when _Banaba_
is scarce. It can be got in greater length and square than _Banaba_.
_Malatapay_ (a variety of _Diospyros philoshantera_), veined black
and red. It resembles _Camagon_.
_Mancono_ is a very hard wood found in Mindanao Island; it is classed
as a species of lignum-vitæ.
_Narra_ (_Pterocarpus palidus santalinus_) gives logs up to 35 feet
long by 26 inches square. It is the Mahogany of the Philippines,
inasmuch as it is always employed in Manila in the manufacture of
furniture, for notwithstanding its somewhat open grain, it polishes
well, and is prettily marked. There is a variety of shades in different
logs varying from straw colour to blood-red, the former being more
common; all are, however, equally esteemed. It is a first-rate wood
for general purposes. In the London market it is classed with the
_Padouk_ of Burmah.
_Palo Maria de Playa_ (_P. Polyandria--Calophyllum inophyllum_)
(Tagálog, _Dangcalán_), is greatly appreciated for crooks and curves,
but as a rule cannot be found of suitable dimensions for large
vessels. It is better than _Molave_ for this purpose, for, due to
the absence of acrid juices, iron bolts do not corrode in it. It is
exceedingly tough and not so heavy as _Molave_.
_Supa_ (_Sindora wallichii_, Benth.) gives logs up to 40 feet long
by 28 inches square. It produces an oil, and is a strong wood for
general purposes, polishes well and can be used advantageously for
house decorations and furniture.
_Tíndalo_ (_Eperna rhomboidea_) is about the same as _Acle_ in
its principal features, but not notable for resisting fire. It is
useful for general purposes, and in particular for decorations and
furniture. It is somewhat brittle, and takes a high polish.
_Yacal_ (_Dipterocarpus plagatus_) gives logs up to 50 feet long by
22 inches square. It is proof against white ants, has great strength
and tenacity, and is much valued in Manila for house-building, etc.
Natives employed in the felling of timber often become very expert
in the selection and appreciation of the standing trunks.
The approximate order of resistance of the best woods, estimated
by their practical employment and not by theoretical comparative
experiments, would be as follows, viz.:--
HARDWOOD STRAINS
Tensile Strain. Transverse Strain.
1 Dúngon. 8 Acle. 1 Molave. 8 Banaba.
2 Yacal. 9 Narra. 2 Camagon. 9 Yacal.
3 Ipil. 10 Tíndalo. 3 Ipil. 10 Mangachapuy.
4 Mangachapuy. 11 Molave. 4 Acle. 11 Laúan.
5 Guijo. 12 Laúan. 5 Dúngon. 12 Guijo.
6 Banaba. 13 Cedar. 6 Tíndalo. 13 Cedar.
7 Camagon. 14 Lanete. 7 Narra. 14 Lanete.
The hardwoods of the Philippines, suitable for building and
trade requirements as described above, are those in general use
only. Altogether about fifty kinds exist, but whilst some are
scarce, others do not yield squared logs of sufficient sizes to be
of marketable value. Amongst these are the _Quercus concentrica_
(Tagálog, _Alayan_), a sort of oak; the _Gimbernatia calamansanay_
(Tagálog, _Calamansanay_); the _Cyrtocarpa quinquestyla_ (Tagálog,
_Amaguís_), and others.
To carry on successfully a timber trade in this Colony, with ability
to fulfil contracts, it is necessary to employ large capital. Firstly,
to ensure supplies by the cutters, the trader must advance them sums
amounting in the total to thousands of pesos, a large percentage of
which he can only nominally recover by placing them against future
profits; secondly, he must own several sailing-ships, built on a
model suited to this class of business. Several Europeans have lost
the little money they had by having to freight unsuitable craft for
transport to the place of delivery, and by only advancing to the
native fellers just when they wanted logs brought down to the beach,
instead of keeping them constantly under advance. With sufficient
capital, however, a handsome profit is to be realized in this line
of business, if it is not killed by too much new legislation.
So far Philippine woods have not met in London with the appreciation
due to their excellent qualities, possibly because they are not
sufficiently well known. In China, however, they are in great demand,
in spite of the competition from Borneo (Kúdat and Sandákan) and
Australian shippers. Since the American occupation, large shipments
of Oregon Pine have been made to the Colony: how this wood will stand
the climate is not yet ascertainable.
_Fruits_.--There are few really choice, luscious fruits in the
Philippines which can compare with the finest European species. Nothing
in this Colony can equal our grape, peach, cherry, or strawberry.
The _Mango_ (_Manguifera indica--Pentandrie_, Linn.) ranks first in
these Islands. It is oblong--oval-shaped--flattened slightly on both
sides, about five inches long, and of a yellow colour when ripe. It
is very delicious, succulent, and has a large stone in the centre
from which fibres run at angles. To cut it, the knife must be pressed
down from the thick end, otherwise it will come in contact with the
fibres. Philippine mangoes are far superior to any others grown in the
East. This fruit has a slight flavour of turpentine, and, as to smell,
Manuel Blanco [150] doubts whether it more resembles bugs, onions,
or tar. The trees are very large and majestic--the leaves are dark
green, and the whole appearance strikingly noble. Great care is needed
to rear the fruit. The natives cut notches in the trunk, and from the
time the tree begins to flower until the fruit is half matured, they
light fires on the ground under its branches, as the smoke is said to
hasten the development. The tree begins to bear fruit at ten years old.
The first mangoes of the season are forced, and even picked before
they are ripe, so that they may more quickly turn yellow. They are
brought to the Manila market in February, and fetch as much as 20
cents each. The natural ripening time is from the end of March. In
the height of the season they can be bought for two dollars per
hundred. Epicures eat as many as ten to a dozen a day, as this
fruit is considered harmless to healthy persons. Mango jelly is also
appreciated by Europeans as well as natives. Luzon and Cebú Islands
appear to produce more mangoes than the rest of the Archipelago. From
my eight mango-trees in Mórong district I got annually two pickings,
and one year three pickings from two trees.
There are other species of mango-tree of the genus _Terebinthaceae_,
viz.:--_Manguifera anisodora, M. altissima, M. rostrata_ and
_M. sinnata_.
The _Banana_ or _Plantain_ (_Musa paradisiaca_) is plentiful
all over the Islands at all seasons. It grows wild, and is also
largely cultivated. It is the fruit of an herbaceous endogenous
plant of the natural order _Musaceae_. It is said that the specific
name _paradisiaca_ is derived, either from a supposition that the
plantain was the forbidden fruit of Eden [151], or from an Arabic
legend that Adam and Eve made their first aprons of the leaves of
this tree, which grow to a length of five to six feet, with a width
of 12 to 14 inches. Some 10 to 12 distinct varieties of bananas are
commonly to be seen, whilst it is asserted that there are over 50
sorts differing slightly from each other. The Tagálog generic name
for this tree and fruit is _Ságuing_. The species known in Tagálog
dialect as _Lacatan_ and _Bongúlan_, of a golden or orange tinge
when the skin is removed and possessing a slight pineapple flavour,
are the choicest. The _Tóndoc_ is also a very fine class. The stem
of the banana-plantain is cut down after fruiting, and the tree
is propagated by suckers. [152] Renewal of the tree from the seed
is only necessary every 12 to 18 years. The fruit is borne in long
clusters on strong stalks which bend over towards the earth. As the
suckers do not all rise simultaneously, the stages of growth of the
young fruit-bearing trees vary, so that there is a constant supply
all the year round. Moreover, it is customary to cut down, and hang
up in the house, the stalk sustaining the fruit before it is ripe,
so that each fruit can be eaten as it matures. The glossy leaves
of the banana-plantain are exceedingly beautiful. They are used for
polishing hardwood floors; they serve as a substitute for plates at
the _tiánguis_ and for wrapping-paper at the small native and Chinese
grocers' shops. In rural places if a _carromata_ driver cannot find
a leather horse-collar, he improvises one of banana-leaf.
The _Papaw_ tree (_Carica. papaya_) flourishes wild--a prolific
growth--attains a height of 20 to 25 feet, and is very picturesque. The
leaves emerge in a cluster from the top of the stem, and are about
20 to 30 inches long. They can be used as a substitute for soap for
washing linen. The foliage has the peculiar property of making meat
or poultry tender if hung up in the branches. The fruit is of a rich
olive green, and remains so almost to maturity, when it quickly turns
yellow. Both in shape and flavour it is something like a melon, and,
although more insipid, it is refreshing in this climate. Containing a
quantity of pepsine, it is often recommended by doctors as a dessert
for persons with weak digestive organs.
Besides these fruits, there are _Pómelo_ oranges, about four times
the size of the largest European orange; ordinary-sized _Oranges_
of three sorts; _Citron; Jack fruit_ (_Anona muricata,_ Linn., or
more probably _Artocarpus integrifolia_) (Tagálog, _Nangca); Custard
Apples (Anona squamosa,_ Linn.) (Tagálog, _Atis_); _Bread-fruit_
(_Artocarpus camansi)_ (Tagálog, _Dalangian_ or _Dalamian_); _Lomboy_
(_Calyptrantes jambolana--Icosandrie_, Linn.), which looks like a
damson; _Santol_ (_Sandoricum ternatum--Decandrie_, Linn.), delicious
prepared in syrup; _Condol_, (_Monoecia syngenesia--Cucurbita
pepo aspera_), a kind of white pumpkin for preserving; _Limes_
(Tagálog, _Limonsuangi_); small green _Limes_ (Tagálog, _Calamánsi_)
for preserving; another kind called _Lucban_; a diminutive _Mango_
(_Manguifera altissima_) (Tagálog, _Paho_), which is brined and then
put in vinegar; _Pomegranates_ (_Punica granatum_); a very inferior
species of wild _Strawberry_; _Chico_ (_Achras sapota--Hexandrie_,
Linn.), the _Chico sapoti_ of Mexico, extremely sweet, the size and
colour of a small potato; _Lanson_ (_Lansium domesticum_), a curious
kind of fruit of an agreeable sweet and acid flavour combined. The
pericarp is impregnated with a white viscous fluid, which adheres
very tenaciously to the fingers. When the inner membrane is removed
the edible portion is exhibited in three divisions, each of which
envelops a very bitter stone. It is abundant in La Laguna.
_Guavas_ (_Psidium pyriferum guyava_, Linn.) (Tagálog, _Bayabas_) of
very fine quality, from which jelly is made, are found wild in great
abundance. They are so plentiful on waste lands that I have never
seen them cultivated. The peel is an excellent astringent. _Lemons_
[153] of two kinds are grown--sometimes as many as a dozen of the small
species, about the size of a walnut, may be seen hanging at one time
on a tree only 18 inches high; a well-known small species is called
_Dayap_ in Tagálog. _Mangosteens_, the delicate fruit of the Straits
Settlements, are found in the islands of Mindanao and Sulu. In Mindanao
Island, on the neck of land forming the western extremity, the _Durien_
thrives. It is about as large as a pineapple, white inside, and when
ripe it opens out in three or four places. It is very delicious eating,
but has a fetid smell. The seeds, as large as beans, are good to eat
when roasted. The tree bears fruit about every 20 years.
_Pineapples_ (_Bromelia ananas_, Linn.) are abundant in the Southern
Islands, where they are cultivated exclusively for the sake of the
leaves, the delicate fibres of which are used to manufacture the fine,
costly texture known as _Piña_ (q.v.). This fruit, which is not so
fine as the Singapore and Cuban species, is in little demand in the
Philippines, as it is justly considered dangerous to eat much of it.
_Grape_ acclimatization has been attempted in the Philippines, but
with very mediocre results. Cebú seems to be the island most suitable
for vine culture, but the specimens of fruit produced can bear no
comparison with the European. In Naga (Cebú Is.) I have eaten green
_Figs_ grown in the orchard of a friend's house.
_Tamarinds_ (_Tamarindus indica_, Linn.) (Tagálog, _Sampáloc_)
are never planted for the sake of the fruit. The tree grows wild,
and the fruit resembles a bean. Picked whilst green, it is used by
the natives to impart a flavour to certain fish sauces. When allowed
to ripen fully, the fruit-pod takes a light-brown colour--is brittle,
and cracks all over under a slight pressure of the fingers. The whole
of the ripe fruit can then be drawn out by pulling the bean-stalk. The
ripe tamarind appears to be little appreciated by any one, and it is
extremely seldom seen, even in the form of a preserve, in a native
dwelling. Containing, as it does, a large quantity of tannin, it is
sometimes used by the Manila apothecaries, and I once heard that a
small parcel was being collected for shipment to Italy.
The _Mabolo_ (_Diospyros discolor_) (Tagálog, _Mabolo_, also _Talang_)
is a fruit of great external beauty and exquisite aroma. It is
about the size of a large peach, the pubescent skin being of a fine
red colour, but it is not very good eating. _Chillies_ (_Capsicum
minimum_, Blanco), _Ginger_ (_Zingiber officinale_, Linn.), _Capsicums_
(_Capsicum tetragonum_, Mill), _Capers_ (_Capparris mariana_) and
_Vanilla_ are found in a wild state. _Sago_ is produced in small
quantities in Mindoro Island, where the sago-plant flourishes. The
pith is cut out, washed, sun-dried, and then pounded. The demand for
this nutritious article is very limited. In 1904 I found the _Cassava_
plant growing near the south coast of Mindanao Island.
There are many other kinds of orchard and wild fruits of comparatively
inferior quality, chiefly used by the natives to make preserves. There
is also a large variety of tuberose and other vegetable products,
never eaten by Europeans, such as the favourite _Síncamas_
(_Decandria--Pachyrhizus angulatus_), resembling a small turnip. The
natives have a taste for many fruits plucked half ripe.
The _Flowers_ of these Islands are too numerous for their description
to come within the scope of this work. To the reader who seeks
an exhaustive treatise on the Botany of the Philippines, I would
recommend Manuel Blanco's "Flora de Filipinas," [154] from which I
have taken the following brief notes.
_Philippine Flowers_
_According to Manuel Blanco_
Orders. Genera. Species. Varieties. Sub-varieties.
Dicotyledones 126 842 2,571 349 5
Monocotyledones 26 325 1,425 270 25
Acotyledones 3 56 483 11 --
155 1,223 4,479 630 30
Some of the most curious and beautiful botanical specimens, not
already described in the preceding pages, are the following, viz.:--
_Arum (?) divaricatum_, Linn. (Tagálog, _Gabigabihán_).--A delicate
bulb. Common in Pasig and Manila.
_Amaryllis atamasco_, Blanco (Tagálog, _Bácong_).--A bulb. Grows to
3 feet. Beautiful large red flower. Blooms in February.
_Agave americana_ (Tagálog, _Magui_).--It is one of a large variety
of Aloes. (Mexican origin?)
_Asplendium nidus._--The beautiful Nest-fern.
_Bignonia quadripinnata_, Blanco (Tagálog, _Pinca-Pincahán_).--A
curious flower.
_Clerodendron longiflorum_, D.C.--An extremely beautiful and delicate
white flower.
_Cactus pitajaya_, Blanco (Tagálog, _Flor de Caliz_).--Gives a grand,
showy flower.
_Caryota urens_, Linn (Tagálog, _Taquipan_).--A beautiful palm. Grows
to 22 feet. The fruit, when tender, is masticated like the _Areca
catechu_.
_Caryota onusta_, Blanco (Tagálog, _Cáuong_).--A fine palm. Gives a
sweet juice which turns into good vinegar. The trunk gives a Sago,
called by the natives _Yoro_. The ripe seeds are a deadly poison. An
infusion of the seeds in water is so caustic that it has been used to
throw on to Moro pirates and thieves; wherever it touches the body
it burns so terribly that none can suffer it or cure it. Sometimes
it is thrown into the rivers to stupefy the fish, which then float
and can be caught with the hand. When _unripe_ the seeds are made
into a preserve. The seeds have also medicinal properties.
_Cryptogamia_.--Nine families of very luxuriant ferns.
_Cryptogamia_.--_Boletus sanguineus_ (Tagálog, _Culapô_).--A curious
blood-red Fungus.
_Dillenia Reifferscheidia_ (Tagálog, _Catmon_).--A very singular,
showy flower.
_Exocarpus ceramica_, D.C.--A curious Cactus.
_Euphorbia tirucalli_, Linn.--A curious Cactus.
_Erythrina carnea_, Blanco (Tagálog, _Dapdap_).--Grows to 20
feet. Gives a lovely red flower.
_Hibiscus syriacus_, Linn. (Several varieties of Hibiscus.)
_Hibiscus abelmoschus_, Linn.
_Mimosa pudica_, Linn.--_Mimosa asperata_, Blanco (Tagálog,
_Mahíhin_).--The "Sensitive Plant," so called because at the least
contact with anything it closes up all the little petals forming
the leaf. It is one of the most curious plants in the Islands. It
has a small red flower. Grows only a few inches from the ground,
among the grass.
_Mimosa tenuifolia_, Blanco.--The "Sensitive Tree," which has the
same property of closing the leaf on contact.
_Mimosa scutifera_, Blanco.--A tree with seed-pods hanging down
like curls.
_Momordica sphoeroidea_, Blanco (Tagálog, _Buyoc-buyoc_).--Climbs high
trees. The fruit is eaten when cooked. Soap is obtained from the roots.
_Nelumbium speciosum_, Wild (Tagálog, _Baino_; Igorrote, _Sucao_).--An
aquatic plant found in the Lake of Bay and other places. Beautiful
pink or red flower. The natives eat the roots and seeds.
_Passiflora laurifolia_, Linn.--A curious Passion-flower, quite
different to the European species.
_Pancratium zeylanicum_ (Tagálog, _Catongal_).--A bulb giving a very
peculiar flower.
_Pinus toeda_.--The only kind of Pine known here. To be found in the
mountains of Mancayan (Lepanto) and Benguet.
_Spathodea luzonica_, Blanco (Tagálog, _Tue_).--Grows to 15 feet. Gives
a gorgeous white flower. Common on the sea-shores. The wood is used
for making guitars and clogs.
_Philippine Orchids_
_The principal Orders_
** Natural crosses or hybrids--rare and valuable.
Genera. Species.
Aerides Augustiarium
Lawrenciæ
Marginatum
Quinquevulnerum
Roebelinii
Sanderianum
Bulbophyllum Dearei
Cymbidium Pendulum
Pendulum atro purpureum
Cypripedium Lævigatum
Boxallii
Stonei
Argus
Dendrobium Anosmum
Aurem philippinense
Crumenatum
Erythroxanthum
Dearei
Macrophyllum
Superbum
Superbum giganteum
Platycanlon
Taurinum
Gramatophyllum Measuresianum
Multiflorum
Multiflorum tigrinum
Speciosum
Phalænopsis Amabalis
**Casta
**Intermedia
**Intermedia brymeriana
**Intermedia portei
**Intermedia lencorrhoda
Luddemaniana ochracia
Schilleriana
Rosea
Sanderiana
Sanderiana punctata
Stuartiana
Stuartiana bella
Stuartiana nobilis
Stuartiana punctatissima
Schilleriana vestalis
Veitchiana
Veitchiana brachyodon
Platyclinis or Cobbiana
Dendrochilum Filiformis
Glumacea
Uncata
Renanthera Storiei
Saccolabeum Violaccum
Blumei
Blumei majus
Sarcochilus Unguiculatus
Vanda Sanderiana
Sanderiana albata
Sanderiana labello viridi
Batemanii
Lamellata boxallii
The generic name for Orchid in Tagálog is _Dapo_.
_Some interesting facts relating to Philippine Botany_
Sweet-smelling _Flowers_ are very rare. Of the few, the most popular
in Manila is the _Sampaguita_ (probably a corruption of the Spanish
name _Santa Paquita_), which is sold made up in necklet form on cotton.
Looking on to the Pasig River at Manila in the early morning,
one often sees large masses of floating verdure of a small-cabbage
appearance. This aquatic plant is the _Pistia stratiotes_, Linn.,
(Tagálog, _Quiapo_).
The firewood in common use as fuel, in great demand, and known as
_Raja de Tangal_, is the _Rhizophora longissima_. It is also useful
for fencing, roof-framing, etc. Another well-known firewood is the
_Rhizophora gynnorhiza_ (Tagálog, _Bacaúan_). _Langary_ is also used
as firewood of an inferior quality. They are swamp-trees.
The species _Pteclobyum_ gives the "Locust-bean," as sold at
every little sweetmeat shop in London. This tree (when raised
on or transplanted to highlands) may be called the friend of the
coffee-plant, for it opens its leaves in the sunshine to shade it and
closes them when rain is about to fall, so that the coffee-plant may
be refreshed by the water. Also, at night, it closes its leaves to
give the coffee-plant the benefit of the dew. Another peculiar feature
is that the branches lopped off for household fuel can, when barked,
be used at once, without needing to be dried or seasoned. Its natural
habitat is the mangrove swamp, and the trunk and root give market fuel.
_Colot-colotán_, or _Manquit_, is the Tagálog name given to the
_Chrysopogon aciculatus_, Trin. (Spanish, _Amor seco_)--the little
particles like pointed grass-seeds which stick to one's trousers or
skirt when crossing an uncultivated field and can only be removed by
picking them out one by one.
The Tagálog affix _aso_, to the name of a botanical specimen,
means _pseudo_, i.e. not the genuine species; v.g., _Síncamas_
is the _Decandria--Pachyrhizus angulatus_ (_vide_ p. 321), whereas
_Sincamas-aso_ is the _D.--Pachyrhizus montanus_.
Many places take their names from trees and plants, v.g.:--
Antipolo (Rizal) a tree.
Bauang (Batangas) garlic.
Bulacan (Bulacan) a tree.
Cápas (Pangasinán) the cotton-tree (Igorrote
dialect).
Camagon Is. a tree.
Cabuyao (Laguna) a tree.
Calumpit (Bulacan) a tree.
Culasi (Antique) a tree.
Iba (Zambales) a plant.
Lucbang (Tayabas) a small lime.
Lipa (Batangas) nettle.
Quiapo (Manila suburb) an aquatic plant.
Sampáloc (Manila suburb) the tamarind-tree.
Salomague (Ilocos) the tamarind-tree. (Igorrote
dialect).
Tabaco (Albay) the tobacco-plant.
Taal (Batangas) a tree (same as _Ipil_).
Talisay (Batangas) a tree.
_Medicinal Herbs, Roots, Leaves, and Barks_ abound everywhere. Nature
provides ample remedies for dysenteric, strumatic, scorbutic, and
many other diseases. An extensive work on the subject was compiled by
Ignacio de Mercado, the son of a Spanish Creole father and Tagálog
mother, born in 1648 at Parañaque, seven miles from Manila. He was
parish priest in Lipa in 1674, and subsequently held several other
incumbencies up to his death, which took place in Bauang (Batangas)
on March 29, 1698. His MS. passed from the pharmacy of one religious
corporation to another to be copied, and for over a century after
the British occupation of Manila (1762-63) it was supposed to be
lost. Finally, in 1876, it was discovered by Don Domingo Vidal y Soler,
who gave it to the Augustine friars for publication, but I am not
aware that it was ever printed. According to Manuel Blanco, Ignacio
de Mercado's MS. describes 483 medicinal specimens, and attached
to the description are 171 coloured sketches of medicinal plants,
leaves, woods, and barks, and also 35 coloured sketches of plants,
etc., without any description of their medicinal properties. The only
one of these remedies which I have had occasion to test on myself
is _Tagulaúay Oil_, extracted from the leaves of the plant called in
Tagálog _Tangantangan_. It is an excellent styptic.
_Ylang-Ylang_ (_Anona odoratissima_, Blanco; _Cananga odorata_,
Hook) and _Champaca_ (_Michelia champaca_, Linn.) yield odoriferous
essential oils, and these fine perfumes are, especially the former,
exported to foreign countries. The export of _Ylang-Ylang_ in the
years 1902 and 1903 amounted to 3,949 and 5,942 gallons respectively.
CHAPTER XIX
Mineral Products
Coal--Gold--Iron--Copper--Sulphur, Etc.
Owing to the scarcity of manufacturing industries in this Colony,
the consumption of _Coal_ is very limited, and up to 1889 it hardly
exceeded 25,000 tons per annum. In 1892 nearly double that quantity
found a market. In 1896 the coal imported from Newcastle (New South
Wales) alone amounted to 65,782 tons; in 1897 to 89,798 tons. A small
proportion of this is employed in the forges, foundries, and a few
steam-power factories, most of them situated around Manila, but by
far the greater demand is for coaling steam-ships. Since the American
occupation the increase of steam-shipping and the establishment
of ice-plants all over the Colony have raised the consumption of
coal. Wood fuel is still so abundant in rural districts that coal
will probably not be in general request for the steam sugar-mills
for many years to come.
Australia, Great Britain, and Japan supply coal to this Colony;
in 1892 Borneo traders sent several cargoes of inferior product to
Manila; nevertheless, local capital has been expended from time to
time in endeavours to work up the home deposits.
Philippine coal is more correctly speaking highly carbonized lignite
of the Tertiary age, and analogous to Japanese coal. Batan Island,
off the south-east coast of Luzon Island, is said to have the finest
lignite beds in the Archipelago.
The island of Cebú contains large deposits of lignite. The mines
of Compostela are estimated to be very rich in quantity and of
medium quality. The late owner, Isaac Conui, for want of capital,
was unable to develop them fully. Transport by buffalo-carts from
the mines to the coast was very deficient and costly, and Conui,
who was frequently my guest in Manila in 1883, unsuccessfully
sought to raise capital for constructing a line of railway from the
collieries to Compostela village (east coast). They were then taken
up by a Spaniard, with whom the Spanish Government made contracts
for coaling the gunboats. A tram line was laid down to the pits, but
there was a great lack of promptitude in deliveries, and I heard of
ships lying off the coaling-wharf for several hours waiting to _start_
coaling. The enterprise has by no means given an adequate return for
the over P100,000 invested in it up to the year 1897. The coal-mine of
Danao, on the same coast, has not been more prosperous. When I visited
it in 1896 it had not yielded a cent of nett profit. In 1904 I made
the acquaintance, in Cebú Island, of a holder of P47,000 interest
in this enterprise. He told me that he had got no return for his
money in it. He had spent P1,000 himself to have the mine inspected
and reported on. He sent the report to his co-partners in Manila,
and heard no more about it until he went to the capital, where he
learnt that the Managing Director had resigned, and no one knew who
was his successor, what had become of his report, or anything definite
relating to the concern.
Anthracite has been found in Cebú, [155] and satisfactory trials have
been made with it, mixed with British bituminous coal. Perhaps volcanic
action may account for the volatile bituminous oils and gases having
been driven off the original deposits. The first coal-pits were sunk
in Cebú in the Valle de Masanga, but the poor commercial results led
to their abandonment about the year 1860. There are also extensive
unworked coal deposits a few miles from the west coast village of
Asturias, which I visited in 1896 with a planter friend, Eugenio
Alonso, who was endeavouring to form a coal-mining syndicate. The
_Revista Minera_ (a Madrid mining journal) referred in 1886 to the
coal of the Alpacó Mountain, in the district of Naga (Cebú Is.) as
being pure, dry, of easy combustion, carrying a strong flame, and
almost free from sulphur pyrites. Cebú coal is said to be of better
quality and cleaner than the Labuan and Australian products, but its
heating powers being less, it is less serviceable for long sea voyages.
The coal-mines in the hills around the Cumansi Valley, about eight
miles from the Cebú coast (Danao) have been worked for years without
financial success. The quality is reported excellent. Indeed,
in several of the larger islands of the Colony there are outcrop
indications of workable coal, unobtainable for want of transport
facilities.
In the Province of Albay, the Súgod Collieries were started by a
company formed in the year 1874. There were some fifteen partners,
each of whom subscribed a capital of P14,300. One of these partners,
Ceferino de Arámburu, told me that for a while the result was so
good that a Manila banking firm offered to take over the concern
from the shareholders at a premium of 20 per cent. upon the original
capital. About 4,000 tons of coal were extracted, most of which was
given away as samples, in the hope of large contracts resulting from
the trials, although it is said that the consumption was too rapid,
and that it had to be mixed with Cardiff coal. Seven pits were sunk,
and the concern lingered on until the year 1881, when its working
was relinquished. The failure was attributed to the shallowness of
the pits, which were only 30 metres deep, whilst it was supposed that
if the excavation had been continued before these pits were flooded,
shale and limestone strata could have been removed, exposing a still
more valuable seam, in which case it might have been worth while
providing pumping-machinery. The cost of extraction and delivery on
the coast was estimated at 75 cents of a peso per ton, whilst Cardiff
coal in Manila was worth, at the time, about eight pesos per ton,
and the Australian product ranged usually at one to one and a half
pesos below that figure, port tax unpaid.
In January, 1898, "The Philippine Mining and Development Company,
Limited," was formed in Hong-Kong with a capital of $1,600,000
(Mex.) in 160,000 $10 shares for the development of Philippine
coal deposits and other industries, under the management of a
Scotch merchant of long standing and good repute in Manila (since
deceased). The Spanish-American conflict which arose four months
later impeded active operations by the company.
In May, 1902, a company styled "Minas de Carbon de Batan" was
constituted to purchase from and exploit the coal-mines of Messrs. Gil
Hermanos, situated in the Island of Batan, Sorsogón Province. The
purchase price was fixed at P500,000, and the company's capital at
P1,000,000 divided into 5,000 equal shares. Hopeful reports were made
on the property by an American, a Spanish, and a Japanese mining
engineer respectively. When I interviewed the Managing Director of
the company, in Manila, two years after its formation, no dividend
had yet been paid to the shareholders.
_Comparative Analyses of Coal_
Source. Fixed Carbon. Volatile matter. Water. Ash.
per cent. per cent. per cent. per cent.
Cardiff 83.00 8.60 4.50 3.90
Australia 71.45 16.25 2.90 9.40
Cebú 57.94 31.75 9.23 1.08
Rock Spring,
Wyo. 56.50 34.50 6.25 2.75
Cebú 51.96 37.56 7.80 2.68
Cebú 49.50 35.03 11.18 3.62
I do not know that any capitalist has ever received an adequate return
for his investment in Philippine coal-mining.
From the earliest period of the Spanish occupation of these Islands,
attention has been given to _Gold-seeking_.
It is recorded that in the year 1572 Captain Juan Salcedo (Legaspi's
grandson) went to inspect the mines of Paracale, (Camarines); and in
the same district the village of Mambulao has long enjoyed fame for
the gold-washing in its vicinity.
In the time of Governor Pedro de Arandia (1754-59), a certain Francisco
Estorgo obtained licence to work these Paracale mines, and five veins
are said to have been struck. The first was in the Lipa Mountain,
where the mine was called "San Nicolás de Tolentino"; the second,
in the Dobójan Mountain, was called "Nuestra Señora de la Soledad de
Puerta Vaga"; the third, in Lipara, was named "Mina de las Animas";
the fourth, in the territory of San Antonio, took the name of "San
Francisco," and the fifth, in the Minapa Mountains, was named "Nuestra
Señora de los Dolores," all in the district of Paracale, near the
village of Mambulao. The conditions of Estorgo's licence were, that
one-fifth (_real quinto_) of the output should belong to the King;
that Estorgo was authorized to construct, arm, and garrison a fort
for his own defence against anticipated attacks from Mahometans,
and that he should have the title of Castellano, or guardian of
the fort. It was found necessary to establish the smelting-works
in Mambulao, so he obtained a licence to erect another fort there
on the same conditions, and this fort was named "San Cárlos." In a
short time the whole enterprise came to grief. Estorgo's neighbours,
instigated by native legal pettifoggers in Manila, raised endless
lawsuits against him; his means were exhausted, and apparatus being
wanted to work the mines, he had to abandon them.
About the same time, the gold-mines of Pangotcotan and Acupan (Benguet
district) were worked to advantage by Mexicans, but how much metal was
won cannot be ascertained. The extensive old workings show how eagerly
the precious metal was sought in the past. The Spanish Government
granted only concessions for gold-mining, the title remaining in the
Crown. Morga relates (1609) that the Crown royalty of one-tenth (_vide_
p. 53) of the gold extracted amounted to P10,000 annually. According
to Centeno, the total production of gold in all the Islands in 1876
did not not exceed P3,600.
During the Government of Alonso Fajardo de Tua (1618-24) it came to
the knowledge of the Spaniards that half-caste Igorrote-Chinese in
the north of Luzon peacefully worked gold-deposits and traded in the
product. Therefore Francisco Carreño de Valdés, a military officer
commanding the Provinces of Pangasinán and Ilocos, obtained permission
from the Governor to make a raid upon these Igorrote-Chinese and
appropriate their treasure-yielding territory. After a seven days'
march the Spanish gold-seekers and troops arrived at the deposits,
where they took up their quarters without resistance. The natives held
aloof whilst mutual offers of peace were made. When the Spaniards
thought they were in secure possession of the neighbourhood, the
natives attacked and slaughtered a number of them. The commander of the
district and the leader of the native troops were among the slain. Then
they removed the camp to a safer place; but provisions ran short and
the wet season set in, so the survivors marched back to the coast with
the resolution to renew their attempt to possess the spoil in the
following year. In the ensuing dry season they returned and erected
a fort, whence detachments of soldiers scoured the neighbourhood to
disperse the Igorrote-Chinese, but the prospectors do not appear to
have procured much gold.
Many years ago a Spanish company was formed to work a gold-mine near
the mountain of Malaguit, in the Province of Camarines Norte, but it
proved unsuccessful.
At the beginning of last century a company was founded, under the
auspices of the late Queen Christina of Spain (great-grandmother of
the present King Alfonso XIII.), which was also an utter failure. I
was told that the company had spacious offices established in Manila,
whence occasionally the employees went up to the mines, situated near
the Caraballo Mountain, as if they were going to a picnic. When they
arrived there, all denoted activity--for the feast; but the mining
work they did was quite insignificant compared with the squandered
funds, hence the disaster of the concern.
The coast of Surigao (north-east extremity of Mindanao Is.) has been
known for centuries to have gold-deposits. A few years ago it was
found in sufficiently large quantities near the surface to attract the
attention of capitalists. A sample of the washings was given to me,
but gold extraction was never taken up in an organized way in that
district. A friend of mine, a French merchant in Manila, told me in
1886 that for a long time he received monthly remittances of 4 1/2
to 5 1/2 lbs. of alluvial gold from the Surigao coast, extracted by
the natives on their own account. In the same district a Spaniard
attempted to organize labour for systematic gold-washing, but the
friars so influenced the natives against him that he could only have
continued his project at the risk of his life, therefore he gave it up.
In an independent way, the natives obtain gold from earth-washings in
many districts, particularly in the unsubdued regions of Luzon Island,
where it is quite a common occupation. The product is bartered on the
spot to the Chinese ambulant traders for other commodities. Several
times, whilst deer-stalking near the river, a few miles past Montalbán
(Rizal), I have fallen in with natives washing the sand from the river
bed in search of gold, and they have shown me some of their findings,
which they preserve in quills.
In other places in Luzon Island gold is procured in very small
quantities by washing the earth from the bottoms of pits dug from 20 to
25 feet deep and 3 feet wide. The extraction of gold from auriferous
rock is also known to the natives. The rock is broken by a stone on
an anvil of the same material. Then the broken pieces are crushed
between roughly-hewn stone rollers put in motion by buffaloes,
the pulverized ore being washed to separate the particles of the
precious metal. I should hardly think the yield was of much account,
as the people engaged in its extraction seemed to be miserably poor.
Gold probably exists in all the largest islands of the Archipelago,
but in a dispersed form; for the fact is, that after centuries of
search, large pockets or veins of it have never been traced to defined
localities, and, so far as discoveries up to the present demonstrate,
this Colony cannot be considered rich in auriferous deposits. Until
the contrary has been proved, I venture to submit the theory that
every gold-bearing reef in these Islands, accessible to man, has been
disintegrated by volcanic action ages ago.
In 1887 a Belgian correspondent wrote to me inquiring about a company
which, he stated, had been formed for working a Philippine mine of
Argentiferous Lead. On investigation I learnt that the mines referred
to were situated at Acsúbing, near the village of Consolacion, and at
Panoypoy, close to the village of Talamban in Cebú Island. They became
the property of a Frenchman [156] about the beginning of 1885, and so
far no shipment had been made, although the samples sent to Europe were
said to have yielded an almost incredibly enormous amount of gold (!),
besides being rich in galena (sulphide of lead) and silver. I went to
Cebú Island in June, 1887, and called on the owner in Mandaue with
the object of visiting these extraordinary mines; but they were not
being worked for want of funds, and he left for Europe the same year,
the enterprise being finally abandoned.
In 1893 "The Philippines Mineral Syndicate" was formed in London
to work scientifically the historical Mambulao Gold Mines already
referred to. One pound shares were offered in these Islands and
subscribed to by all classes, from the British Consul at that time
down to native commercial clerks. Mr. James Hilton, a mining engineer,
had reported favourably on the prospects. After the usual gold-mining
period of disappointment had passed away, an eccentric old gentleman
was sent out as an expert to revive the whole concern and set it
upon a prosperous basis. I had many conversations with him in Manila
before he went to Mambulao, where he soon died. Heavy machinery came
out from Europe, and a well-known Manila resident, not a mining
engineer, but an all-round smart man, was sent to Mambulao, and,
due to his ability, active operations commenced. This most recent
earnest venture in Philippine gold-mining has not, however, so far
proved to be a Golconda to the shareholders.
That there is gold in Mindoro Island is evident from the fact that
the Minguianes, a wild tribe, wear gold jewellery made by themselves,
and come down to the coast villages to barter with this metal, for
they do not understand trading with the coin medium.
As a general rule, failure in most Philippine mining speculations
was chiefly due to the unwillingness of the native to co-operate with
European capitalists in search of quick fortunes for themselves. The
native rustic did not seek and would not submit to constant organized
and methodical labour at a daily wage, to be paid periodically when
he had finished his work. The only class whom one could employ in the
neighbourhood of the mines was migratory and half-subjected, whilst
there was no legislation whatever in force regulating the relations
between workers and capitalists. Some suggested the employment of
Chinese, but the obstacles to this proposal have been pointed out
in Chap. viii. It is very doubtful whether much profitable mining
will ever be done in this Colony without Chinese labour. Again, the
wretched state of the public highways obliged the few enterprising
capitalists to spend their money on the construction of roads which
had already been paid for in taxes.
It is calculated that in the working of mines in the Philippines, as
much as P1,300,000 was spent from the beginning of the last century
up to 1876, without the least satisfactory result.
A Spanish writer [157] asserts that on the coasts of Taal and Bauan,
in the Province of Batangas, there were many traces of old gold-mines,
and remarks: "We are already scared in this enlightened century at
the number who have spent their silver and their health in excavating
mines in the Philippines, only to undeceive themselves, and find
their miserable greed punished."
Still Gold-seeking continues, and the hope of many an American to-day
is centred in the possibility of finding the smile of fortune in the
Benguet and other districts now being scoured by prospectors.
Iron-mines, situated a few miles from Manila, were worked about
the middle of the 18th century by Government, but the result being
disastrous, a concession of working rights was put up to public
auction, and adjudicated to a certain Francisco Salgado, who engaged
to pay annually to the State P20,500 in gold and 125 tons of iron. The
concern was an entire failure, chiefly owing to the usual transport
difficulty. Salgado afterwards discovered an iron mine in a place
called Santa Inés, near Bosoboso, in the district of Mórong, and
obtained a concession to work it. The ore is said to have yielded 75
per cent. of pure metal. The greatest obstacle which Salgado had to
contend with was the indolence of the natives, but eventually this
was overcome by employing Chinese in their stead. All went well for a
time, until the success which attended the undertaking awoke envy in
the capital. Salgado found it desirable to erect his smelting-furnaces
on the banks of the Bosoboso River to obtain a good water supply. For
this a special permission had to be solicited of the Gov.-General,
so the opportunity was taken to induce this authority to put a stop
to the whole concern on the ground that the Chinese workmen were
not Christians! Salgado was ordered to send these Chinese to the
Alcayceria in Binondo (Manila), and ship them thence to China at his
own expense. Moreover, on the pretext that the iron supplied to the
Royal Stores had been worked by infidels, the Government refused
to pay for the deliveries, and Salgado became a ruined victim of
religious fanaticism.
The old parish priest of Angat, in Bulacan Province, once gave me
the whole history of the rich iron-mines existing a few miles from
that town. It appears that at about the beginning of last century,
two Englishmen made vain efforts to work these mines. They erected
expensive machinery (which has since disappeared piece by piece),
and engaged all the headmen around, at fixed salaries, to perform
the simple duty of guaranteeing a certain number of men each to work
there daily. The headmen were very smart at receiving their pay,
some of them having the audacity to ask for it in advance; yet the
number of miners diminished, little by little, and no reasonable terms
could induce them to resume work. The priest related that, after the
Englishmen had spent a fortune of about £40,000, and seeing no result,
in despair they hired a canoe, telling the native in charge to paddle
out to sea, where they blew their brains out with pistols.
Afterwards a Spaniard, who had made money during years of office as
Chief Judge and Governor of the Bulacan Province, thought he could,
by virtue of the influence of his late position, command the services
of all the labourers he might require to work the mine. It was a vain
hope; he lost all his savings, and became so reduced in circumstances
that for a long time he was a pauper, accepting charity in the parish
convents of the province.
The Angat iron-mines undoubtedly yield a very rich ore--it is stated up
to 85 per cent. of metal. Up to the Revolution they were still worked
on a small scale. In 1885, at the foot of these ferruginous hills, I
saw a rough kind of smelting-furnace and foundry in a dilapidated shed,
where the points of ploughshares were being made. These were delivered
at a fixed minimum price to a Chinaman who went to Binondo (Manila) to
sell them to the Chinese ironmongers. In Malolos (Bulacan) I met one of
the partners in this little business--a Spanish half-caste--who told me
that it paid well in proportion to the trifling outlay of capital. If
the natives chose to bring in mineral they were paid for it; when
they did not come, the works and expenses were temporarily stopped.
In Baliuag, a few miles from Angat, where I have stayed a score
of times, I observed, at the threshold of several houses, slabs of
iron about 8 feet long by 2 feet wide and 5 inches thick. I inquired
about the origin of this novelty, and several respectable natives,
whom I had known for years, could only inform me that their elders
had told them about the foreigners who worked the Angat mines, and
that the iron in question came from there. Appearing to belong to no
one in particular, the slabs had been appropriated.
Copper is extracted in small quantities by both the wild tribes of
the North and the Mahometans of the South, who manufacture utensils
of this metal for their own use. In the North, half-worked copper
is obtained from the Igorrotes, but the attempt of a company--the
_Compañia Cantabro-Filipina_, established in the middle of last
century--to exploit the copper deposits in Mancayan, in the district
of Lepanto, has hardly been more successful than all other mining
speculations undertaken on a large scale in this Colony.
Marble exists in large beds in the Province of Bataan, which is the
west-coast boundary of Manila Bay, and also in the Island of Romblon,
but, under the circumstances explained, no one cared to risk capital
in opening quarries. In 1888 surface (boulder) marble was being cut
near Montalbán (Rizal) under contract with the Dominican friars to
supply them with it for their church in Manila. It was of a motley
whitish colour, polished well, and a sample of it sent by me to a
marble-importer in London was reported on favourably.
Granite is not found in these Islands, and there is a general want
of hard stone for building purposes. Some is procurable at Angono,
up the Lake of Bay, and it is from here that the stone was brought
by the Spaniards for the Manila Port Works. Granite is brought over
from Hong-Kong when needed for works of any importance, such as the
new Government House in Manila City, in course of construction when
the Spaniards evacuated the Islands. For ordinary building operations
there is a material--a kind of marl-stone called _Adobe_--so soft
when quarried that it can be cut out in small blocks with a hand-saw,
but it hardens considerably on exposure to the air.
Gypsum deposits occur in a small island opposite to the town of
Culasi (Antique) on the west coast of Panay, called Marilisan. The
superincumbent marl has been removed in several places where regular
workings were carried on for years by natives, and shiploads of it
were sent to Manila until the Spanish Government prohibited its free
extraction and export.
Sulphur exists in many islands, sometimes pure, in unlimited
quantities, and often mixed with copper, iron, and arsenic. The
crater peak of the Taal Volcano in the Bómbon Lake burst in 1749
(_vide_ p. 18), and from that date, until the eruption of 1754,
sulphur was extracted by the natives. These deposits were again
worked in 1780, and during a few years following. Bowring states
[158] that a well-known naturalist once offered a good sum of money
for the monopoly of working the sulphur mines in the Taal district.
Mineral oil was discovered some 12 years ago in the mountains of Cebú
Island, a few miles from the west-coast town of Toledo. A drill-boring
was made, and I was shown a sample of the crude _Oil_. An Irishman was
then conducting the experimental works. Subsequently a British engineer
visited the place, and reported favourably on the prospects. In 1896
I was again at the borings. Some small machinery had been erected for
working the drills. A Dutch mining engineer was in charge of the work,
which was being financed by a small British syndicate; but so far
a continuous flow had not been obtained, and it was still doubtful
whether a well had been struck or not. The Dutchman was succeeded
by an American, who, when the Spanish-American War was on the point
of breaking out, had to quit the place, and the enterprise has since
remained in suspense.
There is a tendency, in most new and unexplored countries, to
see visionary wealth in unpenetrated regions--to cast the eye of
imagination into the forest depths and the bowels of the earth, and
become fascinated with the belief that Nature has laid vast treasures
therein; and the veil of mystery constitutes a tradition until it is
rent by scientific investigation.
CHAPTER XX
Domestic Live-stock--Ponies, Buffaloes, Etc.
The Phillipine pony is not an indigenous animal. It is said to have
originated from the small Andalusian horse and the Chinese mare. I have
ridden more than 500 Philippine ponies, and, in general, I have found
them swift, strong, and elegant animals when well cared for. Geldings
are rarely met with. Before the American occupation ponies ranged
in value from P25 to P150 for a sound animal. Unfortunately,
prices of everything have risen since 1898, and, moreover, a fatal
horse-disease, called "surra," unknown in the Islands before that
period, has considerably reduced the stock of ponies. Due to these
causes, ponies cost to-day about three times the former prices.
The importation of Spanish and Australian horses resulted in failure,
because green grass (_zacate_)--the fodder of Philippine ponies--was
not the diet they had been accustomed to. Amateur enthusiasts
constantly urged the Spanish authorities to take measures for the
improvement of the breed, and in 1888 the acting Gov.-General Moltó
sent a commission to British India to purchase breeding-horses
and mares. A number of fine animals was brought to Manila, but the
succeeding Gov.-General, Weyler, disapproved of the transaction, and
the stock was sold to the public. Two stallions and two mares fetched
together P2,600, the prices of the others ranging about P700 each.
Pony-races took place at Santa Mesa (Manila) every spring. They
were organized by "the Manila Jockey Club," usually patronized by
the Gov.-General of the day, and the great meet lasted three days,
when prizes were awarded to the winners. Ponies which had won races
in Manila fetched from P300 to P1,000. The new racecourse is at Pasay.
In Cebú also there were pony races every autumn on the racecourse
facing the _Cotta_ and the Government House.
Since 1898 the American authorities have imported thousands of horses
from the United States for the public service, and American dealers
have brought quantities of them from Australia and the United States
for private sale. All their fodder, however, has to be procured from
America in pressed bales, as they cannot thrive on the food of the
country. It is thought, however, that a plant, called _Teosinte_,
which is now being cultivated, will be suitable for horse-fodder when
the animals become thoroughly acclimatized.
The ordinary native has no notion of the proper treatment of ponies,
his idea being, generally, that this highly nervous animal can be
managed by brute force and the infliction of heavy punishment. Sights,
as painful as they are ridiculous, are often the result of this
error. Unfortunately, the lower-class native feels little attachment
to any animal but the Buffalo, or _Carabao_, as it is called here,
and the family pig.
Buffaloes six years old are considered in the prime of life
for beginning work, and will continue at hard labour, when well
pastured and bathed, for another six years. At 12 years of age a
carefully worked buffalo will still serve for light labour for about
five years. It is an amphibious animal, and if left to itself it
would pass quite one-third of its life in water or mud, whilst it
is indispensable to allow it to bathe every day. When grazing near
flooded land it will roam into the water up to its neck and immerse
its head for two minutes at a time, searching for vegetable food
below the surface. Whilst undisturbed in the field it is usually
accompanied by five or six white herons, which follow in its trail
in perfect security and feed on the worms and insects brought to the
surface by its foot-prints. It seems also to enjoy the attentions of
a small black bird, which hops about on its back and head to cleanse
its skin and ears of vermin. It is curious to watch this bird flying
towards the buffalo, which raises its head to receive it.
The rustic and the buffalo are familiar companions, and seem to
understand each other perfectly well. There is a certain affinity
between them in many ways. When a peasant is owner of the animal he
works, he treats it almost like one of the family. It is very powerful,
docile, slow in its movements, and easy to train. Many times I have
seen a buffalo ridden and guided by a piece of split rattan attached
to a rattan-ring in its nostril by a child three years of age. It
knows the voices of the family to which it belongs, and will approach
or stand still when called by any one of them. It is not of great
endurance, and cannot support hard work in the sun for more than a
couple of hours without rest and bathing if water be near. Europeans
cannot manage this animal, and very few attempt it; it requires the
patience, the voice, and the peculiar movement of the native.
Altogether the buffalo may be considered the most useful animal in
the Philippines. It serves for carting, ploughing, carrying loads
on its back, and almost all labour of the kind where great strength
is required for a short time. A peasant possessed of a bowie-knife,
a buffalo, and good health, need not seek far to make an independent
living. I owe a certain gratitude to buffaloes, for more than once they
have pulled my carriage out of the mud in the provinces, where horses
could get along no farther. Finally, buffalo-meat is an acceptable
article of food when nothing better can be got; by natives it is
much relished. Its flesh, like that of deer and oxen, is sometimes
cut into thin slices and sun-dried, to make what is called in the
Philippines _Tapa_, in Cuba _Tasajo_, and in Spain _Cecina_.
In the Visayas Islands oxen are used as draught-animals as frequently
as buffaloes,--sometimes even for carriages.
Wild buffaloes are met with, and, when young, they are easily
tamed. Buffalo-hunting, as a sport, is a very dangerous diversion, and
rarely indulged in, as death or victory must come to the infuriated
beast or the chaser. A good hunting-ground is Nueva Ecija, near the
Caraballo de Baler Mountain.
The domesticated buffalo is subject to a bronchial disease called
_garrotillo_; it rarely recovers from a serious sprain, and more
rarely still from a broken leg. In 1887-88, an epidemic disease,
previously unknown, appeared among the cattle, and several thousands
of them died. From the autopsy of some diseased buffaloes, it was
seen that the inside had become converted into blood. Agriculturists
suffered great losses. In the poor neighbourhood of Antipolo alone,
1,410 head of cattle died within four months, according to a report
which the Governor of Mórong showed to me. An old acquaintance of mine
in Bulacan Province lost 85 per cent. of his live-stock in the season,
whilst the remainder were more or less affected.
As a consequence of the Revolution (1896-98) and the War of
Independence (1899-1901) the stock of buffaloes was considerably
reduced, many thousands of these useful animals having been stolen
from their owners by the belligerents, only to slay them or work them
to death. When peace dawned again on the Colony, rinderpest commenced
to make ravages in the buffalo herds, which are now reduced to a
mere fraction of what they were in 1896. The consequences of these
losses in live-stock are referred to in Chap. xxxi. Before the wars,
a buffalo could be got for P10 in places, such as hemp districts,
where ploughing is seldom necessary, whilst in the sugar-yielding
Island of Negros P30 was about the lowest price for an average trained
animal. The present value is from P125 to P250.
In all my travels in this Colony I have seen only five _Donkeys_,
which were imported simply as curiosities.
Mules have been imported into the Islands by the American authorities
for the public service. If sold they would fetch about P300 each. They
are the most satisfactory draught-animals ever introduced and, but
for the fear of the new disease "surra," might take the place of
buffaloes in agriculture.
Sheep do not thrive in this climate. They are brought from Shanghai,
and, as a rule, they languish and die in a few months. Oxen, goats,
dogs, cats, pigs, monkeys, fowls, ducks, turkeys, and geese are
among the ordinary domestic live-stock. Both the dogs and the cats
are of very poor species, and the European breeds are eagerly sought
for. The better class of natives have learned to appreciate the higher
instincts of the European dog. Many Chinese dogs with long, straight
hair, pointed nose, small eyes, and black tongues are brought over
from Hong-Kong. All thoroughbred Philippine cats have a twist in
their tails, and are not nearly so fine as the European race.
Natives do not particularly relish mutton or goat's flesh, which
they say is heating to the blood. I have found stewed monkey very
good food, but the natives only eat it on very rare occasions,
solely as a cure for cutaneous diseases. No flesh, fish or poultry
has the same flavour here as in Europe; sometimes, indeed, the meat
of native oxen sold in Manila has a repulsive taste when the animal
has been quickly fattened for the market on a particular herb, which
it eats readily. Neither can it be procured so tender as in a cold
climate. If kept in an ice-chest it loses flavour; if hung up in
cool air it becomes flabby and decomposes. However, the cold-storage
established by the American authorities and private firms, since
1898, has greatly contributed to improve the supply of tender meat,
and meat shipments are regularly received from Australia and America.
The seas are teeming with fish, and there are swarms of sharks,
whose victims are numerous, whilst crocodiles are found in most of
the deep rivers and large swamps in uncultivated tracts. The _Taclobo_
sea-shell is sometimes found weighing up to about 180 lbs. Fresh-water
fish is almost flavourless and little appreciated.
In all the rice-paddy fields, small fish called _Dalág_ (_Ophiocephalus
vagus_), are caught by the natives, for food, with cane nets, or
rod and line, when the fields are flooded. Where this piscatorial
phenomenon exists in the dry season no one has been able satisfactorily
to explain.
The only beast of prey known in the Philippines is the wild cat,
and the only wild animal to be feared is the buffalo.
Both the jungles and the villages abound with insects and reptilia,
such as lizards, snakes, iguanas, frogs, and other batrachian species,
land-crabs, centipedes [159], tarantulas, scorpions, huge spiders,
hornets, common beetles, queen-beetles (_elator noctilucus_) and
others of the vaginopennous order, red ants (_formica smaragdina_),
etc. Ants are the most common nuisance, and food cannot be left on
the table a couple of hours without a hundred or so of them coming
to feed. For this reason sideboards and food-cupboards are made
with legs to stand in basins of water. There are many species of
ants, from the size of a pin's head to half an inch long. On the
forest-trees a bag of a thin whitish membrane, full of young ants,
is sometimes seen hanging, and the traveller, for his own comfort,
should be careful not to disturb it.
Boa-Constrictors are also found, but they are rare, and I have never
seen one in freedom. They are the most harmless of all snakes in
the Philippines. Sometimes the Visayos keep them in their houses,
in cages, as pets. Small _Pythons_ are common. The snakes most to
be dreaded are called by the natives _Alupong_ and _Daghong-palay_
(Tagálog dialect). Their bite is fatal if not cauterized at once. The
latter is met with in the deep mud of rice-fields and amongst the tall
rice-blades, hence its name. Stagnant waters are nearly everywhere
infested with _Leeches_. In the trees in dense forests there is also
a diminutive species of leech which jumps into one's eyes.
In the houses and huts in Manila, and in most low-lying places,
mosquitoes are troublesome, but thanks to an inoffensive kind of
lizard with a disproportionately big ugly head called the _chacon_,
and the small house-newt, one is tolerably free from crawling
insects. _Newts_ are quite harmless to persons, and are rather
encouraged than otherwise. If one attempts to catch a newt by its
tail it shakes it off and runs away, leaving it behind. Rats and mice
are numerous. There are myriads of cockroaches; but happily fleas,
house-flies, and bugs are scarce. In the wet-season evenings the
croaking of frogs in the pools and swamps causes an incessant din.
In the dry-season evenings certain trees are illuminated by swarms
of fire-flies, which assemble and flicker around the foliage as do
moths around the flame of a candle. The effect of their darting in
and out like so many bright sparks between the branches is very pretty.
There are many very beautiful _Moths_ and _Butterflies_. In 1897 I
brought home about 300 specimens of Philippine butterflies for the
Hon. Walter Rothschild.
The _White Ant_ (_termes_), known here as _Anay_, is by far the
most formidable insect in its destructive powers. It is also common
in China. Here it eats through most woods, but there are some rare
exceptions, such as Molave, Ipil, Yacal, etc. If white ants earnestly
take possession of the woodwork of a building not constructed of
the finest timber, it is a hopeless case. I have seen deal-wood
packing-cases, which have come from Europe, so eaten away that they
could not be lifted without falling to pieces. Merchants' warehouses
have had to be pulled down and rebuilt owing to the depredations of
this insect, as, even if the building itself were not in danger, no
one would care to risk the storage of goods inside. The destruction
caused by _anay_ is possibly exaggerated, but there is no doubt that
many traders have lost considerable sums through having had to realize,
at any price, wares into which this insect had penetrated.
Bats are to be seen in this Colony, measuring up to 5 feet from
tip to tip of their wings. They are caught for the value of their
beautiful soft skins, which generally find a sale to Europeans
returning home. Bat-shooting is a good pastime, and a novelty to
Europeans. Small Bats frequently fly into the houses in the evening.
Deer and _Wild Boars_ are plentiful, and afford good sport to the
huntsman. In Mórong district--in Negros Island--and in Rizal Province,
on and in the vicinity of the estate which I purchased--I have had
some good runs. Monkeys, too, abound in many of the forests. In all
the islands there is enjoyment awaiting the sportsman. Pheasants,
snipe, a dozen varieties of wild pigeons, woodcock, jungle-fowl
(_gallus bankiva_), wild ducks, water-fowl, etc. are common, whilst
there are also turtle-doves, _calaos_ (_buceros hydrocorax_), hawks,
cranes, herons, crows, parrots, cockatoos, kingfishers, parroquets,
and many others peculiar to the Archipelago which I will leave to
ornithologists to describe. [160] One curious species of pigeon
(_calanas nicobarina_) is called in Spanish _Paloma de puñalada_
because of the crimson feathers on its breast, which look exactly as if
they were blood-stained from a dagger-stab. [161] In 1898 I saw some
specimens of this pigeon in the Hamburg Zoological Gardens. There
are several birds of gorgeous plumage, such as the _oropendolo_
(Spanish name).
It is a curious fact that these Islands have no singing birds.
The _Locust Plague_ is one of the great risks the planter has to
run. In 1851 the Government imported some _Martins_ from China with
the hope of exterminating the locusts. When the birds arrived in
the port of Manila they were right royally received by a body of
troops. A band of music accompanied them with great ceremony to Santa
Mesa, where they were set at liberty, and the public were forbidden
to destroy them under severe penalties. At that date there were
countless millions of locusts among the crops. These winged insects
(Tagálog, _balang_) come in swarms of millions at a time, and how
to exterminate them is a problem. I have seen a mass of locusts so
dense that a row of large trees the other side of them could not be
distinguished. Sailing along the Antique coast one evening, I observed,
on the fertile shore, a large brown-coloured plateau. For the moment I
thought it was a tract of land which had been cleared by fire, but on
nearing it I noticed that myriads of locusts had settled on several
fields. We put in quite close to them and I fired off a revolver,
the noise of which caused them to move off slowly in a cloud. When
locusts settle on cultivated lands, miles of crops are often ruined
in a night by the foliage being consumed, and at daybreak only fields
of stalks are to be seen. In the daytime, when the locusts are about
to attack a planted field, the natives rush out with their tin cans,
which serve as drums, bamboo clappers, red flags, etc., to scare
them off, whilst others light fires in open spaces with damp fuel to
raise smoke. Another effective method adopted to drive them away is to
fire off small mortars, such as the natives use at provincial feasts,
as these insects are sensitive to the least noise.
The body of a locust is similar in appearance to a large
grasshopper. The females are of a dark brown colour, and the males of
a light reddish-brown. The female extends the extremity of her body
in the form of an augur, with which she pierces the earth to the depth
of an inch, there to deposit her eggs. In two or three weeks the eggs
hatch. Every few days the females lay eggs, if allowed to settle. The
newly-born insects, having no wings until they are about ten days
old, cannot be driven off, and in the meantime they make great havoc
among the crops, where it is difficult to extinguish them. The method
employed to get rid of them is to place a barrier, such as sheets of
corrugated iron roofing, at one side of a field, dig a pit in front of
the barrier, and send a number of men to beat round the three sides
of the field until the young locusts jump in heaps into the pit. I
have heard planters say that they have succeeded, in this way, in
destroying as much as 20 tons of locusts in one season. I do not know
the maximum distance that locusts can fly in one continuous journey,
but they have been known to travel as much as 60 miles across the
sea. Millions of unwinged locusts (called _lucton_) have been seen
floating down river streams, whilst, however, the winged insect cannot
resist the heavy rains which accompany a hurricane.
It is said that the food passes through the body of a locust as
fast as it eats, and that its natural death is due either to want of
nourishment, or to a small worm which forms in the body and consumes
it. It is also supposed that the female dies after laying a certain
number of eggs. Excepting the damage to vegetation, locusts are
perfectly harmless insects, and native children catch them to play
with; also, when fried, they serve as food for the poorest classes--in
fact, I was assured, on good authority, that in a certain village in
Tayabas Province, where the peasants considered locusts a dainty dish,
payment was offered to the parish priest for him to say Mass and pray
for the continuance of the luxury. In former times, before there were
so many agriculturists interested in their destruction, these insects
have been known to devastate the Colony during six consecutive years.
In the mud of stagnant waters, a kind of beetle, called in Visaya
dialect _Tanga_, is found, and much relished as an article of food. In
the dry season, as much as fifty cents a dozen is paid for them in Molo
(Yloilo) by well-to-do natives. Many other insects, highly repugnant
to the European, are a _bonne bouche_ for the natives.
CHAPTER XXI
Manila Under Spanish Rule
Manila, the capital of the Philippines, is situated on the Island of
Luzon at the mouth and on the left (south) bank of the Pasig River,
at N. lat. 14° 36' by E. long. 120° 52'. It is a fortified city,
being encircled by bastioned and battlemented walls, which were
built in the time of Governor Gomez Perez Dasmariñas, about the
year 1590. It is said that the labour employed was Chinese. These
walls measure about two miles and a quarter long, and bore mounted
old-fashioned cannon. The fortifications are of stone, and their solid
construction may rank as a _chef d'oeuvre_ of the 16th century. The
earthquake of 1880 caused an arch of one of the entrances to fall in,
and elsewhere cracks are perceptible. These defects were never made
good. The city is surrounded by water--to the north the Pasig River,
to the west the sea, and the moats all around. These moats are paved
at the bottom, and sluices--perhaps not in good working order at the
present day--are provided for filling them with water from the river.
The demolition of the walls and moats was frequently debated by
commissions specially appointed from Spain--the last in October,
1887. It is said that a commission once recommended the cleansing of
the moats, which were half full of mud, stagnant water, and vegetable
putrid matter, but the authorities hesitated to disturb the deposit,
for fear of fetid odours producing fever or other endemic disease.
These city defences, although quite useless in modern warfare with
a foreign Power, as was proved in 1898, might any day have been
serviceable as a refuge for Europeans in the event of a serious revolt
of the natives or Chinese. The garrison consisted of one European
and several native regiments.
There are eight drawbridge entrances to the Citadel [162] wherein
were some Government Offices, branch Post and Telegraph Offices,
the Custom-house (temporarily removed to Binondo since May 4, 1887,
during the construction of the new harbour), Colleges, Convents,
Monasteries, a Prison, numerous Barracks, a Mint, a Military Hospital,
an Academy of Arts, a University, a statue of Charles IV. situated
in a pretty square, a fine Town Hall, a Meteorological Observatory,
of which the director was a Jesuit priest, an Artillery Dépôt, a
Cathedral and 11 churches. [163] The little trade done in the city
was exclusively retail. In the month of April or May, 1603, a great
fire destroyed one-third of the city, the property consumed being
valued at P1,000,000.
Manila City was a lifeless capital, with narrow streets all running at
right angles with each other, of sombre, monastic aspect. It had no
popular cafés, no opera-house or theatre; indeed absolutely no place
of recreation. Only the numerous religious processions relieved the
uniformity of city life. The whole (walled) city and its environments
seem to have been built solely with a view to self-defence. Since
1887 it had been somewhat embellished by gardens in the public squares.
Besides the churches of the walled city, those of the suburbs are of
great historical interest. In the Plaza de Santa Cruz is established
the _Monte de Piedad_, or Public Pawnshop--a fine building--erected
under the auspices of Archbishop Pedro Payo.
The great trading-centre is the Island of Binondo, on the right (north)
bank of the Pasig River, where the foreign houses are established. On
the city side of the river, where there was little commerce and
no export or import trade whatever, a harbour was in course of
construction, without the least hope of its ever being completed by
the Spaniards. All the sea-wall visible of these works was carried
away by a typhoon on September 29, 1890. To defray the cost of making
this harbour, a special duty (not included in the Budget) of one per
cent. on exports, two per cent. on imports, 10 cents per ton on vessels
(besides the usual tonnage dues of eight cents per register ton), and a
fishing-craft tax were collected since June, 1880. For eighteen years'
dues-collection of several millions of pesos only a scrap of sea-wall
was to be seen beyond the river in 1898, of no use to trade or to
any one. In 1882 fourteen huge iron barges for the transport of stone
from Angono for the harbour were constructed by an English engineer,
Mr. W. S. Richardson, under contract with the Port Works, for P82,000.
The Port of Manila was officially held to extend for 27 miles
westward from the mouth of the Pasig River. This tortuous river,
about 14 miles long, flows from the Laguna de Bay.
The anchorage of the port was in the bay, two to two and a half miles
south-west from the red light at the river-entrance, in about six
fathoms. There was no special locality reserved for warships.
Ships at the anchorage communicated with the shore by their own
boats or steam-launch, and the loading and discharging of vessels was
chiefly effected in the bay, one to three miles off the river mouth,
by means of lighters called _cascoes_.
Manila Bay has a circumference of 120 nautical miles, and is far too
large to afford adequate protection to ships. The country around it
is flat in character and has really nothing attractive.
On October 20, 1882, a typhoon drove 11 ships and one steamer ashore
from their anchorage, besides dismasting another and causing three
more to collide. When a typhoon is approaching vessels have to run
to Cavite for shelter.
The entrance to the bay is divided into two passages by the small
Island of Corregidor, on which was a lighthouse showing a revolving
bright light, visible 20 miles off. Here was also a signal-station,
communicating by a semaphore with a telegraph station on the opposite
Luzon coast, and thence by wire with Manila. North of Corregidor
Island is situated the once important harbour of Marivéles. [164]
The entrance to the Pasig River is between two moles, which run out
westward respectively from the citadel on the south bank and from the
business suburb of Binondo on the north bank. At the outer extremity
of the northern mole was a lighthouse, showing a fixed red light,
visible eight miles.
Vessels drawing up to 13 feet could enter the river. In the middle of
1887 a few electric lights were established along the quays from the
river mouth to the first bridge, and one light also on that bridge,
so that steamers could enter the river after sunset if desired. The
wharfage is wholly occupied by steamers and sailing-craft trading
within the Archipelago. The tides are very irregular. The rise and
fall at springs may be taken to be five feet.
Up to 1887 ships needing repairs had to go to Hong-Kong, but in that
year a patent slip was established at Cañacao Bay, near Cavite, seven
miles southward from the Manila Bay anchorage. The working capacity
of the hydraulic hauling power of the slip was 2,000 tons.
At Cavite, close by Cañacao, there was a Government Arsenal and a
small slip, having a hauling power of about 500 tons.
Up to the year 1893 the streets of Manila City and suburbs were
badly lighted--petroleum lamps, and sometimes cocoanut oil, being
used. (The paving was perhaps more defective than the lighting.) In
1892 an Electric Light Company was formed, with a share capital of
P500,000 (P350,000 paid up) for illuminating the city and suburbs and
private lighting. Under the contract with the Municipality the company
received a grant of P60,000, and the concern was in full working order
the following year. The poorest working class of Manila--fishermen,
canoemen, day labourers, etc.--live principally in the ward of Tondo,
where dwellings with thatched roofs were allowed to be constructed. In
the wet season the part of this ward nearest to the city was simply
a mass of pollution. The only drainage was a ditch cut around the
mud-plots on which the huts were erected. Many of these huts had
pools of stagnant water under them for months, hence it was there
that the mortality from fever was at its maximum ratio in the dry
season when evaporation commenced. Half the shore side of Tondo
has been many times devastated by conflagrations and by hurricanes,
locally termed _báguios_.
Binondo presents an aspect of great activity during the day. The import
and export trade is still largely in the hands of British merchants,
and the retail traffic is, to a great extent, monopolized by the
Chinese. Their tiny shops, grouped together in rows, form bazaars. At
each counter sits a Chinaman, casting up accounts, with the ancient
_abacus_ [165] still serving him for practical reckoning. Another
is ready at the counter to strike the bargain, whilst a third crafty
Celestial lounges about the entrance to tout for custom, with a margin
on his prices for haggling which is high or low according to whether
the intending purchaser be American, European, half-caste, or native.
There is hardly a street without Chinese dealers, but their principal
centre is the _Rosario_, whilst the finest American and European
shops are to be found in the _Escolta_. [166]
In 1881 a great fire occurred in the _Escolta_, and since then
the class of property in that important thoroughfare has been much
improved. In October, 1885, a second serious fire took place in this
street, and on the site of the ruins there now stands a fine block of
buildings formerly occupied by the Central Post Office and Telegraph
Station, and a row of good shops in European style.
During the working hours were to be seen hundreds of smart Chinese
coolies, half-naked, running in all directions with loads, or driving
carts, whilst the natives dreamily sauntered along the streets,
following their numerous occupations with enviable tranquillity. In the
doorways here and there were native women squatting on the flag-stones,
picking lice from each other's heads, and serving a purchaser
between-times with cigars, betel-nut, and food, when occasion offered.
Certain small handicrafts are almost entirely taken up by the Chinese,
such as boot-making, furniture-making, small smith's-work and
casting, tin-working, tanning, dyeing, etc., whilst the natives are
occupied as silversmiths, engravers, saddlers, water-colour painters,
furniture-polishers, bookbinders, etc. A few years ago the apothecaries
were almost exclusively Germans; now the profession is shared with
natives, half-castes, and one British firm.
The thoroughfares were crowded with carriages during the whole day
drawn by pretty native ponies. The public conveyance regulations in
Spanish times were excellent. The rates for hiring were very moderate,
and were calculated by the time engaged. Incivility of drivers was
a thing almost unknown. Their patience was astonishing. They would,
if required, wait for the fare for hours together in a drenching rain
without a murmur. Having engaged a vehicle (in Manila or elsewhere)
it is usual to guide the driver by calling out to him each turn he has
to take. Thus, if he be required to go to the right--_mano_ (hand)
is the word used; if to the left--_silla_ (saddle) is shouted. This
custom originated in the days before natives were intrusted to drive,
when a postilion rode the left (saddle) pony, and guided his right
(hand) animal with a short rein.
Through the city and suburbs ran lines of tramway with cars drawn
by ponies, and (from October 20, 1888 until 1905) a steam tramway
operated as far as Malabon.
Fortunately, Easter week brought two days of rest every year for
the ponies, namely, Holy Thursday and Good Friday. As in Spain also,
with certain exceptions, such as doctors, urgent Government service,
etc., vehicles were not permitted in the streets and highways on those
days. Soldiers passing through the streets on service carried their
guns with the muzzles pointing to the ground. The church bells were
tolled with muffled hammers; hence, the vibration of the metal being
checked, the peal sounded like the beating of so many tin cans. The
shops were closed, and, so far as was practicable, every outward
appearance of care for worldly concerns was extinguished, whilst it was
customary for the large majority of the population--natives as well as
Europeans--who went through the streets to be attired in black. On Good
Friday afternoon there was an imposing religious procession through
the city and suburbs. On the following Saturday morning (_Sábado de
Gloria_), there was a lively scene after the celebration of Mass. In a
hundred portals and alleys, public and private vehicles were awaiting
the peal of the unmuffled church bells. The instant this was heard
there was a rush in all directions--the clanking of a thousand ponies'
feet; the rumbling sound of hundreds of carriages. The mingled shouts
of the natives and the Chinese coolies showed with what bated anxiety
and forced subjection material interest and the affairs of this life
had been held in check and made subservient to higher thoughts.
An official computation in the year 1885 stated the average number
of vehicles which passed through the main street of the city (_Calle
Real_) _per day_ to be 950; through the _Escolta_, the principal
street of Binondo, 5,000; and across the bridge, connecting Binondo
with Manila City (where the river is 350 feet wide), 6,000.
Sir John Bowring, in the account of his short visit to Manila in 1858,
says he was informed on good authority that the average number of
vehicles passing daily at that date through the _Escolta_ amounted to
915; across the bridge, between Binondo and Manila, 1,256; so that
apparently in 27 years the number of vehicles in use had increased
by about five to one.
The Pasig River is navigable by steam-launches and
specially-constructed steamers of light draught, which go up the whole
distance into the Laguna de Bay. The river is crossed at Manila and
suburbs by three bridges, the chief of which is the _Puente de España._
[167]
In the suburbs there were four Theatres, in none of which a dramatic
company of any note would consent to perform. In one (the _Teatro
Filipino_) the performance could be partly seen from the street;
another (the _Teatro de Tondo_) was situated in a dirty thoroughfare
in a low quarter; the third (the _Teatro del Principe_) usually gave
an entertainment in dialect for the amusement of the natives; and the
fourth (the _Teatro Zorrilla_), located in Tondo, was built to serve
as theatre or circus without any regard to its acoustic properties;
hence only one-third of the audience could hear the dialogue. There
was a permanent Spanish Comedy Company (on tour at times in Yloilo
and Cebú), and occasionally a troupe of foreign strolling players,
a circus, a concert, or an Italian Opera Company came to Manila to
entertain the public for a few weeks.
In 1880 there used to be a kind of tent-theatre, called the _Carrillo_
where performances were given without any pretence to histrionic
art or stage regulations. The scenes were highly ridiculous, and
the gravest spectator could not suppress laughter at the exaggerated
attitudes and comic display of the native performers. The public had
full licence to call to the actors and criticize them in loud voices
_séance tenante_--often to join in the choruses and make themselves
quite at home during the whole spectacle. About a year afterwards
the _Carrillo_ was suppressed. The first Spaniards who systematically
taught the Filipinos European histrionics were Ramon Cubero and his
wife, Elisea Raguer (both very popular in their day), whose daughter
married the Philippine actor and dramatic author José Carvajal. The
old-fashioned native play was the "_Moro Moro_," which continued in
full vogue, in the provinces, up to the end of Spanish dominion. [168]
In the suburb of Paco there was a bull-ring, which did not generally
attract the _élite_, as a bull-fight there was simply a burlesque
upon this national sport as seen in Spain. I have witnessed a Manila
_espada_ hang on to the tail of his victim, and a _banderillero_ meet
the rush of the bull with a vault over his head, amidst hoots from the
shady class of audience who formed the _habitués_ of the Manila ring.
The Civil Governor of the Province had full arbitrary power to enforce
the regulations relating to public performances, but it was seldom he
imposed a fine. The programme had to be sanctioned by authority before
it was published, and it could neither be added to nor any part of
it omitted, without special licence. The performance was given under
the censorship of the Corregidor or his delegate, whose duty it was
to guard the interests of the public, and to see that the spectacle
did not outrage morality.
The ostensible purpose of every annual feast all over the Colony
was to render homage to the local patron Saint and give thanks for
mercies received in the past year. Every town, village, and suburb
was supposed to be specially cared for by its patron Saint, and when
circumstances permitted it there was a religious procession, which
was intended to impress on the minds of the faithful the virtue of
the intercessors by ocular demonstration. Vast sums of money were
expended from time to time in adornment of the images, the adoration
of which seemed to be tinctured with pantheistic feeling, as if these
symbols were part of the Divine essence.
Among the suburban feasts of Manila, that of Binondo was particularly
striking. It took place in the month of October. An imposing
illuminated procession, headed by the clergy, guarded by troops, and
followed up by hundreds of native men, women and children carrying
candles, promenaded the principal streets of the vicinity. But the
religious feeling of the truly devoted was shocked by one ridiculous
feature--the mob of native men, dressed in gowns and head-wreaths,
in representation of the Jews who persecuted our Saviour, rushing
about the streets in tawdry attire before and after the ceremony in
such apparent ignorance of the real intention that it annulled the
sublimity of the whole function.
All Saints' Day--November 1--brought a large income to the priests in
the most frequented parish churches. This is one of the days on which
souls can be got out of Purgatory. The faithful flocked in mobs to the
popular shrines, where an effort was made to place a lighted wax candle
at the foot of the altar, and on bended knee to invoke the Saints' aid
on behalf of their departed relatives and friends. But the crowd was
so great that the pious were not permitted this consolation for more
than two or three minutes. Sacristans made them move on, to leave room
for new-comers, and their candles were then extinguished and collected
in heaps, Chinese infidel coolies being sometimes employed to carry
away the spoil to the parish priest's store. The wax was afterwards
sold to dealers. One church is said to have collected on November 1,
1887, as much as 40 cwts., valued at P37 per cwt. This day was a
public holiday, and in the afternoon and evening it was the custom
to visit the last resting-places, to leave a token of remembrance on
the tombs of the lamented.
The Asylum for Lepers, at Dalumbayan, in the ward of Santa Cruz, was
also visited the same day, and whilst many naturally went there to
see their afflicted relations and friends, others, of morbid tastes,
satisfied their curiosity. This Asylum, subsidized by Government
to the extent of P500 per annum, was, in the time of the Spaniards,
under the care of Franciscan friars.
In January or February the Chinese celebrate their New Year, and
suspend work during a week or ten days. The authorities did not
permit them to revel in fun to the extent they would have done in
their own country; nevertheless, Chinese music, gongs, and crackers
were indulged in, in the quarters most thickly populated by this race.
The natives generally have an unbounded passion for cock-fighting,
and in the year 1779 it occurred to the Government that a profitable
revenue might be derived from a tax on this sport. Thenceforth it
was only permitted under a long code of regulations on Sundays and
feast days, and in places officially designated for the "meet" of
the combatants. In Manila alone the permission to meet was extended
to Thursdays. The cock-pit is called the _Gallera_, and the tax was
farmed out to the highest bidding contractor, who undertook to pay
a fixed annual sum to the Government, making the best he could for
himself out of the gross proceeds from entrance-fees and sub-letting
rents in excess of that amount. In like manner the Government farmed
out the taxes on horses, vehicles, sale of opium, slaughter of animals
for consumption, bridge-tolls, etc., and, until 1888, the market
dues. Gambling licences also brought a good revenue, but it would
have been as impossible to suppress cock-fighting in the Islands as
gambling in England. [169]
The Spanish laws relating to the cock-pit were very strict, and
were specially decreed on March 21,1861. It was enacted that the
maximum amount to be staked by one person on one contest should be 50
pesos. That each cock should wear only one metal spur. That the fight
should be held to be terminated on the death of one or both cocks,
or when one of them retreated. However, the decree contained in all a
hundred clauses too tedious to enumerate. Cock-fighting is discussed
among the natives with the same enthusiasm as horse-racing is in
England. The majority of sportsmen rear cocks for several years,
bestowing upon them as much tender care as a mother would on her
infant. When the hope of the connoisseur has arrived at the age of
discretion and valour, it is put forward in open combat, perhaps
to perish in the first encounter. And the patient native goes on
training others.
Within twenty minutes' drive from Manila, at Nagtájan, on the
right bank of the Pasig River, there was a good European club (since
removed to Ermita), of which the members were chiefly English-speaking
merchants and employees. The entrance-fee was [Pesos]30; the monthly
subscription was [Pesos]5, and [Pesos]1 per month extra for the use
of a fairly good library.
The principal hotel--the "Hotel de Oriente"--was opened in Binondo
in January, 1889, in a large two-storeyed building, with 83 rooms
for the public service, and stabling for 25 horses. It was the
first building specially erected in the Colony for an hotel. The
accommodation and board were good. It ranked with the best hotels
in the East. [In 1903 the building was purchased by the (American)
Insular Government for public offices.] In Manila City and Binondo
there were several other Spanish hotels where the board was tolerable,
but the lodging and service abominable. There was a telephone system
established throughout the city and its environs.
The press was represented by five dailies--_El Diario de Manila,
La Oceania Española_, three evening papers, _El Comercio, La Voz de
España_, and (from March 3, 1889) _La Correspondencia de Manila_--also
a bi-weekly, _La Opinion_. Some good articles appeared at times
in the three dailies first mentioned, but as newspapers strictly
so-called, the information in all was remarkably scant, due to the
strict censorship exercised jointly by a priest and a layman. There
was also a purely official organ--the _Gaceta de Manila_.
The first news-sheet published in Manila appears to have been the
_Filántropo_, in the year 1822, which existed only a few years. Others
followed and failed in a short time. The first Manila daily paper was
the _Estrella_, which started in 1846 and lasted three years. Since
then several dailies have seen the light for a brief period. The
_Diario de Manila_, started in 1848, was the oldest newspaper of
those existing at the end of the Spanish regime.
In Spain journalism began in the 17th century by the publication,
at irregular intervals, of sheets called "_Relaciones_." The first
Spanish newspaper, correctly so called, was established in the 18th
century. Seventy-eight years ago there was only one regular periodical
journal in Madrid. After the Peninsula War, a step was made towards
political journalism. This led to such an abuse of the pen that in
1824 all, except the _Gaceta de Madrid_, the _Gaceta de Bayona_, the
_Diario_, and a few non-political papers were suppressed. Madrid has
now scores of newspapers, of which half a dozen are very readable. The
_Correspondencia de España_, founded by the late Marquis de Santa
Ana as a Montpensier organ, used to afford me great amusement in
Madrid. It contained columns of most extraordinary events in short
paragraphs (_gacetillas_), and became highly popular, hundreds of
persons eagerly waiting to secure a copy. In a subsequent issue, a
few days later, many of the paragraphs in the same columns were merely
corrections of the statements previously published, but so ingeniously
interposed that the hoax took the public for a long time. Newspapers
from Spain were not publicly exposed for sale in Manila; those which
were seen came from friends or by private subscription, whilst many
were proscribed as inculcating ideas dangerously liberal.
There was a botanical garden, rather neglected, although it cost the
Colony about P8,600 per annum. The stock of specimens was scanty,
and the grounds were deserted by the general public. It was at least
useful in one sense--that bouquets were supplied at once to purchasers
at cheap rates, from 25 cents and upwards.
In the environs of Manila there are several pleasant drives and
promenades, the most popular one being the _Luneta_, where a military
band frequently played after sunset. The Gov.-General's palace [170]
and the residences of the foreign European population and well-to-do
natives and Spaniards were in the suburbs of the city outside the
commercial quarter. Some of these private villas were extremely
attractive, and commodiously designed for the climate, but little
attention was paid until quite the latter days to architectural beauty.
Very few of the best private residences have more than one storey
above the ground-floor. The ground-floor is either uninhabited or
used for lodging the native servants, or as a coach-house, on account
of the damp. From the vestibule main entrance (_zaguan_) one passes
to the upper floor, which constitutes the house proper, where the
family resides. It is usually divided into a spacious hall (_caida_),
leading from the staircase to the dining and reception-rooms; on
one or two sides of these apartments are the dormitories and other
private rooms. The kitchen is often a separate building, connected
with the house by a roofed passage; and by the side of the kitchen,
on the same level, is a yard called the _azotea_--here the bath-room
is erected. The most modern houses have corrugated-iron roofs. The
ground-floor exterior walls are of stone or brick, and the whole of the
upper storey is of wood, with sliding windows all around. Instead of
glass, opaque oyster-shells (Tagálog, _cápis_) are employed to admit
the light whilst obstructing the sun's rays. Formerly the walls up to
the roof were of stone, but since the last great earthquake of 1880
the use of wood from the first storey upwards has been rigorously
enforced in the capital and suburbs for public safety. Iron roofs
are very hot, and there are still some few comfortable, spacious,
and cool suburban residences with tile roof or with the primitive
cogon-grass or nipa palm-leaf thatching, very conducive to comfort
although more liable to catch fire.
In Spanish times there were no white burglars, and the main entrance
of a dwelling-house was invariably left open until the family
retired for the night. Mosquitoes abound in Manila, coming from the
numerous malarious creeks which traverse the wards, and few persons
can sleep without a curtain. To be at one's ease, a daily bath is
indispensable. The heat from 12 to 4 p.m. is oppressive from March
to May, and most persons who have no afternoon occupation, sleep the
_siesta_ from 1 to 3 o'clock. The conventional lunch-hour all over
the Colony is noon precisely, and dinner at about 8 o'clock. The
visiting hours are from 5 to 7 in the evening, and _réunions_ and
musical _soirées_ from 9. Society was far less divided here than
in the British-Asiatic Colonies. There was not the same rigid line
drawn as in British India between the official, non-official, and
native. Spaniards of the best families in the capital endeavoured,
with varying success, to europeanize the people of the country, and
many of them exchanged visits with half-breeds, and at times with
wealthy pure natives. Spanish hospitality in the Philippines was far
more marked than in Europe, and educated foreigners were generally
received with great courtesy.
Since the year 1884 the city and suburbs are well supplied with
good drinking-water, which is one of the most praiseworthy modern
improvements undertaken by the Spanish Government. To provide for
this beneficial work, a Spanish philanthropist, named Carriedo--a
late commander of an Acapulco galleon--left a sum of money in the
18th century, in order that the capital and accumulated interest might
one day defray the expense. The water supply (brought from Santólan,
near Mariquina), being more than sufficient for general requirements,
the city and suburbs were, little by little, adorned with several
public fountains. Although Manila lies low the climate is healthy,
and during several years of personal observation I found the average
maximum and minimum temperature at noon in the shade to be 98° and 75°
Fahr. respectively. The climate of Manila may be generally summed up as
follows, viz.:--December, January, and February, a delightful spring;
March, April, and May, an oppressive heat; June, July, August, and
September, heavy rains and more tolerable heat; October and November,
doubtful--sometimes very wet, sometimes fairly dry. Briefly, as to
climate, it is a pleasant place to reside in.
In 1593 Manila already had a coat-of-arms, with the title of "_Muy
Insigne y siempre leal Ciudad_" and in the beginning of the 17th
century King Philip III. conferred upon it the title of "_La muy noble
Ciudad _"; hence it was lately styled "_La muy noble y siempre leal
Ciudad_" (the very noble and always loyal city).
According to Gironnière, [171] the civilized population of this Colony
in 1845 was as follows, namely:--
Europeans (including 500 Friars) 4,050
Spanish-native half-breeds 8,584
Spanish-native-Chinese half-breeds. 180,000
Chinese 9,901
Pure natives 3,304,742
Total civilized population 3,507,277
In the last Spanish census, taken in 1876, the total number of
inhabitants, including Europeans and Chinese, was shown to be a little
under 6,200,000, but a fixed figure cannot be relied upon because it
was impossible to estimate exactly the number of unsubdued savages
and mountaineers, who paid no taxes. The increase of native population
was rated at about two per cent, per annum, except in the Negrito or
Aeta tribes, which are known to be decreasing.
In Manila City and wards it is calculated there were in 1896 about
340,000 inhabitants, of which the ratio of classes was approximately
the following, namely:--
Per cent.
Pure natives 68.00
Chinese half-breeds 16.65
Chinese 12.25
Spaniards and Creoles 1.65
Spanish half-breeds 1.30
Foreigners (other than Chinese) 0.15
100.00
The walled city alone contained a population of about 16,000 souls.
Typhoons affect Manila more or less severely about once a year,
nearly always between April and middle of December, and sometimes
cause immense destruction to property. Roofs of houses are carried
away; the wooden upper-storey frontages are blown out; ships are torn
from their moorings; small craft laden with merchandise are wrecked,
and the inhabitants flee from the streets to make fast their premises,
and await in intense anxiety the conclusion of the tempest. A hurricane
of this description desolated Manila in October, 1882, and, at the same
time, the wind was accompanied by torrents of rain, which did great
damage to the interiors of the residences, warehouses, and offices. A
small house, entirely made of wood, was blown completely over, and the
natives who had taken refuge on the ground-floor were left, without a
moment's notice, with the sky for a roof. Two Chinamen, who thought to
take advantage of the occasion and economically possess themselves of
galvanized-iron roofing, had their heads nearly severed by sheets of
this material flying through the air, and their dead bodies were picked
up in the _Rosario_ the next morning. I was busy with the servants
all that day in my house, in the unsuccessful attempt to fasten the
windows and doors. Part of the kitchen was carried away; water came
in everywhere; and I had to wait patiently, with an umbrella over me,
until the storm ceased. The last similarly destructive hurricane,
affecting Manila, occurred on September 26, 1905.
Manila is also in constant danger of destruction from earthquakes. The
most serious one within the last century occurred in June,
1863. The shock lasted half a minute, and the falling _débris_ of
the upheaved buildings caused 400 deaths, whilst 2,000 persons were
wounded. The total loss of property on that occasion was estimated at
P 8,000,000. Official returns show that 46 public edifices were thrown
down; 28 were nearly destroyed; 570 private buildings were wrecked,
and 528 were almost demolished. Simultaneously, an earthquake occurred
in Cavite--the port and arsenal south-west of Manila--destroying
several public buildings. In 1898 many of the ruins caused by this
earthquake were still left undisturbed within the City of Manila. In
1863 the best buildings had heavy tiled roofs, and many continued so,
in spite of the severe lesson, until after the shock of 1880, when
galvanized corrugated iron came into general use for roofing, and,
in fact, no one in Manila or Binondo now builds a house without it.
In 1880 no lives were lost, but the damage to house property was
considerable. The only person who suffered physically from this
calamity was an Englishman, Mr. Parker, whose arm was so severely
injured that it was found necessary to amputate it.
Prior to 1863 the most serious earthquakes recorded happened in
November, 1610; November, 1645; August, 1658; in 1675; in 1699; in
1796, and in 1852. Consequent on the shock of 1645, all the public
buildings were destroyed excepting one monastery and two churches,
some 600 persons were killed, and the Gov.-General was extricated
from the ruins of his palace.
[172]According to the Jesuit Father Faura, Director of the Manila
Observatory, the following slight quakes occurred in 1881, viz.:--3
in July, 7 in August, 10 in September, and 3 in October. Earth-tremors
almost imperceptible are so frequent in these Islands that one hardly
heeds them after a few months' residence.
In a cosmopolitan city like Manila--the temporary home of so
many different races--it was interesting to observe the varied
wearing-apparel in vogue. The majority of the Spaniards wore the
European costume; the British generally dressed in white drill, with
the coat buttoned up to the neck, and finished off with a narrow
collar of the same material. The Chinese always preserved their own
peculiar national dress--the most rational of all--with the pig-tail
coiled into a chignon. The pure natives and many half-breeds wore
the shirt outside the trousers. It was usually white, with a long
stiff front, and cut European fashion; but often it was made of
an extremely fine yellow-tinted expensive material, called _piña_
(_vide_ p. 283). Some few of the native _jeunesse dorée_ of Manila
donned the European dress, much to their apparent discomfort. The
official attire of the headman of a Manila ward and his subordinates
was a shirt with the tail outside the trousers, like other natives
or half-breeds, but over which was worn the official distinction of
a short Eton jacket, reaching to the hips. All this is now changing,
with a tendency to imitate the Americans.
A native woman wore, as she does now, a flowing skirt of gay
colours--bright red, green, and white being the common choice. The
length of train, and whether the garment be of cotton, silk, or
satin, depends on her means. Corsets are not yet the fashion, but a
chemisette, which just covers her breast, and a starched neckcloth
(_pañuelo_) of _piña_ or _husi_ stuff are in common use. The _pañuelo_
is square, and, being folded triangularly, it hangs in a point down the
back and stands very high up at the neck, in the 17th century style,
whilst the other two points are brooched where they meet at the top of
the chemisette _décolletée_. To this chemisette are added immensely
wide short sleeves. Her hair is brushed back from the forehead,
without a parting, and coiled into a tight, flat chignon. In her
hand she carries a fan, without which she would feel lost. Native
women have an extravagant desire to possess jewellery--even if they
never wear it. The head is covered with a white mantle of very thin
material, sometimes figured, but more often this and the neckcloth
are embroidered--a work in which they excel. Finally, her naked
feet are partly enveloped in _chinelas_--a kind of slipper, flat,
like a shoe-sole with no heel, but just enough upper in front to put
four toes inside. Altogether, the appearance of a Philippine woman of
well-to-do family dressed on a gala day is curious, sometimes pretty,
but, in any case, admirably suited to the climate.
Since 1898 American example, the great demand for _piña_ muslin, at
any price, by American ladies, and the scarcity of this texture, due
to the plants having been abandoned during the wars, have necessarily
brought about certain modifications in female attire.
There is something very picturesque in the simple costume of a peasant
woman going to market. She has no flowing gown, but a short skirt,
enveloped in a _tápis_, generally of cotton. It is simply a rectangular
piece of stuff; as a rule, all blue, red, or black. It is tucked in
at the waist, drawn very tightly around the loins, and hangs over
the skirt a little below the knees, the open edges being at the back.
At times the better class wear the more becoming short skirt and
_tápis_ of silk or satin, with gold-lace embroidered _chinelas_. This
dress is elegant, and adds a charm to the wearer.
The _tápi_ is smaller. It is not used in the street; it is a sort
of _négligé_ apparel worn in the house only, or for going to the
bath. The poorest classes go to the river-side to bathe in it. It is
drawn all around from the waist downwards.
The _patadiong_ is more commonly worn by the Visaya than the northern
woman. It is somewhat like the _tápis_, but is drawn round the waist
from the back, the open edges meeting, more or less, at the front. In
Luzon Island the old women generally prefer this to the _tápis_.
On feast days and special occasions, or for dances, the young women
who can afford it sport the gaudy flowing gown of bright particoloured
striped silk or satin, known as the _saya suelta_, with the train
cut in a peculiar fashion unknown in Europe.
The figure of a peasant woman is erect and stately, due to her habit
from infancy of carrying jars of water, baskets of orchard produce,
etc., on her head with a pad of coiled cloth. The characteristic
bearing of both sexes, when walking, consists in swinging the arms
(but more often the right arm only) to and fro far more rapidly than
the stride, so that it gives them the appearance of paddling.
A "first class" Manila funeral, before the American advent, was
a whimsical display of pompous ignorance worth seeing once. There
was a hideous bier with rude relics of barbarism in the shape of
paltry adornments. A native driver, with a tall "chimney pot" hat,
full of salaried mournfulness, drove the white team. The bier was
headed by a band of music playing a lively march, and followed by
a line of carriages containing the relations and friends of the
deceased. The burial was almost invariably within twenty-four hours
of the decease--sometimes within six hours.
There is nothing in Manila which instantly impresses one as strikingly
national, whether it be in artistic handicraft, music, painting,
sculpture, or even diversions. The peculiar traditional customs of
an Eastern people--their native dress, their characteristic habits,
constitute--by their originality and variation, the only charm to
the ordinary European traveller. The Manila middle-class native,
in particular, possesses none of this. He is but a vivid contrast
to his vivacious Spanish model, a striking departure from his own
picturesque aboriginal state, and an unsuccessful imitator of the
grace and easy manners of his Western tutor. In short, he is neither
one thing nor the other in its true representation compared with the
genial, genuine, and natural type to be found in the provinces.
Many years' residence in Manila, or in any one particular locality of
the Archipelago, will not enable either the alien or the native to form
a just opinion of the physical, social, or economic conditions of the
Colony; they can only be understood after extensive travelling through
and around the Islands. Nor will three or four tours suffice for the
intelligent inquirer, because first impressions often lead to false
conclusions; information obtained through one source must needs be
verified by another; the danger of mistaking isolated cases for general
rules has to be avoided, and, lastly, the native does not reveal to the
first-time traveller the intricacies of Philippine life. Furthermore,
the traveller in any official capacity is necessarily the least
informed person concerning the real thought and aspirations of the
Filipino or true Philippine life; his position debars him from the
opportunity of investigating these things.
It would be beyond the scope of this work to take the reader mentally
through the thousand or more miles of lovely scenery, and into the
homes of the unsophisticated classes who still preserve, unalloyed,
many of their natural characteristics and customs. But within half a
day's journey from the capital there are many places of historical
interest, among which, on account of its revived popularity since
the American advent, may be mentioned Los Baños, on the south shore
of the Laguna de Bay.
Los Baños (the baths) owes its origin to the hot springs flowing from
the volcanic Maquíling Mountain, which have been known to the natives
from time immemorial when the place was called Maynit, which signifies
"hot."
At the close of the 16th century these mineral waters attracted the
attention of Martyr Saint Pedro Bautista (_vide_ p. 64), who sent
a brother of his Order to establish a hospital for the natives. The
brother went there, but shortly returned to Manila and died. So the
matter remained in abeyance for years. Subsequently a certain Fray
Diego de Santa Maria, an expert in medicine and the healing art, was
sent there to test the waters. He found they contained properties
highly beneficial in curing rheumatism and certain other maladies,
so thenceforth many natives and Spaniards went there to seek bodily
relief. But there was no convenient abode for the visitors; no
arrangements for taking the baths, and the Government did nothing. A
Franciscan friar was appointed chaplain to the sick visitors, but
his very incommodious residence was inadequate for the lodging of
patients, and, for want of funds, the priest abandoned the project
of establishing a hospital, and returned to Manila. In 1604 the
Gov.-General, Pedro Bravo de Acuña, gave his attention to this
place, and consented to the establishment of a hospital, church,
and convent. The hospital was constructed of bamboo and other light
material, and dedicated to Our Lady of Holy Waters.
Fray Diego de Santa Maria was appointed to the vicarage and the charge
of the hospital. The whole was supported by gifts from the many sick
persons who went there, but the greatest difficulty was to procure
food. Several natives made donations of lands, with the produce of
which the hospital was to be maintained. These gifts, however, proved
insufficient. The priests then solicited permission from the villagers
of Pila (on the lake shore near Santa Cruz) to pasture cattle on the
tongue of land on the opposite coast called Jalajala, which belonged
to them. With their consent a cattle-ranche was established there;
subsequently, a building was erected, and the place was in time known
as the _Estancia de Jalajala_. Then the permission was asked for and
obtained from the Pila natives to plant cocoanut palms, fruit-trees,
and vegetables. Later on the Austin and Franciscan friars quarrelled
about the right of dominion over the place and district called Maynit,
but eventually the former gave way and ceded their alleged rights in
perpetuity to the Franciscans.
In 1640 Los Baños (formerly a dependency of Bay, under the Austin
friars) was constituted a "town." The Franciscans continued to
beg one concession after another, until at length, in 1671, stone
buildings were commenced--a church, convent, hospital, bathing-pond,
vapour-house, etc., being constructed. Natives and Europeans flocked in
numbers to these baths, and it is said that people even came from India
to be cured. The property lent and belonging to the establishment,
the accumulated funds, and the live-stock had all increased so much in
value that the Government appointed an administrator. Thenceforth the
place declined; its popularity vanished; the administrator managed
matters so particularly for his own benefit that food again became
scarce, and the priest was paid only 10 pesos per month as salary. In
Jalajala a large house was built; the land was put under regular
cultivation; tenants were admitted; but when the property was declared
a royal demesne the Pila inhabitants protested, and nominally regained
possession of the lent property. But the administrator re-opened
and contested the question in the law-courts, and, pending these
proceedings, Jalajala was rented from the Government. During this
long process of legal entanglements the property had several times
been transferred to one and another until the last holder regarded
it as his private estate.
At the beginning of last century Jalajala came into the possession of
M. Paul de la Gironnière, from whom it passed to another Frenchman,
at whose death a third Frenchman, M. Jules Daillard, became owner. On
his decease it became the property of an English Bank, from whom it was
purchased by the Franciscan friars, in 1897, for the sum of P.50,000,
and re-sold by them to a Belgian firm in 1900.
The bathing establishment was gradually falling into decay, until
its complete ruin was brought about by a fire, which left only the
remnant of walls. The priest continued there as nominal chaplain
with his salary of 10 pesos per month and an allowance of rice. The
establishment was not restored until the Government of Domingo
Moriones (1877-80). A vapour bath-house and residence were built,
but the hospital was left unfinished, and it was rotting away from
neglect when the Spaniards evacuated the Islands.
The portion of the Hospital of Los Baños which remained intact, and
the house attached thereto, which the natives called "the palace,"
served to accommodate invalids who went to take the cure. These baths
should only be taken in the dry season--December to May.
Besides the convent and church the town simply consisted of a row of
dingy bungalows on either side of the highroad, with a group of the
same on the mountain side. Since the American advent the place has
been much improved and extended.
On his way from Manila to Los Baños the traveller will pass (on
the left bank of the Pasig River) the ruins of _Guadalupe Church_,
which mark the site of a great massacre of Chinese during their
revolt in 1603 (_vide_ p. 114). The following legend of this once
beautiful and popular church was given to me by the Recoleto friars
at the convent of the Church of La Soledad, in Cavite:--During the
construction of the world-famed _Escorial_, by order of Philip II.,
the architect's nephew, who was employed by his uncle on the work,
killed a man. The King pardoned him on condition that he be banished
to the Philippines. He therefore came to Manila, took holy orders,
and designed and superintended the building of Guadalupe Church,
from the scaffolding of which he fell, and having been caught by the
neck in a rope suspended from the timbers he was hanged.
During the wars of the Rebellion and Independence this ancient building
was destroyed, only the shot-riddled and battered outer walls remaining
in 1905.
CHAPTER XXII
The Tagálog Rebellion of 1896-98
First Period
After the Napoleonic wars in Spain, the "Junta Suprema Central
del Reino" convened the famous "Córtes de Cádiz" by decree dated
September 12, 1809. This _junta_ was succeeded by another--"El
Supremo Consejo de la Regencia"--when the _Córtes_ passed the first
Suffrage Bill known in Spain on January 29, 1810. These _Córtes_
assembled deputies from all the Colonies--Cuba, Venezuela, Chile,
Guatemala, Santa Fé, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, etc.; in fact,
all those dependencies which constituted the four Viceroyalties and
the eight Captain-Generalships of the day. The Philippine deputy,
Ventura de los Reyes, signed the Act of Constitution of 1812. In 1820
the _Córtes_ again admitted this Colony's representatives, amongst
whom were Vicente Posadas, Eulalio Ramirez, Anselmo Jorge Fajárdos,
Roberto Pimental, Esteban Marqués, José Florentino, Manuel Saez
de Vismanos, José Azcárraga, and nine others. They also took part
in the parliamentary debates of 1822 and 1823. The Constitution was
shortly afterwards suspended, but on the demise of Ferdinand VII. the
Philippine deputies, Brigadier Garcia Gamba and the half-breed Juan
Francisco Lecáros, sat in Parliament. Again, and for the last time,
Philippine members figured in the _Córtes_ of the Isabella II. Regency;
then, on the opening of Parliament in 1837, their exclusion, as well as
the government of the Ultramarine Provinces by special laws, was voted.
The friars, hitherto regarded by the majority of Filipinos as their
protectors and friendly intermediaries between the people and the civil
rulers, had set their faces against the above radical innovations,
foreseeing in them a death-blow to their own preponderance. Indeed,
the "friar question" only came into existence after the year 1812.
In 1868 Queen Isabella II. was deposed, and the succeeding Provisional
Government (1868-70), founded on Republican principles, caused an
Assembly of Reformists to be established in Manila. The members of
this _Junta General de Reformas_ were five Filipinos, namely, Ramon
Calderon, Bonifacio Saez de Vismanos, Lorenzo Calvo, Gabriel Gonzalez
Esquibel, and Joaquin Pardo de Tavera; eleven civilian Spaniards,
namely, Joaquin J. Inchausti, Tomàs Balbas y Castro, Felino Gil,
Antonio Ayala, with seven others and five Spanish friars, namely,
Father Fonseca, Father Domingo Trecera, Rector of the University,
(Dominicans), one Austin, one Recoleto and one Franciscan friar. This
_junta_ had the power to vote reforms for the Colony, subject to the
ratification of the Home Government. But monastic influence prevailed;
the reforms voted were never carried into effect, and long before
the Bourbon restoration took place (1874) the Philippine Assembly had
ceased to exist. But it was impossible for the mother country, which
had spontaneously given the Filipinos a taste of political equality,
again to yoke them to the old tutelage without demur. Alternate
political progress and retrogression in the Peninsula cast their reflex
on this Colony, but the first sparks of liberty had been gratuitously
struck which neither reaction in the Peninsula nor persecution in the
Colony itself could totally extinguish. No Filipino, at that period,
dreamed of absolute independence, but the few who had been taught by
their masters to hope for equal laws, agitated for their promulgation
and became a thorn in the side of the Monastic Orders. Only as their
eyes were spontaneously opened to liberty by the Spaniards themselves
did they feel the want of it.
The Cavite Rising of 1872 (_vide_ p. 106), which the Philippine
Government unwisely treated as an important political movement and
mercilessly avenged itself by executions and banishment of many of the
best Manila families, was neither forgotten nor forgiven. To me, as a
foreigner, scores of representative provincial natives did not hesitate
to open their hearts in private on the subject. The Government lost
considerably by its uncalled-for severity on this occasion. The natives
regarded it as a sign of apprehension, and a proof of the intention
to rule with an iron rod. The Government played into the hands of
the Spanish clergy, and all the friars gained by strengthening their
monopoly of the incumbencies they lost in moral prestige. Thinking men
really pitied the Government, which became more and more the instrument
of the ecclesiastics. Since then, serious ideas of a revolution to be
accomplished one day took root in the minds of influential Filipinos
throughout the provinces adjacent to Manila. _La Solidaridad_, a
Philippine organ, founded in Madrid by Marcelo Hilario del Pilar,
Mariano Ponce, Eduardo Leyte and Antonio Luna for the furtherance of
Philippine interests was proscribed, but copies entered the Islands
clandestinely. In the villages, secret societies were formed which the
priests chose to call "Freemasonry"; and on the ground that all vows
which could not be explained at the confessional were anti-christian,
the Archbishop gave strict injunctions to the friars to ferret out
the so-called Freemasons. Denunciations by hundreds quickly followed,
for the priests willingly availed themselves of this licence to get rid
of anti-clericals and others who had displeased them. In the town of
Malolos (which in 1898 became the seat of the Revolutionary Congress)
Father Moïses Santos caused all the members of the Town Council to
be banished, and when I last dined with him in his convent, he told
me he had cleared out a few more and had his eye on others. From
other villages, notably in the provinces around the capital, the
priests had their victims escorted up to Manila and consigned to
the Gov.-General, who issued the deportation orders without trial
or sentence, the recommendation of the all-powerful _padre_ being
sufficient warrant. Thus hundreds of families were deprived of fathers
and brothers without warning or apparent justification;--but it takes
a great deal to rouse the patient native to action. Then in 1895 came
the Marahui campaign in Mindanao (_vide_ p. 144). In order to people
the territory around Lake Lanao, conquered from the _Moros_, it was
proposed to invite families to migrate there from the other islands,
and notifications to this effect were issued to all the provincial
governors. At first it was put to the people in the smooth form of a
proposal. None volunteered to go, because they could not see why they
should give up what they had to go and waste their lives on a tract
of virgin soil with the very likely chance of a daily attack from the
_Moros_. Peremptory orders followed, requiring the governors to send up
"emigrants" for the Ylígan district. This caused a great commotion in
the provinces, and large numbers of natives abandoned their homes to
evade anticipated violence. I have no proof as to who originated this
scheme, but there is the significant fact that the _orders_ were issued
only to the authorities of those provinces supposed to be affected by
the secret societies. Under the then existing system, the governors
could not act in a case like this without the co-operation of the
parish priests; hence during the years 1895 and 1896 a systematic
course of official sacerdotal tyranny was initiated which, being
too much even for the patient Filipino, was the immediate cause of
the members of the _Katipunan_ secret society hastening their plans
for open rebellion, the plot of which was prematurely discovered on
Thursday, August 20, 1896. The rebellion in Cuba was calling for all
the resources in men and material that Spain could send there. The
total number of European troops dispersed over these Islands did
not exceed 1,500 well armed and well officered, of which about 700
were in Manila. The native auxiliaries amounted to about 6,000. The
impression was gaining ground that the Spaniards would be beaten
out of Cuba; but whilst this idea gave the Tagálogs moral courage to
attempt the same in these Islands, so far as one could then foresee,
Spain's reverse in the Antilles and the consequent evacuation would
have permitted her to pour troops into Manila, causing the natives'
last chance to vanish indefinitely.
Several months before the outbreak, the _Katipunan_ sent a deputation
to Japan to present a petition to the Mikado, praying him to annex
the Philippines. This petition, said to have been signed by 5,000
Filipinos, was received by the Japanese Government, who forwarded
it to the Spanish Government; hence the names of 5,000 disaffected
persons were known to the Philippine authorities, who did not find
it politic to raise the storm by immediate arrests.
The so-called "Freemasonry" which had so long puzzled and irritated
the friars, turned out, therefore, to be the _Katipunan_, which simply
means the "League." [173] The leaguers, on being sworn in, accepted the
"blood compact" (vide p. 28), taking from an incision on the leg or arm
the blood with which to inscribe the roll of fraternity. The cicatrice
served also as a mark of mutual recognition, so that the object and
plans of the leaguers should never be discussed with others. The drama
was to have opened with a general slaughter of Spaniards on the night
of August 20, but, just in the nick of time, a woman sought confession
of Father Mariano Gil (formerly parish priest of Bigaá, Bulacan),
then the parish priest of Tondo, a suburb of Manila, and opened the
way for a leaguer, whose heart had failed him, to disclose the plot on
condition of receiving full pardon. With this promise he made a clean
breast of everything, and without an hour's delay the civil guard
was on the track of the alleged prime movers. Three hundred supposed
disaffected persons were seized in Manila and the Provinces of Pampanga
and Bulacan within a few hours, and, large numbers being brought
in daily, the prisons were soon crowded to excess. The implacable
Archbishop Bernardino Nozaleda advocated extermination by fire and
sword and wholesale executions. Gov.-General Ramon Blanco hesitated to
take the offensive, pending the arrival of reinforcements which were
called for. He informed the Home Government that the rising was of no
great importance, but that he required 1,000 more troops to be sent
at once. The reply from Madrid was that they were sending 2,000 men,
2,000,000 cartridges, 6,000 Remington rifles, and the gunboats _Isla
de Cuba_ and _Isla de Luzon_. Each steamer brought a contingent of
troops, so that General Blanco had a total of about 10,000 Spanish
regulars by the end of November. Spain's best men had been drafted
off to Cuba, and these were chiefly raw levies who had all to learn
in the art of warfare.
Meanwhile, the rebellion had assumed alarming proportions. Among the
first to be seized were many of the richest and most prominent men in
the Colony--the cream of Manila society. There was intense excitement
in the capital as their names gradually leaked out, for many of them
were well known to us personally or by repute. No one who possessed
wealth was safe. An opulent Chinese half-caste, Don Pedro P. Rojas,
who was popularly spoken of as the prime supporter of the rebellion,
was a guest at Government House two days before the hour fixed for
the general slaughter. It cost him a fortune to be allowed to leave
the Islands. He took his passage for Europe in the _Isla de Panay_,
together with Dr. Rizal, but very prudently left that steamer at
Singapore and went on in the French mail to Marseilles and thence to
Paris, where he was still residing in 1905. No _documentary_ evidence
could be produced against him, and on June 1, 1897, the well-known
politician, Romero Robledo, undertook his defence in the _Córtes_, in
Madrid, in a brilliant speech which had no effect on his parliamentary
colleagues. For the Spaniards, indeed, the personal character of Pedro
P. Rojas was a matter of no moment. The Manila court-martial, out of
whose jurisdiction Rojas had escaped, held his estates, covering over
70,000 acres, under embargo, caused his numerous steam cane-mills to be
smashed, and his beautiful estate-house to be burnt, whilst his 14,000
head of cattle disappeared. Subsequently the military court exonerated
Pedro P. Rojas in a decree which stated "that all those persons who
made accusations against him have unreservedly retracted them, and that
they were only extracted from such persons by the tortures employed by
the Spanish officials; that the supposed introduction of arms into the
Colony through an estate owned by Pedro P. Rojas is purely fantastical,
and that the only arms possessed by the rebels were those taken by them
in combat from the Spanish soldiers." [174] But his second cousin,
Francisco L. Rojas, a shipowner, contrabandist, and merchant, was
not so fortunate. He was also one of the first seized, and his trial
was pending until General Blanco left the Islands. During this period
Rojas' wife besought the General to release him, but he could not do
so without incurring public censure, in view of the real or fictitious
condemnatory evidence brought against him by the court-martial. The
chief accusation was that of importing arms for the rebellion. It
even became a current topic, for a few weeks, that some German
merchants had made a contract with Rojas to sell him the arms, but
the Spanish authorities had sufficient good sense, on this occasion,
not to be guided by public outcry. When General Polavieja arrived,
Francisco L. Rojas' fate became a certainty, and he was executed as a
traitor. The departure of Pedro P. Rojas and the serenity of General
Blanco aroused great indignation among the civilian Spaniards who
clamoured for active measures. A week passed before it was apparent
to the public that he had taken any military action. Meanwhile, he
was urged in vain by his advisers to proclaim martial law. The press
censor would not allow the newspapers to allude to the conspirators as
"rebels," but as "brigands" (_tulisanes_). The authorities were anxious
to stifle the notion of rebellion, and to treat the whole movement
as a marauding affair. On August 23 the leading newspaper published
a patriotic appeal to the Spaniards to go _en masse_ the next day to
the Gov.-General to concert measures for public safety. They closed
their shops and offices, and assembled before Government House; but
the General refused to receive them, and ordered the newspaper to pay
a fine of P500, which sum was at once raised in the streets and cafés.
On August 26, 1,000 rebels made a raid on Coloocan, four miles outside
the capital. They killed a few Chinese, and seized others to place them
in the van of their fighting men. The armed crowd was kept at bay by a
posse of civil guards, until they learnt that a cavalry reinforcement
was on the way from Manila. Then the rebels, under cover of darkness,
fled towards the river, and were lost sight of. The next morning I
watched the troopers cross over the _Puente de España_. There was
mud up to the ponies' bellies, for they had scoured the district all
around. The hubbub was tremendous among the habitual saunterers on
the _Escolta_--the Rialto of Manila. For the next few days every
Spaniard one met had some startling news to tell, until, by the
end of the week, a reaction set in, and amidst jokes and _copitas_
of spirits, the idea that the Coloocan affair was the prelude to a
rebellion was utterly ridiculed. The Gov.-General still refused to
proclaim martial law, considering such a grave measure unnecessary,
when suddenly the whole city was filled with amazement by the news
of a far more serious attack near Manila.
About 4 a.m. on Sunday, August 30, the rebels concentrated at the
village of San Juan del Monte, distant half an hour on horseback from
the city gates. They endeavoured to seize the powder magazine. One
Spanish artilleryman was killed and several of the defenders were badly
wounded whilst engaged in dropping ammunition from window openings into
a stream which runs close by. Cavalry and infantry reinforcements were
at once sent out, and the first battle was fought at the entrance to
the village of San Juan del Monte. The rebels made a hard stand this
time under the leadership of Sancho Valenzuela (a hemp-rope maker in
a fairly good way of business), but he showed no military skill and
chiefly directed his men by frantic shouts from the window of a wooden
house. Naturally, as soon as they had to retreat, Valenzuela and his
three companions were taken prisoners. The rebels left about 80 dead
on the field and fled towards the Pasig River, which they tried to
cross. Their passage was at first cut off by gunboats, which fired
volleys into the retreating mob and drove them higher up the bank,
where there was some hand-to-hand fighting. Over a hundred managed
to get into canoes with the hope of reaching the Lake of Bay; but,
as they passed up the river, the civil guard, lying in ambush on
the opposite shore, fired upon them, and in the consequent confusion
every canoe was upset. The loss to the rebels in the river and on the
bank was reckoned at about 50. The whole of that day the road to San
Juan del Monte was occupied by troops, and no civilian was allowed
to pass. At 3 p.m. the same day martial law was proclaimed in Manila
and seven other Luzon provinces.
The next morning at sunrise I rode out to the battlefield with the
correspondent of the _Ejército Español_ (Madrid). The rebel slain had
not yet been removed. We came across them everywhere--in the fields and
in the gutters of the highroad. Old men and youths had joined in the
scrimmage and, with one exception, every corpse we saw was attired in
the usual working dress. This one exception we found literally upside
down with his head stuck in the mud of a paddy-field. Our attention
was drawn to him (and possibly the Spaniards' bullets, too) by his
bright red baggy zouave trousers. We rode into the village, which
was absolutely deserted by its native inhabitants, and stopped at
the estate-house of the friars where the Spanish officers lodged. The
_padre_ looked extremely anxious, and the officers advised us not to
go the road we intended, as rebel parties were known to be lurking
there. The military advice being practically a command, we took the
highroad to Sampáloc on our way back to the city.
In the meantime the city drawbridges, which had probably not been
raised since 1852 (_vide_ p. 343, footnote), were put into working
order--the bushes which had been left to flourish around the approaches
were cut down, and the Spanish civilians were called upon to form
volunteer cavalry and infantry corps. So far the rebel leaders had
issued no proclamation. It was not generally known what their aims
were--whether they sought independence, reforms, extermination of
Spaniards or Europeans generally. The attitude of the thoroughbred
native non-combatants was glum silence born of fear. The half-castes,
who had long vaunted their superior birth to the native, found
themselves between two stools. If the natives were going to succeed
in the battle, they (the half-castes) would want to be the peaceful
wire-pullers after the storm. On the other hand, they had so long
striven to be regarded as on a social equality with the Spaniards
that they could not now abstain from espousing their cause against the
rebels without exciting suspicion. Therefore, in the course of a few
days, the half-castes resident in the capital came forward to enlist
as volunteers. But no one imagined, at that time, how widespread was
the _Katipunan_ league. To the profound surprise of the Spaniards it
was discovered, later on, that many of the half-caste volunteers were
rebels in disguise, bearing the "blood compact" mark, and presumably
only waiting to see which way the chances of war would turn to join
the winning side.
Under sentence of the court-martial established on August 30, the
four rebel leaders in the battle of San Juan del Monte were executed
on September 4, on the Campo de Bagumbayan, facing the fashionable
Luneta Esplanade, by the seashore. Three sides of a square were
formed by 1,500 Spanish and half-caste volunteers and 500 regular
troops. Escorted by two Austin and two Franciscan friars, the condemned
men walked to the execution-ground from the chapel within the walled
city, where they had been confined since the sentence was passed. They
were perfectly self-composed. They arrived on the ground pinioned;
their sentence was read to them and Valenzuela was unpinioned for
a minute to sign some document at a table. When he was again tied
up, all four were made to kneel on the ground in a row facing the
open sea-beach side of the square. Then amidst profound silence, an
officer, at the head of 16 Spanish soldiers, walked round the three
sides of the square, halting at each corner to pronounce publicly
the formula--"In the name of the King! Whosoever shall raise his
voice to crave clemency for the condemned shall suffer death." The 16
soldiers filed off in fours and stood about five yards behind each
culprit. As the officer lowered his sword the volley was fired, and
all but Valenzuela sank down and rolled over dead. It was the most
impressive sight I had witnessed for years. The bullets, which had
passed clean through Valenzuela's body, threw up the gravel in front
of him. He remained kneeling erect half a minute, and then gradually
sank on his side. He was still alive, and four more shots, fired close
to his head, scattered his brains over the grass. Conveyances were
in readiness to carry off the corpses, and the spectators quitted
the mournful scene in silence. This was the first execution, which
was followed by four others in Manila and one in Cavite in General
Blanco's time, and scores more subsequently.
Up the river the rebels were increasing daily, and at Pasig a thousand
of them threatened the civil guard, compelling that small force and the
parish priest to take refuge in the belfry tower. On the river-island
of Pandácan, just opposite to the European Club at Nagtájan, a crowd
of armed natives, about 400 strong, attacked the village, sacked the
church, and drove the parish priest up the belfry tower. In this plight
the _padre_ was seen to wave a handkerchief, and so drew the attention
of the guards stationed higher up the river. Aid was sent to him at
once; the insurgents were repulsed with great loss, but one European
sergeant was killed, and several native soldiers wounded. The rebellion
had spread to the northern province of Nueva Ecija, where the Governor
and all the Europeans who fled to the Government House in San Isidro
were besieged for a day (September 8) and only saved from capture
by the timely arrival from Manila of 500 troops, who outflanked the
insurgents and dispersed them with great slaughter. In Bulacan the
flying column under Major Lopez Arteaga had a score of combats with
the rebels, who were everywhere routed. Spaniards and creoles were
maltreated wherever they were found. A young creole named Chofré,
well known in Manila, went out to Mariquina to take photographic views
with a foreign half-caste friend of his named Augustus Morris. When
they saw the rebels they ran into a hut, which was set fire to. Morris
(who was not distinguishable as a foreigner) tried to escape and was
shot, whilst Chofré was burnt to death. From Maragondón a Spanish lady
was brought to Manila raving mad. At 23, _Calle Cabildo_ (Manila),
the house of a friend of mine, I several times saw a Spanish lady
who had lost her reason in Mariquina, an hour's drive from Manila.
Crowds of peaceful natives swarmed into the walled city from the
suburbs. The Gov.-General himself abandoned his riverside residence
at Malacañan, and came with his staff to _Calle Potenciana_. During
the first four months quite 5,000 Chinese, besides a large number
of Spanish and half-caste families, fled to Hong-Kong. The passport
system was revived; that is to say, no one could leave Manila for the
other islands or abroad without presenting himself personally at the
Civil Governor's office to have his _cédula personal_ viséd.
The seditious tendency of a certain Andrés Bonifacio, a warehouse-man
in the employ of a commercial firm in Manila, having come to the
knowledge of the Spaniards, he was prematurely constrained to seek
safety in Cavite Province which, thenceforth, became the most important
centre of the rebellion. Simultaneously Emilio Aguinaldo [175] rallied
his fighting-men, and for a short while these two organizers operated
conjointly, Bonifacio being nominally the supreme chief. From the
beginning, however, there was discord between the two leaders as to
the plan of campaign to be adopted. Bonifacio advocated barbarous
persecution and extermination of the Europeans, whilst Aguinaldo
insisted that he was fighting for a cause for which he sought the
sympathy and moral support of friends of liberty all the world over and
that this could never be obtained if they conducted themselves like
savages. Consequent on this disagreement as to the _modus operandi_,
Bonifacio and Aguinaldo became rivals, each seeking the suppression
of the other. Aguinaldo himself explains [176] that Bonifacio
having condemned him to death, he retaliated in like manner, and the
contending factions met at Naig. Leaving his armed followers outside,
Aguinaldo alone entered the house where Bonifacio was surrounded by
his counsellors, for he simply wished to have an understanding with
his rival. Bonifacio, however, so abusively confirmed his intention
to cut short Aguinaldo's career that the latter withdrew, and ordered
his men to seize Bonifacio, who was forthwith executed, by Aguinaldo's
order, for the prosperity of the cause and the good of his country.
Bonifacio's followers were few, and, from this moment, Emilio
Aguinaldo gradually rose from obscurity to prominence. Born at Cauit
[177] (Cavite) on March 22, 1869, of poor parents, he started life
in the service of the incumbent of San Francisco de Malabon. Later
on he went to Manila, where, through the influence of a relative,
employed in a humble capacity in the capital, he was admitted
into the College of San Juan de Letran under the auspices of the
Dominican friars. Subsequently he became a schoolmaster at Silan
(Cavite), and at the age of twenty-six years he was again in his
native town as petty-governor (Municipal Captain). He is a man
of small frame with slightly webbed eyes, betraying the Chinese
blood in his veins, and a protruding lower lip and prominent chin
indicative of resolve. Towards me his manner was remarkably placid
and unassuming, and his whole bearing denoted the very antithesis of
the dashing warrior. Throughout his career he has shown himself to be
possessed of natural politeness, and ever ready with the soft answer
that turneth away wrath. He understands Spanish perfectly well, but
does not speak it very fluently. Aguinaldo's explanation to me of the
initial acts of rebellion was as follows:--He had reason to know that,
in consequence of something having leaked out in Manila regarding
the immature plans of the conspirators, he was a marked man, so he
resolved to face the situation boldly. He had then been petty-governor
of his town (Cauit) sixteen months, and in that official capacity he
summoned the local detachment of the civil guard to the Town Hall,
having previously arranged his plan of action with the town guards
(_cuadrilleros_). Aguinaldo then spoke aside to the sergeant, to whom
he proposed the surrender of their arms. As he quite anticipated, his
demand was refused, so he gave the agreed signal to his _cuadrilleros_,
who immediately surrounded the guards and disarmed them. Thereupon
Aguinaldo and his companions, being armed, fled at once to the next
post of the civil guard and seized their weapons also. With this
small equipment he and his party escaped into the interior of the
province, towards Silan, situated at the base of the Sungay [178]
Mountain, where the numerous ravines in the slopes running towards
the Lake Bómbon (popularly known as the Lake of Taal) afforded a
safe retreat to the rebels. Hundreds of natives soon joined him,
for the secret of Aguinaldo's influence was the widespread popular
belief in his possession of the _anting-anting_ (_vide_ p. 237);
his continuous successes, in the first operations, strengthened this
belief; indeed, he seemed to have the lucky star of a De Wet without
the military genius.
On August 31, 1896, eleven days after the plot was discovered in
Manila, he issued his _pronunciamiento_ simultaneously at his
birthplace, at Novaleta, and at San Francisco de Malabon. This
document, however, is of little historic value, for, instead of
setting forth the aims of the revolutionists, it is simply a wild
exhortation to the people, in general vague terms, to take arms and
free themselves from oppression. In San Francisco de Malabon Aguinaldo
rallied his forces prior to their march to Imus, [179] their great
strategic point. The village itself, situated in the centre of a large,
well-watered plain, surrounded by planted land, was nothing--a mere
collection of wooden or bamboo-and-thatch dwellings. The distance
from Manila would be about 16 miles by land, with good roads leading
to the bay shore towns. The people were very poor, being tenants
or dependents of the friars; hence the only building of importance
was the friars' estate-house, which was really a fortress in the
estimation of the natives. This residence was situated in the middle
of a compound surrounded by massive high walls, and to it some 17
friars fled on the first alarm. For the rebels, therefore, Imus
had a double value--the so-called fortress and the capture of the
priests. After a siege which lasted long enough for General Blanco to
have sent troops against them, the rebels captured Imus estate-house
on September 1, and erected barricades there. Thirteen of the priests
fell into their hands. They cut trenches and threw up earthworks in
several of the main roads of the province, and strengthened their
position at Novaleta. Marauding parties were sent out everywhere
to steal the crops and live-stock, which were conveyed in large
quantities to Imus. Some of the captured priests were treated most
barbarously. One was cut up piecemeal; another was saturated with
petroleum and set on fire, and a third was bathed in oil and fried
on a bamboo spit run through the length of his body. There was a
_Requiem_ Mass for this event. During the first few months of the
rising many such atrocities were committed by the insurgents. The
Naig outrage caused a great sensation in the capital. The lieutenant
had been killed, and the ferocious band of rebels seized his widow
and daughter eleven years old. The child was ravished to death,
and they were just digging a pit to bury the mother alive when she
was rescued and brought to Manila in the steam-launch _Mariposa_
raving mad, disguised as a native woman. Aguinaldo, personally,
was humanely inclined, for at his headquarters he held captive one
Spanish trooper, an army lieutenant, a Spanish planter, a friar, and
two Spanish ladies, all of whom were fairly well treated. The priest
was allowed to read his missal, the lieutenant and trooper were made
blacksmiths, and the planter had to try his hand at tailoring.
The insurgents occupied Parañaque and Las Piñas on the outskirts
of Manila, and when General Blanco had 5,000 fresh troops at his
disposal he still refrained from attacking the rebels in their
positions. Military men, in conversation with me, excused this
inaction on the ground that, to rout the rebels completely without
having sufficient troops to garrison the places taken and to form
flying columns to prevent the insurgents fleeing to the mountain
fastnesses, would only require them to do the work over again when
they reappeared. So General Blanco went on waiting in the hope that
more troops would arrive with which to inflict such a crushing defeat
on the rebels as would ensure a lasting peace. The rebels were in
possession of Imus for several months. Three weeks after they took it,
artillery was slowly carried over to Cavite, which is connected with
the mainland by a narrow isthmus, so the rebels hastened to construct
a long line of trenches immediately to the south of this (_vide_ map),
whereby communication with the heart of the province was effectually
cut off. Not only did their mile and a half of trenches and stockade
check any advance into the interior from the isthmus, but it served
as a rallying-point whence Cavite itself was menaced. The Spaniards,
therefore, forced to take the offensive to save Cavite falling into
rebel hands, made an attack on the Novaleta defences with Spanish
troops and loyal native auxiliaries on November 10. The next day the
Spaniards were repulsed at Binacayan with the loss of one-third of
the 73rd Native Regiment and 60 Spanish troops, with 50 of both corps
wounded. The intention to carry artillery towards Imus was abandoned
and the Spaniards fell back on Dalahican, about a mile north of the
rebel trenches of Novaleta, where they established a camp at which I
spent a whole day. They had four large guns and two bronze mortars;
in the trench adjoining the camp they had one gun. The troops numbered
3,500 Spaniards under the command of General Rios. The 73rd Native
Regiment survivors had quarters there, but they were constantly engaged
in making sorties on the road leading to Manila. No further attempt
was made in General Blanco's time to dislodge the rebels from their
splendidly-constructed trenches, which, however, could easily have
been shelled from the sea side.
A number of supposed promoters of the rebellion filled the Cavite
prison, and I went over to witness the execution of 13 of them on
September 12. I knew two or three of them by sight. One was a Chinese
half-caste, the son of a rich Chinaman then living. The father was
held to be a respectable man of coolie origin, but the son, long
before the rebellion, had a worthless reputation.
In the Provinces of Pampanga and Bulacan, north of Manila, the rebel
mob, under the command of a native of Cabiao (Nueva Ecija) named
Llaneras, was about 3,000 strong. To oppose this Major Lopez Arteaga
had a flying column of 500 men, and between the contending parties
there were repeated encounters with no definite result. Whenever the
rebels were beaten off and pursued they fled to their strongholds
of San Mateo (Manila, now Rizal) and Angat (Bulacan). The Spaniards
made an unsuccessful attempt to dislodge the enemy at Angat, whilst
at San Mateo, where they were supposed to be 5,000 strong, they were
left undisturbed. The rebels attacked Calumpit (Bulacan), pillaged
several houses, decapitated an Englishman's cook, and drove the civil
guard and the parish priest up the belfry tower. On the other side
of the river, Llaneras visited the rice-mills of an Anglo-American
firm, took some refreshment, and assured the manager, Mr. Scott,
that the rebels had not the least intention to interfere with any
foreigners (as distinguished from Spaniards), against whom they had
no complaint whatever.
At length a plan of campaign was prepared, and expeditionary forces
were to march in two directions through the disaffected provinces south
of Manila, and combine, according to circumstances, when the bulk of
the rebels could be driven together. One division operated from the
lake town of Viñan, whilst General Jaramillo took his troops round to
Batangas Province and worked northwards. Before the lake forces had
gone very far they met with a reverse at the hands of the rebels in
the neighbourhood of Carmona, but rallied and pushed on towards the
rebel quarters near Silan, where the enemy was apparently concentrating
for a great struggle. The combined columns under General Jaramillo at
length opened the attack. A pitched battle was fought, and no quarter
was given on either side. This fierce contest lasted a whole day,
and the Spaniards were forced to retire with considerable loss. The
combined operations accomplished nothing decisive, and served only
to check an advance on the capital by the rebels, who were already
in practical possession of the whole of Cavite province excepting
the port, arsenal, and isthmus of Cavite.
In Manila the volunteers mounted guard whilst the regulars went to
the front. For a while the volunteers were allowed to make domiciliary
search, and they did very much as they liked. Domiciliary search was
so much abused that it had to be forbidden, for the volunteers took
to entering any house they chose, and roughly examined the persons of
natives to see if they had the _Katipunan_ brand. Crowds of suspects
were brought into Manila, and shiploads of them were sent away in
local steamers to the Caroline Islands and Mindanao, whilst every
mail-steamer carried batches of them _en route_ for Fernando Po. On
October 1 the s.s. _Manila_ sailed with 300 Filipinos for Chafarinas
Islands, Ceuta, and other African penal settlements. In the local
steamers many of them died on the way. The ordinary prisons were more
than full, and about 600 suspects were confined in the dungeons of Fort
Santiago at the mouth of the Pasig River, where a frightful tragedy
occurred. The dungeons were over-crowded; the river-water filtered in
through the crevices in the ancient masonry; the Spanish sergeant on
duty threw his rug over the only light- and ventilating-shaft, and in
a couple of days carts were seen by many citizens carrying away the
dead, calculated to number 70. Provincial governors and parish priests
seemed to regard it as a duty to supply the capital with batches of
"suspects" from their localities. In Vigan, where nothing had occurred,
many of the heads of the best families and moneyed men were arrested
and brought to Manila in a steamer. They were bound hand and foot,
and carried like packages of merchandise in the hold. I happened to
be on the quay when the steamer discharged her living freight with
chains and hooks to haul up and swing out the bodies like bales of
hemp. From Nueva Cáceres (Camarines), the Abellas and several other
rich families and native priests were seized and shipped off. Poor
old Manuel Abella, like scores of others, was tortured in Bilibid
prison and finally shot. He was a notary, unfortunately possessed of a
fine estate coveted by an impecunious Spaniard, who denounced Abella,
and was rewarded by being appointed "Administrator" of his property,
out of which he so enriched himself that he was able, in a few months,
to return to Spain in a good financial position. A friend of mine,
a native planter of Balayán, was imprisoned for months, and then
sent back to his town declared innocent. He had been a marked man
since 1895, just after his son Quintin, a law student, had had a
little altercation with his clerical professors in Manila. Thousands
of peaceful natives were treated with unjustifiable ferocity. The old
torture-chamber on the ground-floor of the convent of Baliuag (Bulacan)
is still shown to visitors. The court-martial, established under
the presidency of a colonel, little by little practised systematic
extortion, for, within three months of the outbreak, hundreds of the
richest natives and half-castes in Manila were imprisoned for a few
days and released _conditionally_. From the lips of my late friend,
Telesforo Chuidian, a wealthy Chinese half-caste, known to all Manila
society, I heard of the squalid misery and privations to which he and
others of his class were subjected, but the complete list would fill
a page. Some were even re-arrested for the same nefarious purpose,
and the daily papers published their names on each occasion. Archbishop
Nozaleda and Gov.-General Blanco were at variance from the beginning of
the revolt, and in accordance with historical precedent it could only
end in one way, namely, that the clerical party advised the Cánovas
Ministry to recall the General and appoint in his stead another who
would be obedient to the friars.
General Blanco was not sufficiently sanguinary for the monks. As a
strategist he had refused, at the outset, to undertake with 1,500
European troops a task which was only accomplished by his successor
with 28,000 men. But the priests thought they knew better, and Blanco
left for Spain in December, 1896. The relative positions of the parties
at this crisis stood as follows:--The rebels were in possession of
the whole of the Province of Cavite excepting the city and arsenal of
Cavite and the isthmus connecting that city with the mainland. They
were well fortified at Imus with trenches and stockades extending
from the estate-house fort in several directions, defended by an
army of 6,000 to 7,000 men. Their artillery was most primitive,
however, consisting only of a few small guns called _lantacas_,
some new guns of small calibre roughly cast out of the church bells,
and iron waterpipes of large diameter converted into _mitrailleuse_
mortars. They were strongly entrenched behind a mile and a half of
strategically constructed earthworks defending the town of Novaleta,
which they held. They were supposed to have at least 20,000 men
in occupation there. Including San Francisco de Malabon, Silan,
Perez Dasmariñas, and the several other places they held, their
total force in the whole province was estimated at 35,000 men. About
one-fifth of that number was armed with rifles (chiefly Maüsers), the
remainder carrying bowie-knives and bamboo lances. The bowie-knife was
irresistible by the Spaniards when the native came to close-quarter
fighting. The rebels had ample supplies of rice, buffaloes, etc.,
stolen from the non-combatant natives. To my personal knowledge
they had daily communication with Manila, and knew everything that
was going on there and the public feeling in the capital. They had
failed in the attempt to seize the town of Santa Cruz (La Laguna),
where they killed one Spaniard and then retreated. Loyal natives in
Viñan organized volunteer forces to keep them out of that town. Those
Manila volunteers known as the _Guerrilla á muerte_ battalion, with
a few regulars, frequently patrolled the lake coast in steam-launches
from Manila, and kept the rebels from occupying that district. North
of Manila the rebellion reached no farther than Bulacan and Pampanga
Provinces, where Llaneras's flying column, together with the rebels
in the mountain fastnesses of Angat and San Mateo, amounted to
about 10,000 men. Llaneras notified the Manila-Dagúpan (English)
Railway officials that they were to cease carrying loyal troops on
their line; but as those orders were not heeded, a train was wrecked
on November 19 about 20 miles up from the capital. The locomotive
and five carriages were smashed, the permanent-way was somewhat
damaged, five individuals were wounded, and the total loss sustained
was estimated at P40,000. In the last week of November the friars'
estate-house at Malinta, some five miles north of Manila, was in
flames; we could see the blaze from the bay. The slightest reverse
to Spanish arms always drew a further crowd of rebels into the field.
The total European force when General Blanco left was about 10,000
men. In Cavite Province the Spaniards held only the camp of Dalahican,
and the city and arsenal of Cavite with the isthmus. The total number
of suspects shipped away was about 1,000. I was informed by my friend
the Secretary of the Military Court that 4,377 individuals were
awaiting trial by court-martial. The possibility of the insurgents
ever being able to enter the capital was never believed in by the
large majority of Europeans, although from a month after the outbreak
the rebels continued to hold posts within a couple of hours' march
from the old walls. The natives, however, were led to expect that the
rebels would make an attempt to occupy the city on Saint Andrew's Day
(the patron-saint day of Manila, _vide_ p. 50). The British Consul
and a few British merchants were of opinion that a raid on the
capital was imminent, and I, among others, was invited by letter,
dated Manila, November 16, 1896, and written under the authority of
H.B.M.'s Consul, to attend a meeting on the 18th of that month at the
offices of a British establishment to concert measures for escape in
such a contingency. In spite of these fears, business was carried on
without the least apparent interruption.
When General Blanco reached Spain he quietly lodged at the Hotel de
Roma in Madrid, and then took a private residence. Out of courtesy
he was offered a position in the _Cuarto Militar_, which he declined
to accept. For several months he remained under a political cloud,
charged with incompetency to quell the Philippine Rebellion. But there
is something to be said in justification of Blanco's inaction. He was
importuned from the beginning by the relentless Archbishop and many
leading civilians to take the offensive and start a war _à outrance_
with an inadequate number of European soldiers. His 6,000 native
auxiliaries (as it proved later on) could not be relied upon in a
_civil_ war. Against the foreign invader, with Spanish prestige still
high, they would have made good loyal fighting-material. Blanco was
no novice in civil wars. I remember his career during the previous
twenty-five years. With his 700 European troops he parried off the
attacks of the first armed mobs in the Province of Manila (now Rizal),
and defended the city and the approaches to the capital. Five hundred
European troops had to be left, here and there, in Visayas for the
ordinary defence. Before the balance of 300 could be embarked in half
a dozen places in the south and landed in Manila, the whole Province
of Cavite was in arms. He could not leave the defence of the city
entirely in the hands of untrained and undrilled volunteers and march
the whole of his European regular troops into another province. A
severe reverse, on the first encounter, might have proved fatal
to Spanish sovereignty. Blanco had the enormous disadvantage (one
must live there to appreciate it) of the wet season, and the rebels
understood this. He had, therefore, to damp the movement by feigning
to attach to it as little importance as possible. Lastly, Blanco was
a man of moderate and humane tendencies; a colonial governor of the
late Martinez Campos school, whose policy is--when all honourable
peaceful means are exhausted, use force.
The Cánovas party was broken up by the assassination of the Prime
Minister on August 8, 1897. This ministry was followed by the
provisional Azcárraga Cabinet, which, at the end of six weeks, was
superseded by the Liberal party under the leadership of Práxedes
Sagasta, who, to temporize with America, recalled the inflexible
General Weyler from Cuba, and on October 9 appointed General Ramon
Blanco, Marquis de Peña Plata, to take the command there.
General Camilo Polavieja (Marquis de Polavieja) arrived in Manila in
December, 1896, as the successor of Blanco and the chosen _Messiah_
of the friars. He had made a great name in Cuba as an _energetic_
military leader, which, in Spanish colonies, always implied a tinge
of wanton cruelty. In Spain he was regarded as the right arm of the
ultra-clericals and a possible supporter of Carlism. He was accompanied
by General Lachambre, whose acquaintance I made in Havana. In the
same steamer with General Polavieja came 500 troops, whilst another
steamer simultaneously brought 1,500. Polavieja, therefore, on landing,
had about 12,000 European troops and 6,000 native auxiliaries; but
each steamer brought fresh supplies until the total European land
forces amounted to 28,000. By this time, however, the 6,000 native
troops were very considerably reduced by desertion, and the remainder
could hardly be relied upon. But Polavieja started his campaign with
the immense advantage of having the _whole_ of the dry season before
him. General Lachambre, as Deputy Commander of the forces, at once took
the field against the rebels in Cavite Province. It would be tedious
to relate in detail the numerous encounters with the enemy over this
area. Battles were fought at Naig, Maragondón, Perez Dasmariñas,
Nasugbú, Taal, Bacoor, Novaleta, and other places. Imus, which in
Manila was popularly supposed to be a fortress of relative magnitude,
whence the rebels would dispute every inch of ground, was attacked
by a large force of loyal troops. On their approach the rebels set
fire to the village and fled. Very few remained to meet the Spaniards,
and as these few tried to escape across the paddy-fields and down the
river they were picked off by sharp-shooters. It was a victory for the
Spaniards, inasmuch as their demonstration of force scared the rebels
into evacuation. But it was necessary to take Silan, which the rebels
hastened to strengthen, closely followed up by the Spaniards. The
place was well defended by earthworks and natural parapets, and
for several hours the issue of the contest was doubtful. The rebels
fought bravely, leaping from boulder to boulder to meet the foe. In
every close-quarter combat the bowie-knife had a terrible effect, and
the loyal troops had suffered heavily when a column of Spaniards was
marched round to the rear of the rebels' principal parapet. They were
lowered down with ropes on to a rising ground facing this parapet, and
poured in a continuous rifle fire until the rebels had to evacuate it,
and the general rout commenced with great slaughter to the insurgents,
who dispersed in all directions. Their last stronghold south of Manila
having been taken, they broke up into small detachments, which were
chased and beaten wherever they made a stand. The Spaniards suffered
great losses, but they gained their point, for the rebels, unable
to hold any one place against this onslaught, were driven up to the
Laguna Province and endeavoured unsuccessfully to hold the town of
Santa Cruz. It is interesting to remark, in order to show what the
rebel aim at that time really was, that they entered here with the
cry of "Long live Spain; Death to the Friars!" After three months'
hard fighting, General Lachambre was proclaimed the Liberator of Cavite
and the adjoining districts, for, by the middle of March, 1897, every
rebel contingent of any importance in that locality had been dispersed.
Like every other Spanish general in supreme command abroad, Polavieja
had his enemies in Spain. The organs of the Liberal party attacked him
unsparingly. Polavieja, as everybody knew, was the chosen executive
of the friars, whose only care was to secure their own position. He
was dubbed the "General Cristiano." He was their ideal, and worked
hand-in-hand with them. He cabled for more troops to be sent with
which to garrison the reconquered districts and have his army corps
free to stamp out the rebellion, which was confined to the Northern
Provinces. Cuba, which had already drained the Peninsula of over
200,000 men, still required fresh levies to replace the sick and
wounded, and Polavieja's demand was refused. Immediately after
this he cabled that his physical ailments compelled him to resign
the commandership-in-chief, and begged the Government to appoint a
successor. The Madrid journals hostile to him thereupon indirectly
attributed to him a lie, and questioned whether his resignation was
due to ill-health or his resentment of the refusal to send out more
troops. Still urging his resignation, General Fernando Primo de Rivera
was gazetted to succeed him, and Polavieja embarked at Manila for Spain
on April 15, 1897. General Lachambre, as the hero of Cavite, followed
to receive the applause which was everywhere showered upon him in
Spain. As to Polavieja's merits, public opinion was very much divided,
and as soon as it was known that he was on the way, a controversy was
started in the Madrid press as to how he ought to be received. _El
Imparcial_ maintained that he was worthy of being honoured as a 19th
century conquering hero. This gave rise to a volley of abuse on the
other side, who raked up all his antecedents and supposed tendencies,
and openly denounced him as a dangerous politician and the supporter
of theocratic absolutism. According to _El Liberal_ of May 11, Señor
Ordax Avecilla, of the Red Cross Society, stated in his speech at
the Madrid Mercantile Club, "If he (the General) thought of becoming
dictator, he would fall from the heights of his glory to the Hades
of nonentity." His enemies persistently insinuated that he was really
returning to Spain to support the clericals actively. But perhaps the
bitterest satire was levelled against him in _El Pais_ of May 10,
which, in an article headed "The Great Farce," said: "Do you know
who is coming? Cyrus, King of Persia; Alexander, King of Macedonia;
Cæsar Augustus; Scipio the African; Gonzalo de Córdova; Napoleon, the
Great Napoleon, conqueror of worlds. What? Oh, unfortunate people,
do you not know? Polavieja is coming, the incomparable Polavieja,
crowned with laurels, commanding a fleet laden to the brim with rich
trophies; it is Polavieja, gentlemen, who returns, discoverer of new
worlds, to lay at the feet of Isabella the Catholic his conquering
sword; it is Polavieja who returns after having cast into obscurity
the glories of Hernan Cortés; Polavieja, who has widened the national
map, and brings new territories to the realm--new thrones to his
queen. What can the people be thinking of that they remain thus in
silence? Applaud, imbeciles! It is Narvaez who is resuscitated. Now
we have another master!" No Spanish general who had arrived at
Polavieja's position would find it possible to be absolutely neutral
in politics, but to compare him with Narvaez, the military dictator,
proved in a few days' time to be the grossest absurdity. On May
13 Polavieja arrived in Barcelona physically broken, half blind,
and with evident traces of a disordered liver. His detractors were
silent; an enthusiastic crowd welcomed him for his achievements. He
had broken the neck of the rebellion, but by what means? Altogether,
apart from the circumstances of legitimate warfare, in which probably
neither party was more merciful than the other, he initiated a system
of striking terror into the non-combatant population by barbarous
tortures and wholesale executions. On February 6, 1897, in one
prison alone (Bilibid) there were 1,266 suspects, most of whom were
brought in by the volunteers, for the forces in the field gave little
quarter and rarely made prisoners. The functions of the volunteers,
organized originally for the defence of the city and suburbs, became
so elastic that, night after night, they made men and women come
out of their houses for inspection conducted most indecorously. The
men were escorted to the prisons from pure caprice, and subjected to
excessive maltreatment. Many of them were liberated in the course of a
few days, declared innocent, but maimed for life and for ever unable
to get a living. Some of these victims were well known to everybody
in Manila; for instance, Dr. Zamora, Bonifacio Arévalo the dentist,
Antonio Rivero (who died under torture), and others. The only apparent
object in all this was to disseminate broadcast living examples of
Spanish vengeance, in order to overawe the populace. Under General
Blanco's administration such acts had been distinctly prohibited on
the representation of General Cárlos Roca.
Polavieja's rule brought the brilliant career of the notable Filipino,
Dr. José Rizal y Mercado, to a fatal end. Born in Calamba (La Laguna),
three hours' journey from Manila, on June 19, 1861, he was destined
to become the idol of his countrymen, and consequently the victim of
the friars and General Polavieja. Often have I, together with the old
native parish priest, Father Leoncio Lopez, spent an hour with José's
father, Francisco Mercado, and heard the old man descant, with pride,
on the intellectual progress of his son at the Jesuits' school in
Manila. Before he was fourteen years of age he wrote a melodrama in
verse entitled _Junto al Pasig_ ("Beside the Pasig River"), which was
performed in public and well received. But young José yearned to set
out on a wider field of learning. His ambition was to go to Europe,
and at the age of twenty-one he went to Spain, studied medicine,
and entered the Madrid University, where he graduated as Doctor of
Medicine and Philosophy. He subsequently continued his studies in
Paris, Brussels, London, and at several seats of learning in Germany,
where he obtained another degree, notwithstanding the fact that he had
the difficulty of a foreign language to contend with. As happened to
many of his _confrères_ in the German Universities, a career of study
had simultaneously opened his eyes to a clearer conception of the
rights of humanity. Thrown among companions of socialistic tendencies,
his belief in and loyalty to the monarchical rule of his country were
yet unshaken by the influence of such environment; he was destined
only to become a disturbing element, and a would-be reformer of that
time-worn institution which rendered secular government in his native
land a farce. To give him a party name, he became an anti-clerical,
strictly in a political and lawful sense. He was a Roman Catholic, but
his sole aim, outside his own profession, was to save his country from
the baneful influence of the Spanish friars who there held the Civil
and Military Government under their tutelage. He sought to place his
country on a level of material and moral prosperity with others, and he
knew that the first step in that direction was to secure the expulsion
of the Monastic Orders. He sympathized with that movement which, during
his childhood, culminated in the Cavite Conspiracy (_vide_ p. 106). He
looked profoundly into the causes of his country's unhappiness, and to
promote their knowledge, in a popular form, he wrote and published in
Germany, in the Spanish language, a book entitled "Noli me tángere." It
is a censorious satirical novel, of no great literary merit, but it
served the author's purpose to expose the inner life, the arrogance,
and the despotism of the friars in their relations with the natives. On
his return to the Islands, a year after the publication of this work,
we met at the house of a mutual friend and conversed on the subject of
"Noli me tángere," a copy of which he lent to me.
As an oculist Rizal performed some very clever operations, but he
had another mission--one which brought upon him all the odium of the
clerical party, but which as quickly raised him in popular esteem in
native circles. He led a party in his own town who dared to dispute
the legality of the Dominican Order's possession of a large tract of
agricultural land. He called upon the Order to show their title-deeds,
but was met with a contemptuous refusal. At length prudence dictated
a return to Europe. I often recall the farewell lunch we had together
at the Restaurant de Paris, in the _Escolta_. During his absence his
own relations and the chief families in his town became the objects
of persecution. They were driven from the lands they cultivated and
rented from the Religious Order, without compensation for improvements,
and Spaniards took their holdings. In 1890 Rizal saw with his own eyes,
and perhaps with envy, the growing prosperity of Japan; but the idea
of annexation to that country was distasteful to him, as he feared
the Japanese might prove to be rather harsh masters. On his return to
Europe he contributed many brilliant articles to _La Solidaridad_, the
Madrid-Philippine organ mentioned on p. 363; but, disgusted with his
failure to awaken in Spain a sympathetic interest in his own country's
misfortunes, he left that field of work and re-visited London, where he
found encouragement and very material assistance from an old friend of
mine, a distinguished Filipino. Rizal's financial resources were none
too plentiful, and he himself was anxious for a position of productive
activity. It was proposed that he should establish himself in London
as a doctor, but with his mind always bent on the concerns of his
country he again took to literary work. He edited a new edition of
Dr. Antonio de Morga's work on the Philippines [180] (the original
was published in Mexico in 1609), with notes, and wrote a new book in
the form of romance, entitled "El Filibusterismo," [181] the purpose
of which was to show how the Filipinos were goaded into outlawry.
About this time two priests, C---- and C----, who had seceded from
the Roman Catholic Church, called upon my Philippine friend to urge
him to take an interest in their projected evangelical work in the
Islands. They even proposed to establish a new Church there and appoint
a hierarchy--an extremely risky venture indeed. My friend was asked
to nominate some Filipino for the archbishopric. It was put before
Rizal, but he declined the honour on the ground that the acceptance
of such an office would sorely offend his mother. Finally, in 1893,
a Pampanga Filipino, named C----, came on the scene and proposed to
furnish Rizal with ample funds for the establishment of a Philippine
college in Hong-Kong. Rizal accepted the offer and set out for that
colony, where he waited in vain for the money. For a while he hesitated
between following the medical profession in Hong-Kong and returning
to Manila. Mutual friends of ours urged him not to risk a re-entry
into the Islands; nevertheless, communications passed between him
and the Gov.-General through the Spanish Consul, and nothing could
induce him to keep out of the lion's mouth. Rizal avowed that he had
been given to understand that he could return to the Islands without
fear for his personal safety and liberty. He arrived in Manila and was
arrested. His luggage was searched in the Custom-house, and a number
of those seditious proclamations referred to at p. 204 were found,
it was alleged, in his trunks. It is contrary to all common sense to
conceive that a sane man, who had entertained the least doubt as to
his personal liberty, would bring with him, into a public department of
scrutiny, documentary evidence of his own culpability. He was arraigned
before the supreme authority, in whose presence he defended himself
right nobly. The clerical party wanted his blood, but Gov.-General
Despujols would not yield. Rizal was either guilty or innocent,
and should have been fully acquitted or condemned; but to meet the
matter half way he was banished to Dapítan, a town on the north shore
of Mindanao Island. I saw the bungalow, situated at the extremity of
a pretty little horse-shoe bay, where he lived nearly four years in
bondage. His bright intelligence, his sociability, and his scientific
attainments had won him the respect and admiration of both the civil
and religious local authorities. He had such a well-justified good
repute as an oculist that many travelled across the seas to seek his
aid. The Cuban insurrection being in full operation, it opened the
way for a new and interesting period in Rizal's life. Reading between
the lines of the letters he was allowed to send to his friends, there
was evidence of his being weighed down with _ennui_ from inactivity,
and his friends in Europe took the opportunity of bringing pressure
on the Madrid Government to liberate him. In a house which I visit
in London there were frequent consultations as to how this could be
effected. In the end it was agreed to organize a bogus "Society for
the Liberation of Prisoners in the Far East." A few ladies met at the
house mentioned, and one of them, Miss A----, having been appointed
secretary, she was sent to Madrid to present a petition from the
"Society" to the Prime Minister, Cánovas del Castillo, praying for
the liberation of Rizal in exchange for his professional services
in the Spanish army operating in Cuba, where army doctors were much
needed. Hints were deftly thrown out about the "Society's" relations
with other European capitals, and the foreign lady-secretary played
her part so adroitly that the Prime Minister pictured to himself
ambassadorial intervention and foreign complications if he did not
grant the prayer of what he imagined to be an influential society with
potential ramifications. The Colonial Minister opposed the petition;
the War Minister, being Philippine born, declined to act on his own
responsibility for obvious reasons. Repeated discussions took place
between the Crown advisers, to whom, at length, the Prime Minister
disclosed his fears, and finally the Gov.-General of the Philippines,
Don Ramon Blanco, was authorized to liberate Rizal, on the terms
mentioned, if he saw no objection. As my Philippine friend, who went
from London to Madrid about the matter, remarked to the War Minister,
"Rizal is loyal; he will do his duty; but if he did not, one more or
less in the rebel camp--what matters?" The Gov.-General willingly
acted on the powers received from the Home Government, and Rizal's
conditional freedom dated from July 28, 1896. The governor of Dapítan
was instructed to ask Rizal if he wished to go to Cuba as an army
doctor, and the reply being in the affirmative, he was conducted on
board the steamer for Manila, calling on the way at Cebú, where crowds
of natives and half-castes went on board to congratulate him. He had
become the idol of the people in his exile; his ideas were _then_
the reflection of all Philippine aims and ambitions; the very name of
Rizal raised their hopes to the highest pitch. Most fantastic reports
were circulated concerning him. Deeds in Europe, almost amounting
to miracles, were attributed to his genius, and became current talk
among the natives when they spoke _sotto voce_ of Rizal's power and
influence. He was looked up to as the future regenerator of his race,
capable of moving armies and navies for the cause of liberty. Their
very reverence was his condemnation in the eyes of the priests.
There were no inter-island cables in those days, and the arrival
of Rizal in the port of Manila was a surprise to the friars. They
expostulated with General Blanco. They openly upbraided him for
having set free the soul of disaffection; but the general would not
relinquish his intention, explaining, very logically, that if Rizal
were the soul of rebellion he was now about to depart. The friars were
eager for Rival's blood, and the parish priest of Tondo arranged
a revolt of the _caudrilleros_ (guards) of that suburb, hoping
thereby to convince General Blanco that the rebellion was in full
cry, consequent on his folly. No doubt, by this trick of the friars,
many civilian Spaniards were deceived into an honest belief in the
ineptitude of the Gov.-General. In a state of frenzy a body of them,
headed by Father Mariano Gil, marched to the palace of Malacañan to
demand an explanation of General Blanco. The gates were closed by order
of the captain of the guard. When the general learnt what the howling
outside signified he mounted his horse, and, at the head of his guards,
met the excited crowd and ordered them to quit the precincts of the
palace, or he would put them out by force. The abashed priest [182]
thereupon withdrew with his companions, but from that day the occult
power of the friars was put in motion to bring about the recall of
General Blanco. In the meantime Rizal had been detained in the Spanish
cruiser _Castilla_ lying in the bay. Thence he was transferred to the
mail-steamer _Isla de Panay_ bound to Barcelona. He carried with him
letters of recommendation to the Ministers of War and the Colonies,
courteously sent to him by General Blanco with the following letter
to himself:--
(_Translation_.)
_Manila_, _30th August_, 1896.
_Dr. Jose Rizal_.
_My Dear Sir_,--
Enclosed I send you two letters, for the Ministers of War and the
Colonies respectively, which I believe will ensure to you a good
reception. I cannot doubt that you will show me respect in your
relations with the Government, and by your future conduct, not only
on account of your word pledged, but because passing events must make
it clear to you how certain proceedings, due to extravagant notions
can only produce hatred, ruin, tears and bloodshed. That you may be
happy is the desire of Yours, etc.,
_Ramon Blanco_.
He had as travelling companion Don Pedro P. Rojas, already referred
to, and had he chosen he could have left the steamer at Singapore as
Rojas did. Not a few of us who saw the vessel leave wished him "God
speed." But the clerical party were eager for his extermination. He
was a thorn in the side of monastic sway; he had committed no crime,
but he was the friars' arch-enemy and _bête noire_. Again the lay
authorities had to yield to the monks. Dr. Rizal was cabled for to
answer certain accusations; hence on his landing in the Peninsula he
was incarcerated in the celebrated fortress of Montjuich (the scene of
so many horrors), pending his re-shipment by the returning steamer. He
reached Manila as a State prisoner in the _Colon_, isolated from all
but his jailors. It was materially impossible for him to have taken
any part in the rebellion, whatever his sympathies may have been. Yet,
once more, the wheel of fortune turned against him. Coincidentally the
parish priest of Mórong was murdered at the altar whilst celebrating
Mass on Christmas Day, 1896. The importunity of the friars could be
no longer resisted; this new calamity seemed to strengthen their
cause. The next day Rizal was brought to trial for _sedition_ and
_rebellion_, before a court-martial composed of eight captains,
under the presidency of a lieutenant-colonel. No reliable testimony
could be brought against him. How could it be when, for years, he had
been a State prisoner in forced seclusion? He defended himself with
logical argument. But what mattered? He was condemned beforehand to
ignominious death as a traitor, and the decree of execution was one of
Polavieja's foulest acts. During the few days which elapsed between
sentence and death he refused to see any priest but a Jesuit, Padre
Faura, his old preceptor, who hastened his own death by coming from a
sick bed to console the pupil he was so proud of. In his last moments
his demeanour was in accordance with his oft-quoted saying, "What is
death to me? I have sown the seed; others are left to reap." In his
condemned cell he composed a beautiful poem of 14 verses ("My last
Thought"), which was found by his wife and published. The following
are the first and last verses.
_Mi Ultimo Pensamiento_.
Adios, Pátria adorada, region del sol querida,
Perla del Mar de Oriente, nuestro perdido Eden.
A dárte voy alegre la triste mústia vida,
Y fuera mas brillante, mas fresca, mas florida,
Tambien por ti la diera, la diera por tu bien.
Adios, padres y hermanos, trozos del alma mia.
Amigos de la infancia en el perdido hogar.
Dad gracias que descanso del fatigoso dia;
Adios, dulce extrangera, mi amiga, mi alegria,
Adios, queridos seres, morir es descansar.
The woman who had long responded to his love was only too proud to
bear his illustrious name, and in the sombre rays which fell from his
prison grating, the vows of matrimony were given and sanctified with
the sad certainty of widowhood on the morrow. Fortified by purity of
conscience and the rectitude of his principles, he felt no felon's
remorse, but walked with equanimity to the place of execution. About
2,000 regular and volunteer troops formed the square where he knelt
facing the seashore, on the blood-stained field of Bagumbayan. After an
officer had shouted the formula, "In the name of the King! Whosoever
shall raise his voice to crave clemency for the condemned, shall
suffer death," four bullets, fired from behind by Philippine soldiers,
did their fatal work. This execution took place at 6 a.m. on December
30, 1896. An immense crowd witnessed, in silent awe, this sacrifice
to priestcraft. The friars, too, were present _en masse_, many of
them smoking big cigars, jubilant over the extinction of that bright
intellectual light which, alas! can never be rekindled.
The circumstances under which Rizal, in his exile, made the
acquaintance of Josephine Taufer, who became his wife, are curious. The
account was given to me by Mrs. Rizal's foster-father as we crossed the
China Sea together. The foster-father, who was an American resident in
Hong-Kong, found his eyesight gradually failing him. After exhausting
all remedies in that colony, he heard of a famous oculist in Manila
named Rizal, a Filipino of reputed Japanese origin. Therefore,
in August, 1894, he went to Manila to seek the great doctor, taking
with him a Macao servant, his daughter, and a girl whom he had adopted
from infancy. The Philippine Archipelago was such a _terra incognita_
to the outside world that little was generally known of it save the
capital, Manila. When he reached there he learnt, to his dismay,
that the renowned practitioner was a political exile who lived in
an out-of-the-way place in Mindanao Island. Intent on his purpose,
he took ship and found the abode of Dr. Rizal. The American had been
forsaken by his daughter in Manila, where she eventually married a
young native who had neither craft nor fortune. The adopted daughter,
therefore, was his companion to Dapítan. When they arrived at the
bungalow the bright eyes of the lovely Josephine interested the doctor
far more than the sombre diseased organs of her foster-father. The
exile and the maiden, in short, fell in love with each other, and they
mutually vowed never to be parted but by force. The old man's eyes
were past all cure, and in vain he urged the girl to depart with him;
love dissented from the proposition, and the patient found his way
back to Manila, and thence to Hong-Kong, with his Macao servant--a
sadder, but a wiser man. The foster-child remained behind to share
the hut of the political exile. When, an hour after her marriage,
she became Widow Rizal, her husband's corpse, which had received
sepulture in the cemetery, was guarded by soldiers for four days lest
the superstitious natives should snatch the body and divide it into
a thousand relics of their lamented idol. Then Josephine started
off for the rebel camp at Imus. On her way she was often asked,
"Who art thou?" but her answer, "Lo! I am thy sister, the widow of
Rizal!" not only opened a passage for her, but brought low every head
in silent reverence. Amidst mourning and triumph she was conducted to
the presence of the rebel commander-in-chief, Emilio Aguinaldo, who
received her with the respect due to the sorrowing relict of their
departed hero. But the formal tributes of condolence were followed
by great rejoicing in the camp. She was the only free white woman
within the rebel lines. They lauded her as though an angelic being
had fallen from the skies; they sang her praises as if she were a
modern Joan of Arc sent by heaven to lead the way to victory over
the banner of Castile. But she chose, for the time being, to follow a
more womanly vocation, and, having been escorted to San Francisco de
Malabon, she took up her residence in the convent to tend the wounded
for about three weeks. Then, when the battle of Perez Dasmariñas was
raging, our heroine sallied forth on horseback with a Mäuser rifle
over her shoulder, and--as she stated with pride to a friend of mine
who interviewed her--she had the satisfaction of shooting dead one
Spanish officer, and then retreated to her convent refuge. Again,
she was present at the battle of Silan, where her heroic example of
courage infused new life into her brother rebels. The carnage on both
sides was fearful, but in the end the rebels fell back, and there,
from a spot amidst mangled corpses, rivulets of blood, and groans of
death, Josephine witnessed many a scene of Spanish barbarity--the
butchery of old inoffensive men and women, children caught up by
the feet and dashed against the walls, and the bayonet-charge on the
host of fugitive innocents. The rebels having been beaten everywhere
when Lachambre took the field, Josephine had to follow in their
retreat, and after Imus and Silan were taken, she, with the rest,
had to flee to another province, tramping through 23 villages on
the way. She was about to play another _rôle_, being on the point
of going to Manila to organize a convoy of arms and munitions, when
she heard that certain Spaniards were plotting against her life. So
she sought an interview with the Gov.-General, who asked her if she
had been in the rebel camp at Imus. She replied fearlessly in the
affirmative, and, relying on the security from violence afforded
by her sex and foreign nationality, there passed between her and
the Gov.-General quite an amusing and piquant colloquy. "What did
you go to Imus for?" inquired the General. "What did you go there
for?" rejoined Josephine. "To fight," said the General. "So did I,"
answered Josephine. "Will you leave Manila?" asked the General. "Why
should I?" queried Josephine. "Well," said the General, "the priests
will not leave you alone if you stay here, and they will bring false
evidence against you. I have no power to overrule theirs." "Then
what is the use of the Gov.-General?" pursued our heroine; but the
General dismissed the discussion, which was becoming embarrassing,
and resumed it a few days later by calling upon her emphatically to
quit the Colony. At this second interview the General fumed and raged,
and our heroine too stamped her little foot, and, woman-like, avowed
"she did not care for him; she was not afraid of him." It was temerity
born of inexperience, for one word of command from the General could
have sent her the way many others had gone, to an unrevealed fate. Thus
matters waxed hot between her defiance and his forbearance, until
visions of torture--thumb-screws and bastinado--passed so vividly
before her eyes that she yielded, as individual force must, to the
collective power which rules supreme, and reluctantly consented to
leave the fair Philippine shores in May, 1897, in the s.s. _Yuensang_,
for a safer resting-place on the British soil of Hong-Kong.
The execution of Dr. Rizal was a most impolitic act. It sent into
the field his brother Pasciano with a large following, who eventually
succeeded in driving every Spaniard out of their native province of
La Laguna. They also seized the lake gunboats, took an entire Spanish
garrison prisoner, and captured a large quantity of stores. Pasciano
rose to the rank of general before the rebellion ended. [183]
General Fernando Primo de Rivera, Marquis de Estella, arrived in
Manila, as the successor of General Camilo Polavieja, in the spring
of 1897. He knew the country and the people he was called upon to
pacify, having been Gov.-General there from April, 1880, to March,
1883. A few days after his arrival he issued a proclamation offering
an amnesty to all who would lay down their arms within a prescribed
period. Many responded to this appeal, for the crushing defeat of
the rebels in Cavite Province, accompanied by the ruthless severity
of the soldiery during the last Captain-Generalcy, had damped the
ardour of thousands of would-be insurgents. The rebellion was then
confined to the north of Manila, but, since Aguinaldo had evacuated
Cavite and joined forces with Llaneras, the movement was carried far
beyond the Provinces of Bulacan and Pampanga. Armed mobs had risen
in Pangasinán, Zambales, Ilocos, Nueva Ecija, and Tárlac. Many
villages were entirely reduced to ashes by them; crops of young
rice too unripe to be useful to anybody were wantonly destroyed;
pillage and devastation were resorted to everywhere to coerce the
peaceful inhabitants to join in the movement. On the other hand, the
nerves of the priests were so highly strung that they suspected every
native, and, by persistently launching false accusations against their
parishioners, they literally made rebels. Hence at Candon (Ilocos Sur),
a town of importance on the north-west coast of Luzon, five influential
residents were simply goaded into rebellion by the frenzied action
of the friars subordinate to the Bishop of Vigan, Father José Hévia
de Campomanes. These residents then killed the parish priest, and
without arms fled for safety to the mountain ravines. A few months
before, at the commencement of the rebellion, this same Austin friar,
Father Rafael Redondo, had ignominiously treated his own and other
native curates by having them stripped naked and tied down to benches,
where he beat them with the prickly tail of the ray-fish to extort
confessions relating to conspiracy. In San Fernando de la Union the
native priests Adriano Garcés, Mariano Gaerlan, and Mariano Dacanaya
were tortured with a hot iron applied to their bodies to force a
confession that they were freemasons. The rebels attacked Bayambang
(Pangasinán), drove out the Spanish garrison, seized the church
and convent in which they had fortified themselves, made prisoner
the Spanish priest, burnt the Government stores, Court-house, and
Spanish residences, but carefully avoided all interference with the
British-owned steam rice-mill and paddy warehouses. Troops were sent
against them by special train from Tárlac, and they were beaten out
of the place with a loss of about 100 individuals; but they carried
off their clerical prisoner. General Monet operated in the north
against the rebels with Spanish and native auxiliary forces. He
attacked the armed mobs in Zambales Province, where encounters of
minor importance took place almost daily, with no decisive victory
for either party. He showed no mercy and took no prisoners; his
troops shot down or bayoneted rebels, non-combatants, women and
children indiscriminately. Tillage was carried on at the risk of
one's life, for men found going out to their lands were seized as
spies and treated with the utmost severity as possible sympathizers
with the rebels. He carried this war of extermination up to Ilocos,
where, little by little, his forces deserted him. His auxiliaries
went over to the rebels in groups. Even a few Spaniards passed to
the other side, and after a protracted struggle which brought no
advantage to the Government, he left garrisons in several places
and returned to Manila. In Aliaga (Nueva Ecija) the Spaniards had
no greater success. The rebels assembled there in crowds, augmented
by the fugitive mobs from Pangasinán, and took possession of the
town. The Spaniards, under General Nuñez, attacked them on two sides,
and there was fought one of the most desperate battles of the north. It
lasted about six hours: the slaughter on both sides was appalling. The
site was strewn with corpses, and as the rebels were about to retreat
General Nuñez advanced to cut them off, but was so severely wounded
that he had to relinquish the command on the field. But the flight of
the insurgents was too far advanced to rally them, and they retired
south towards Pampanga.
In Tayabas the officiousness of the Governor almost brought him to
an untimely end. Two well-known inhabitants of Pagsanján (La Laguna)
were accused of conspiracy, and, without proof, court-martialled
and executed. The Governor went to witness the scene, and returning
the next day with his official suite, he was waylaid near Lucbang
by a rebel party, who killed one of the officers and wounded the
Governor. Filipinos returning to Manila were imprisoned without trial,
tortured, and shipped back to Hong-Kong as deck passengers. The wet
season had fully set in, making warfare in the provinces exceedingly
difficult for the raw Spanish recruits who arrived to take the place
of the dead, wounded, and diseased. Spain was so hard pressed by
Cuban affairs that the majority of these last levies were mere boys,
ignorant of the use of arms, ill clad, badly fed, and with months of
pay in arrear. Under these conditions they were barely a match for
the sturdy Islanders, over mountains, through streams, mud-pools,
and paddy-fields. The military hospitals were full; the Spaniards
were as far off extinguishing the _Katipunan_ as the rebels were
from being able to subvert Spanish sovereignty. The rebels held only
two impregnable places, namely Angat and San Mateo, but whilst they
carried on an interminable guerilla warfare they as carefully avoided
a pitched battle. The Gov.-General, then, had resort to another edict,
dated July 2, 1897, which read thus:--
_Edict_
Don Fernando Primo de Rivera y Sobremonte, Marquis de
Estella, Governor and Captain-General of the Philippines, and
Commander-in-Chief of the Army.
Whereas the unlimited amplitude given to my former edicts by
some authorities who are still according the benefits of the
amnesty to those who present themselves after the expiration of
the conceded time, imperatively calls for a most absolute and
positive declaration that there is a limit to clemency and pardon,
otherwise the indefinite postponement of the application of the
law may be interpreted as a sign of debility; and
Whereas our generosity has been fully appreciated by many who
have shown signs of repentance by resuming their legal status,
whilst there are others who abuse our excessive benevolence
by maintaining their rebellious attitude, and encroach on our
patience to prolong the resistance; and
Whereas it is expedient to abolish the spectacle of a few groups,
always vanquished whilst committing all sorts of felonies under
the protection of a fictitious political flag, maintaining a
state of uneasiness and corruption;
Now, therefore, the authorities must adopt every possible means
of repression, and I, as General-in-Chief of the Army,
Order and Command
_Article_ 1.--All persons having contracted responsibilities up
to date on account of the present rebellion who fail to report
themselves to the authorities or military commanders before the
10th of July will be pursued and treated as guilty.
_Article_ 2.--Commanding generals in the field, military and civil
governors in districts where the rebels exist, will prohibit all
inhabitants from leaving the villages and towns, unless under
absolute necessity for agricultural purposes, or taking care of
rural properties or other works. Those comprised in the latter
class will be provided by the municipal captains with a special
pass, in which will be noted the period of absence, the place to
be visited, and the road to be taken, always provided that all
persons absenting themselves from the villages without carrying
such passes, and all who, having them, deviate from the time,
road, or place indicated, will be treated as rebels.
_Article 3._--After the 10th instant all persons will be required
to prove their identity by the personal document (_cédula
personal_), together with the pass above-mentioned, and neither
the amnesty passes already granted nor any other document will
have any legal validity.
All who contravene these orders will be tried by court-martial.
_Fernando Primo de Rivera_.
The indiscreetness of this measure was soon evident. It irritated
the well-disposed inhabitants, from whom fees were exacted by the
Gov.-General's venal subordinates; the rigorous application of the
edict drove many to the enemy's camp, and the rebels responded to
this document by issuing the following Exhortation in Tagálog dialect,
bearing the pseudonym of "Malabar." It was extensively circulated in
July, 1897, but bears no date. The Spanish authorities made strenuous
but unsuccessful efforts to confiscate it. It is an interesting
document because (1) It admits how little territory the _Katipunan_
itself considered under its dominion. (2) It sets forth the sum total
of the rebels' demands at that period. (3) It admits their impotence
to vanquish the loyal forces in open battle.
To the Brave Sons of the Philippines
The Spaniards have occupied the towns of Cavite Province because we
found it convenient to evacuate them. We must change our tactics
as circumstances dictate.
We have proved it to be a bad policy to be fortified in one place
awaiting the enemy's attack. We must take the offensive when we
get the chance, adopting the Cuban plan of ambush and guerilla
warfare. In this way we can, for an indefinite period, defy Spain,
exhaust her resources, and oblige her to surrender from poverty,
for it must be remembered that the very Spanish newspapers admit
that each soldier costs a dollar a day, and adding to this
his passage money, clothing and equipment, the total amounts
to a considerable sum. Considering that Spanish credit abroad
is exhausted, that her young men, to avoid conscription, are
emigrating to France and elsewhere in large numbers, Spain must
of necessity yield in the end. You already know that Polavieja
resigned because the Government were unable to send him the
further 20,000 men demanded. The Cubans, with their guerilla
system, avoiding encounters unfavourable to themselves, have
succeeded in wearying the Spaniards, who are dying of fever in
large numbers. Following this system, it would be quite feasible
to extend the action of the _Katipunan_ to Ilocos, Pangasinán,
Cagayán, and other provinces, because our brothers in these places,
sorely tyrannized by the Spaniards, are prepared to unite with us.
The Provinces of Zambales, Tárlac, Tayabas, etc., are already
under the _Katipunan_ Government, and to complete our success,
the revolutionary movement should become general, for the ends
which we all so ardently desire, namely:
(1) Expulsion of the friars and restitution to the townships
of the lands which the friars have appropriated, dividing the
incumbencies held by them, as well as the episcopal sees equally
between Peninsular and Insular secular priests.
(2) Spain must concede to us, as she has to Cuba, Parliamentary
representation, freedom of the Press, toleration of all religious
sects, laws common with hers, and administrative and economic
autonomy.
(3) Equality in treatment and pay between Peninsular and Insular
civil servants.
(4) Restitution of all lands appropriated by the friars to the
townships, or to the original owners, or in default of finding
such owners, the State is to put them up to public auction in
small lots of a value within the reach of all and payable within
four years, the same as the present State lands.
(5) Abolition of the Government authorities' power to banish
citizens, as well as all unjust measures against Filipinos;
legal equality for all persons, whether Peninsular or Insular,
under the Civil as well as the Penal Code.
The war must be prolonged to give the greatest signs of vitality
possible, so that Spain may be compelled to grant our demands,
otherwise she will consider us an effete race and curtail, rather
than extend, our rights.
_Malabar_.
Shortly after this Emilio Aguinaldo, the recognized leader of the
rebels, issued a _Manifiesto_ in somewhat ambiguous terms which might
imply a demand for independence. In this document he says:--
We aspire to the glory of obtaining the liberty, _independence_,
and honour of the country.... We aspire to a Government
representing all the live forces of the country, in which the most
able, the most worthy in virtue and talent, may take part without
distinction of birth, fortune, or race. We desire that no monk,
or friar, shall sully the soil of any part of the Archipelago,
nor that there shall exist any convent, etc., etc.
Every month brought to light fresh public exhortations, edicts, and
proclamations from one side or the other, of which I have numerous
printed copies before me now. About this time the famous Philippine
painter, Juan Luna (_vide_ p. 195), was released after six months'
imprisonment as a suspect. He left Manila _en route_ for Madrid in
the Spanish mail-steamer _Covadonga_ in the first week of July and
returned to Manila the next year (November 1898).
In the field there were no great victories to record, for the rebels
confined themselves exclusively to harassing the Spanish forces
and then retreating to the mountains. To all appearances trade in
Manila and throughout the Islands was little affected by the war,
and as a matter of fact, the total exports showed a fair average
when compared with previous years. The sugar production was, however,
slightly less than in 1896, owing to a scarcity of hands, because, in
the ploughing season, the young labourers in Negros were drafted off
to military service. Total imports somewhat increased, notwithstanding
the imposition of a special 6 per cent. _ad valorem_ tax.
But the probability of an early pacification of the Islands was
remote. By the unscrupulous abuse of their functions the volunteers
were obliging the well-intentioned natives to forsake their allegiance,
and General Primo de Rivera was constrained to issue a decree, dated
August 6, forbidding all persons in military service to plunder,
or intimidate, or commit acts of violence on persons, or in their
houses, or ravish women, under penalty of death. In the same month
the General commissioned a Filipino, Don Pedro Alejandro Paterno, to
negotiate terms of capitulation with the rebels. By dint of bribes and
liberal expenditure of money (_vide_ Paterno's own letter at p. 410)
Paterno induced the minor chiefs in arms to accept, in principle,
the proposal of peace on the basis of reforms and money. Paterno was
appointed by the Gov.-General sole mediator in the discussion of the
terms to be made with Emilio Aguinaldo, and the General's private
secretary, Don Niceto Mayoral, was granted special powers to arrange
with Paterno the details of the proposed treaty. From Paterno's lips
I have the following account of the negotiations:--
On August 4, 1897, he started on a series of difficult journeys
into the rebel camps to negotiate severally with the chiefs, who,
one after the other, stoutly refused to capitulate. On August 9 he
interviewed Aguinaldo at Biac-na-bató, situated in the mountains, about
a mile north of San Miguel de Mayumo (Bulacan). Aguinaldo withheld his
decision until Paterno could report to him the definite opinions of his
generals. Thereupon Paterno returned to the rebel chiefs, some of whom
still tenaciously held out, whilst others were willing to capitulate,
subject to Aguinaldo's approval. Paterno's mission was daily becoming
more perilous, for the irreconcilable leaders regarded him as an
evil genius sent to sow discord in the camp. After many delays the
principal warriors assembled at Biac-na-bató on October 31 and held a
great meeting, which Paterno, who is a fluent speaker, attended and
harangued his audience in eloquent phrases, but to no purpose. His
position was now a somewhat critical one. Several of the chiefs assumed
such a defiant attitude that but for the clement nature of Aguinaldo,
Paterno might never have returned to tell the tale. They clamorously
insisted on their resolution to fight. Then Paterno adroitly brought
matters to a crisis in a bold peroration which changed the whole
scene. "Capitulate," he exclaimed, "or get hence and vanquish the
enemy! Is victory to be gained in this hiding-place?" Piqued by
this fearless challenge, General Natividad immediately sallied
forth with his troops and encountered the Spaniards for the last
time. His dead body was brought into the camp, and, in the shades of
night, with sombre lights flickering around them, in the presence of
Natividad's bleeding corpse, again Paterno exhorted them to reflect on
the prospects in the field and the offer of capitulation. Impressed
by the lugubrious scene, Aguinaldo yielded, and the next day peace
negotiations were opened. But other difficulties intervened. Aguinaldo
having heard that a subordinate chief was conspiring to force his hand
to capitulate, abruptly cast aside the papers, declaring that he would
never brook coercion. The deadlock lasted a whole day, but at length
Aguinaldo signed conditions, which Paterno conveyed to General Primo
de Rivera at San Fernando (Pampanga). The willingness to capitulate
was by no means unanimous. Paterno was forewarned that on his route
a party of 500 Irreconcilables were waiting to intercept and murder
him, so to evade them he had to hide in a wood. Fifteen minutes' delay
would have cost him his life. Even a Spanish colonel for some occult
reason sought to frustrate the peace negotiations by falsely reporting
to General Primo de Rivera that Paterno was inciting the rebels to
warfare. But the General believed in Paterno's good faith, although
he declared the terms proposed unacceptable, and in like manner three
other amended proposals were rejected, until finally the fifth document
was accepted as tantamount to a Protocol of Peace to serve as a basis
for the treaty. Here ends Paterno's verbal declaration.
The Protocol was signed in duplicate by Emilio Aguinaldo of the one
part, and Pedro A. Paterno, as Peacemaker, of the other part. One
copy was archived in the office of the _Gobierno General_ in Manila,
[184] and the other was remitted to the Home Government with a despatch
from the Gov.-General.
After many consultations and much deliberation it was decided at
a Cabinet meeting to approve unreservedly of the negotiations,
and to that effect a cablegram was sent to General Primo de Rivera
fully empowering him to conclude a treaty of peace on the basis
of the Protocol. Meanwhile, it soon became evident that there
were three distinct interests at stake, namely, those of Spain
and the Spanish people, those of the friars, and the claims of the
rebels. Consequently the traditional feud between the Archbishop of
Manila and the Captain-General was revived.
General Primo de Rivera in his despatch urged the Madrid Government to
grant certain reforms, in any case, which could not fail to affect the
hitherto independent position of the friars in governmental affairs. He
also drew the attention of the Government to the defenceless
condition of the capital in the event of a foreign attack (_vide_
Senate speeches reported in the _Diario de las Sesiones_, Madrid,
1899 and 1900). The friars were exceedingly wroth, and combined to
defeat the General's efforts to come to an understanding with the
rebels. They secretly paid natives to simulate the _Katipunan_ in
the provinces, and the plot only came to light when these unfortunate
dupes fell into the hands of the military authorities and confessed
what had happened. Nevertheless, the General pursued the negotiations
with Paterno as intermediary. Aguinaldo's original demand was for a
total indemnity of P3,000,000, but, in the course of the negotiations
alluded to, it was finally reduced to P1,700,000, inclusive of P800,000
to be paid to Aguinaldo on his retirement from the Colony.
The terms of the Protocol of Peace having been mutually agreed upon,
a treaty, known as the _Pacto de Biac-na-bató_, [185] is alleged to
have been signed at Biac-na-bató on December 14, 1897, between Emilio
Aguinaldo and others of the one part, and Pedro A. Paterno, as attorney
for the Captain-General, acting in the name of the Spanish Government,
of the other part. Under this treaty the rebels undertook to deliver up
their arms and ammunition of all kinds to the Spaniards; to evacuate
the places held by them; to conclude an armistice for three years for
the application and development of the _reforms to be introduced_
by the other part, and not to conspire against Spanish sovereignty
in the Islands, nor aid or abet any movement calculated to counteract
those reforms. Emilio Aguinaldo and 34 other leaders undertook to quit
the Philippine Islands and not return thereto until so authorized by
the Spanish Government, in consideration whereof the above-mentioned
P800,000 was to be paid as follows:--P400,000 in a draft on Hong-Kong
to be delivered to Aguinaldo on his leaving Biac-na-bató [This draft
was, in fact, delivered to him]; P200,000 payable to Aguinaldo as soon
as he should send a telegram to the revolutionary general in command
at Biac-na-bató, ordering him to hand over the rebels' arms to the
Captain-General's appointed commissioner [This telegram was sent],
and the final P200,000 immediately after the singing of the _Te Deum_
which would signify an official recognition of peace.
_It was further alleged_ that on behalf of the Spanish Government
many radical reforms and conditions were agreed to (outside the
Treaty of Biac-na-bató), almost amounting to a total compliance
with the demands of the rebels. But no evidence whatever has been
adduced to confirm this allegation. Indeed it is a remarkable fact
that neither in the Madrid parliamentary papers (to copies of which
I have referred), nor in the numerous rebel proclamations and edicts,
nor in the published correspondence of Pedro A. Paterno, is even the
full text of the treaty given. It is singular that the rebels should
have abstained from publishing to the world those precise terms which
they say were accepted and not fulfilled by the Spanish Government,
which denies their existence.
Whatever reforms might have been promised would have been purely
governmental matters which required no mediator for their execution;
but as to the money payments to be made, Paterno was to receive them
from the Government and distribute them. An Agreement to this effect
was, therefore, signed by General Primo de Rivera and Pedro A. Paterno
in the following terms, viz.:--
In the peace proposals presented by the sole mediator, Don Pedro
Alejandro Paterno, in the name and on behalf of the rebels in arms,
and in the Peace Protocol which was agreed to and submitted to His
Majesty's Government, _which approved of the same_, there exists
a principal clause relating to the sums of money which were to be
handed over to the rebels and their families as indemnity for the
loss of their goods consequent on the war, which sums amounted to
a total of P1,700,000, which the mediator, Señor Paterno, was to
distribute absolutely at his discretion, but the payment of the
said sum will have to be subject to the conditions proposed by
the representative of the Government, H.E. the General-in-Chief of
this Army. These conditions were agreed to be as follows, viz.:--
(1) For the rebels in arms a draft for the sum of P400,000 will
be handed to Señor Paterno, payable in Hong-Kong, as well as
two cheques for P200,000 each, payable only on the condition
of the Agreement being fulfilled on the other part. (2) For
the families of those who were not rebels in arms, or engaged
in rebellion, but who have likewise suffered the evils of war,
the balance of the sum offered shall be paid in three equal
instalments, the last to be paid six months after the date on
which the _Te Deum_ shall be sung, assuming the peace to become
an accomplished fact. Peace shall be held to be effectively
concluded if, during the interval of these instalment periods,
no party of armed rebels, with recognized leader, shall exist,
and if no secret society shall have been discovered as existing
here or abroad with the proved object of conspiracy by those who
benefit by these payments. The representative of the rebels, Don
Pedro Alejandro Paterno, and the representative of the Government,
the Captain-General Don Fernando Primo de Rivera, agree to the
above conditions, in witness whereof each representative now
signs four copies of the same tenour and effect, one being for
the Government, another for the archives of the Captain-Generalcy,
and one copy each for the said representatives.
[186]Done in Manila on the 15th of December, 1897.
_Fernando Primo de Rivera_,
_The General-in-Chief._
_Pedro A. Paterno_,
_The Mediator._
In the course of a few days a military deputation was sent by the
Gov.-General, under the leadership of Lieut.-Colonel Primo de Rivera,
to meet Aguinaldo and his 34 companions-in-arms at a place agreed
upon in the Province of Pangasinán. They had a repast together,
and Aguinaldo called for cheers for Spain, in which all heartily
joined. Thence they proceeded in vehicles to Sual to await the arrival
of the s.s. _Uranus_, in which they embarked for Hong-Kong on Monday,
December 27, 1897. Armed rebel troops were stationed at several places
all along the route to Sual, ready to avenge any act of treachery,
whilst two Spanish generals were held as hostages at the rebel camp
at Biac-na-bató until Aguinaldo cabled his safe arrival in Hong-Kong.
Aguinaldo had very rightly stipulated that a Spanish officer of high
rank should accompany him and his followers to Hong-Kong as a guarantee
against foul play. The Gov.-General, therefore, sent with them his
two nephews, Lieut.-Colonel Primo de Rivera and Captain Celestino
Espinosa, and Major Antonio Pezzi. Aguinaldo and eight other chiefs,
namely, Gregorio H. del Pilar, Wenceslao Vinegra, Vito Belarmino,
Mariano Llaneras, Antonio Montenegro, Luis Viola, Manuel Fino, and
Escolástico Viola, stayed at the Hong-Kong Hotel, whilst the remainder
took up their abode elsewhere in the city. Aguinaldo cashed his draft
for P400,000, but as to the other two instalments of the P800,000,
the Spanish Government defaulted.
There was great rejoicing in Manila, in Madrid, and in several Spanish
cities, and fêtes were organized to celebrate the conclusion of
peace. In Manila particularly, amidst the pealing of bells and strains
of music, unfeigned enthusiasm and joy were everywhere evident. It was
a tremendous relief after sixteen months of persecution, butchery,
torture, and pecuniary losses. General Primo de Rivera received
the thanks of the Government, whilst the Queen-Regent bestowed on
him the Grand Cross of San Fernando, with the pension of 10,000
pesetas (nominal value £400). But no one in Spain and few in Manila
as yet could foresee how the fulfilment of the Agreement would be
bungled. According to a letter of Pedro A. Paterno, dated March 7,
1898, published in _El Liberal_ of Madrid on June 17, 1898, it would
appear that (up to the former date) the Spanish Government had failed
to make any payment to Paterno on account of the P900,000, balance of
indemnity, for distribution according to Clause (2) of the Agreement
set forth on the preceding page. The letter says:--
As a matter of justice, I ought to have received the two
instalments, amounting to P600,000. Why is this obligation not
carried out, and why has General Primo de Rivera not followed my
advice by arresting Yocson and his followers from the 5th of last
February? I have my conscience clear respecting the risings in
Zambales and Pangasinán Provinces and those about to take place
in La Laguna and Tayabas.
Whatever were the means employed, the rebellion was disorganized for a
while, but the Spanish authorities had not the tact to follow up this
_coup_ by temperate and conciliatory measures towards their wavering
quondam foes. Persons who had been implicated in the rebellion
were re-arrested on trivial trumped-up charges and imprisoned,
whilst others were openly treated as seditious suspects. The priests
started a furious campaign of persecution, and sought, by all manner
of intrigue, to destroy the compact, which they feared would operate
against themselves. More executions took place. Instead of the expected
general amnesty, only a few special pardons were granted.
There had been over two months of nominal peace; the rebels had
delivered up their arms, and there was nothing to indicate an
intention to violate their undertakings. Primo de Rivera, who
believed the rebellion to be fast on the wane, shipped back to
Spain 7,000 troops. The Madrid Government at once appointed to vacant
bishoprics two friars of the Orders obnoxious to the people, and it is
inconceivable that such a step would have been so speedily taken if
there were any truth in the rebels' pretension that the expulsion of
the friars had been promised to them. Rafael Comenge, the President
of the Military Club, was rewarded with the Grand Cross of Military
Merit for the famous speech which he had delivered at the Club. It
was generally lauded by Spaniards, whilst it filled all classes of
natives with indignation. Here are some extracts from this oration:--
You arrive in time; the cannibals of the forest are still there;
the wild beast hides in his lair (_bravo_); the hour has come
to finish with the savages; wild beasts should be exterminated;
weeds should be extirpated. (_Great applause_.) Destruction
is the purport of war; its civilizing virtue acts like the
hot iron on a cancer, destroying the corrupt tendons in order
to arrive at perfect health. No pardon! (_Very good, very
good_.) Destroy! Kill! Do not pardon, for this prerogative belongs
to the monarch, not to the army. . . . From that historical,
honoured, and old land Spain, which we all love with delirious joy,
no words of peace come before this treason, but words of vigour
and of justice, which, according to public opinion, is better
in quality than in quantity. (_Frantic applause, several times
repeated, which drowned the voice of the orator_.) Soldiers! you
are the right arm of Spain. Execute; exterminate if it be
necessary. Amputate the diseased member to save the body;
cut off the dry branches which impede the circulation of the
sap, in order that the tree may again bring forth leaves and
flowers. (_Señor Peñaranda interposed, shouting, "That is the
way to speak!" Frantic applause_.)
Thirty thousand pesos were subscribed at the Military Club for the
benefit of General Primo de Rivera. Admiral Patricio Montojo, who had
co-operated against the rebels by firing a few shots at them when they
occupied the coast towns of Cavite Province and transporting troops
to and from Manila, was the recipient of a sword of honour on March
17, 1898. It was presented to him, on behalf of the Military Club,
by Señor Comenge (who escaped from Manila as soon as the Americans
entered the port) as a "perpetual remembrance of the triumph of our
ships off the coast of Cavite," although no deed of glory on the
part of the fleet, during the period of the rebellion, had come to
the knowledge of the general public.
The reforms alluded to in the treaty made with the rebel chiefs were
a subject of daily conversation; but when the _Diario de Manila _
published an article on March 17, demanding autonomy for the Islands
and urging the immediate application of those reforms, General
Primo de Rivera suspended the publication of the newspaper. Some
were inquisitive enough to ask, Has a treaty been signed or a trick
been played upon the rebels? The treatment of the people was far from
being in harmony with the spirit of a treaty of peace.
The expatriated ex-rebels became alarmed by the non-receipt of the
indemnity instalment and the news from their homes. A committee of
Filipinos, styled _La Junta Patriótica,_ was formed in Hong-Kong. They
were in frequent communication with their friends in the Islands. The
seed of discontent was again germinating under the duplicity of the
Spanish lay and clerical authorities. Thousands were ready to take
the field again, but their chiefs were absent, their arms surrendered,
and the rebellion disorganized. Here and there roving parties appeared,
but having no recognized leaders, their existence did not invalidate
the treaty. The Spaniards, indeed, feigned to regard them only
as a remnant of the rebels who had joined the pre-existing brigand
bands. The volunteers were committing outrages which might have driven
the people again into open revolt, and General Primo de Rivera had,
at least, the sagacity to recognize the evil which was apparent to
everybody. The volunteers and guerilla battalions were consequently
disbanded, not a day too soon for the tranquillity of the city. On
March 25, the tragedy of the _Calle de Camba _took place. This street
lies just off the _Calle de San Fernando _in Binondo, a few hundred
yards from the river. In a house frequented by seafaring men a large
number of Visayan sailors had assembled and were, naturally, discussing
the topics of the day with the warmth of expression and phraseology
peculiar to their race, when a passer-by, who overheard the talk,
informed the police. The civil guard at once raided the premises,
accused these sailors of conspiracy, and, without waiting for proof
or refutation, shot down all who could not escape. The victims of this
outrage numbered over 70. The news dismayed the native population. The
fact could no longer be doubted that a reign of terrorism and revenge
had been initiated with impunity, under the assumption that the
rebellion was broken for many a year to come. How the particulars of
this crime were related by the survivors to their fellow-islanders we
cannot know, but it is a coincidental fact that only now the flame of
rebellion spread to the southern Island of Cebú. For over a generation
the Cebuános around Talisay, Minglanilla, and Talambau had sustained
a dispute with the friars respecting land-tenure. From time to time
procurators of the Law Court secretly took up the Cebuános' cause,
and one of them, Florencio Gonzalez, was cast into prison and slowly
done to death. This event, which happened almost coincidentally with
the _Calle de Camba_ tragedy, excited the Cebuános to the utmost
degree. Nine days after that unfortunate episode, on April 3, 1898,
a party of about 5,000 disaffected natives made a raid on the city of
Cebú. The leaders were armed with rifles, but the rank-and-file carried
only bowie-knives. About 4 p.m. all the forces which could be mustered
in the city went out against the rebels, who overwhelmed the loyalists,
cutting some to pieces, whilst the remainder hastened back to the
city in great disorder. But, instead of following up their victory,
the half-resolute rioters camped near Guadalupe for the night. At
5 a.m. on April 4 they marched upon the city. Peaceful inhabitants
fled before the motley, yelling crowd of men, women and children
who swarmed into the streets, armed with bowie-knives and sticks,
demanding food and other trifles. The terrified Spanish volunteers,
after their defeat, took refuge in the _Cotta de San Pedro _(the
Fort), where the Governor, General Montero, joined them, and ordered
all foreigners to do the same. Later on the foreigners were permitted
to return to their residences. Amidst the confusion which prevailed,
the flight of peaceful citizens, the street-fighting, and the moans of
the dying, the rebels helped themselves freely to all they wanted. The
mob of both sexes told the townspeople that they (the rioters) had
nothing to fear, as _anting-anting _wafers (q.v.) had been served
out to them. The rebels had cut the Cebú-Tuburan telegraph-wires
(_vide_ p. 267), but in the meantime three small coasting steamers
had been despatched to Yloilo, Ylígan, and another port to demand
reinforcements. The next day, at sunrise, the rebels attempted
to reach the Fort, but were fired upon from the Governor's house,
which is situated in front of it, compelling them to withdraw along
the shore road, where the gunboat _Maria Cristina _opened fire on
them. The rebels then retreated to the Chinese quarter of Lutao,
around the Cathedral and the Santo Nino Church. The Spaniards remained
under cover whilst the mob held possession of the whole city except the
Fort, Government House, the College, the churches, and the foreigners
houses. During the whole day there was an incessant fusillade, the
rebels' chief stronghold being the Recoleto Convent. Groups of them
were all over the place, plundering the shops and Spanish houses and
offices. On April 5 a small force of Spanish regulars, volunteers,
and sailors made a sortie and fired on the insurgents in Lutao from
long range. They soon retired, however, as the Fort was in danger of
being attacked from another side. The same afternoon the steamer sent
to Ylígan for troops returned with 240 on board. During the night the
Spanish troops ventured into the open and shots were exchanged. On
April 6 the _Venus_ arrived with 50 soldiers from Yloilo and was at
once sent on to Bojol Island in search of rice and cattle, which were
difficult to procure as that island was also in revolt. Native women
were not interfered with by either party, nor were the foreigners,
many of whom took refuge at the British Consulate. The rebels wished
to advance from Lutao, but were kept back by the fire from the gunboat
_Maria Cristina_. The Spanish troops did not care to venture past a
block of buildings in which were the offices and stores of a British
firm. On April 7 the merchant steamer _Churruca_ arrived with troops,
and in a couple of hours was followed by the cruiser _Don Juan de
Austria_, also bringing reinforcements under the command of General
Tejeiro (a former Governor of Cebú Is.). The total fresh troops
amounted to about 500 men of the 73rd Native Regiment and Spanish
_cazadores_. Whilst these troops were landing, many of the rebels
hastened out of the city towards San Nicolás. General Montero and
the Spanish refugees then emerged from the _cotta_. After General
Tejeiro had strategically deployed his troops, a squad of them,
crossing the General Loño Square (now called _Plaza de Rizal_)
drove the rebels before them and dislodged them from the vicinity
of the Recoleto Convent. At the same time the rebels were attacked
at the _mestizo_ quarter called the Parian and at Tiniago, whence
they had to retreat, with severe loss, towards San Nicolás, which
practically adjoins Cebú and is only separated therefrom by a narrow
river. Simultaneously, the _Don Juan de Austria_ threw a shell into
the corner house of the (chiefly Chinese) shopping-quarter, Lutao,
which killed several Chinese and set fire to the house. The flames,
however, did not catch the adjoining property, so the troops burst open
the doors, poured petroleum on the goods found therein, and caused
the fire to extend until the whole quarter was, as I saw it, a mass
of charred ruins with only the stone walls remaining. To complete
the destruction of Lutao, once a busy bazaar, situated in that part
of the city immediately facing the sea, another bomb was thrown into
the centre. The troops then marched to San Nicolás, and a third shell
fired at the retreating enemy entered and completely destroyed a large
private residence. An attempt was made to procure supplies from the
little Island of Magtan, which lies only half a mile off the coast
of Cebú, but the expedition had to return without having been able
to effect a landing at the capital town of Opon, which had risen in
rebellion. On April 8 the loyal troops continued their pursuit of the
rebels, who suffered severe losses at San Nicolás and Pili, on the road
south of Cebú city. The corpses collected in the suburbs were carted
into the city, where, together with those lying about the streets,
they were piled into heaps, partly covered with petroleum-bathed logs,
and ignited. The stench was very offensive for some hours, especially
from a huge burning pile topped with a dead white horse in the General
Loño Square. Practically the whole of the east coast of the island
had risen against the Spaniards, but the rebels were careful not to
interfere with foreigners when they could distinguish them as such. A
large force of insurgents made another stand at Labangan, where they
were almost annihilated; it is estimated they left quite a thousand
dead on the field. The loyal troops followed up the insurgents towards
the mountain region, whilst the _Don Juan de Austria_ cruised down
the coast with the intention of bombarding any town which might be in
rebel hands. The material losses in Cebú amounted to about P1,725,000
in Lutao, represented by house property of Chinese and half-castes
and their cash and stock-in-trade. The "Compañia General de Tabacos"
lost about P30,000 in cash in addition to the damage done to their
offices and property. Rich natives and Chinese lost large sums of
money, the total of which cannot be ascertained. From the Recoleto
Convent P19,000 in cash were stolen, and there, as well as in many of
the Spanish residences, everything valuable and easily removable was
carried off; but whether all this pillage was committed by the rebels
alone must ever remain a mystery. The only foreigner who lost his life
was my late Italian friend Signor Stancampiano, who is supposed to have
died of shock, for when I last saw him he was hopelessly ill. As usual,
a considerable number of well-known residents of the city were arrested
and charged with being the prime movers in these doleful events.
Upon the hills on the west coast of Cebú, near Toledo town,
some American friends of mine experienced a series of thrilling
adventures. Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, mother and son, to whom I am indebted
for their generous hospitality, resided on a large sugar-estate at
Calumampao, of which Mr. Wilson was part owner. They were, naturally,
in ignorance of what had taken place in Cebú City. The rebellion spread
to their district, and many of the natives on and about the estate were
eager to join in the movement. Mr. Wilson did his utmost to point out
to them the futility of the attempt, but they indulged in all sorts of
superstitions about the invulnerability of their chief, Claudio, and
the charm attached to a red flag he carried, and they were determined
to take their chance with him. On April 19 an insurgent force came on
to the plantation, compelled the labourers to join their standard, and
coolly quartered themselves in the out-buildings and warehouses. They
did no harm to the Wilsons, but they kidnapped a Spanish gentleman who
lived close by, and shot him, in spite of Mr. Wilson's entreaties to
spare his life. The insurgents moved off, taking with them the estate
hands, and in a couple of days a company of Spanish soldiers, under the
command of Captain Suarez, arrived at the estate-house. The officer
was very affable, and Mr. and Mrs. Wilson treated him as hospitably
as they did all their friends and European passers-by. Naturally
the conversation fell on the all-absorbing topic of the day and the
object of his mission. After he and his men had been well refreshed
they started down the hill to meet some cavalry reinforcements, and,
as the Wilsons watched their departure, to their astonishment they
saw Claudio, at the head of 200 rebels, rushing down the hill with
the red flag floating in the air. Simultaneously a body of Spanish
horse approached through the valley; Claudio and his followers, caught
between the Spanish cavalry and infantry, retreated to a storehouse
in the valley. The result was that some 40 rebels were killed,
others taken prisoners, and the remainder escaped into the planted
fields. Every leader was killed, and every peaceful native whom the
Spaniards met on their way was unmercifully treated. Mr. Wilson was
then asked to go on board a Spanish vessel, and when he complied he
was charged with being in league with the rebels. He was allowed to
return to shore to fetch his mother--a highly-educated, genial old
lady--and when they both went on board they found there two Englishmen
as prisoners. Their guest of a few days previous treated them most
shamefully. When they were well on the voyage to Cebú the prisoners
were allowed to be on the upper deck, and Mrs. Wilson was permitted
to use an armchair. The soldiers insulted them, and, leaning their
backs against Mrs. Wilson's chair, some sang ribald songs, whilst
others debated whether their captives would be shot on the beach or
at the _Cotta_ in Cebú. Sometimes they would draw their swords and
look viciously towards them. At last, after a series of intimidations,
they reached Cebú, where, after being detained on board several hours,
they were all taken before the Governor and the Chief Justice, and
were only saved from further miseries through the intercession of
the American Vice-Consul, who, by the way, was an Englishman. War
had just been declared between America and Spain (April 23, 1898),
and the estate had to be left to the mercy of the rebels, whilst my
friends took passage to Singapore on the _Gulf of Martaban_.
All immediate danger having now been dispelled, the Spaniards solaced
themselves with the sweets of revenge. A Spanish functionary (who
with his wife and brother's family were well known to me for several
years) caused the soldiers to raid private houses, and bring out
native families by force into the public square, or conduct them to
the cemetery on the Guadalupe road, where they were shot in batches
without inquiry and cremated. The heartrending scenes and wailing
of the people failed to turn their persecutor from his purpose,
save in one case--that of a colleague, who, wearing his chain of
office, stepped forward and successfully begged for his life. A low
estimate of this official's victims is 200. The motive for his awful
crime was greed, for he formally confiscated his victims' goods and
shipped them off daily in schooners to Yloilo. His ill-gotten gains
would have been greater but for the action of the Governor, who,
fearing that retribution might fall on his own head as the highest
authority, ordered his guilty subordinate to appear before him, and
in the presence of Filipinos he reprimanded him, boxed his ears,
and commanded him to quit the island within a given period under
pain of death. The Governor's indignation was evidently feigned,
for he very shortly availed himself of an altogether novel means
of terrorism. Sedition was smouldering throughout the island, but
after the events of April the Spaniards seemed too daunted to take
the field against the Cebuános. The Christian Governor, therefore,
took into his service a Mindanao Mahometan, Rajahmudah Datto Mandi, and
his band of about 100 Sámal Moros to overrun the island and punish the
natives. This chief, with his warriors, had been called from Zamboanga
(Mindanao Is.) to Yloilo by General Rios, who immediately commissioned
him to Cebú in the month of July, 1898. On his arrival there he at once
started his campaign under the auspices of the Governor, who granted
him full liberty to dispose of the lives and property of the Cebuános
to his heart's content, and as proof of the accomplishment of his gory
mission he brought in and presented to his patron the ears which he
had cut off the Cebuános. North of Cebú City he and his retainers made
a fresh start, slaying the people, burning villages, and devastating
the standing crops. Having accomplished his task within three months
Datto Mandi withdrew with all his men, except two who wished to
settle at Pardo. He could not persuade them to leave, and after his
departure they were cut to pieces by the Cebuános. Pending positive
corroboration I was very sceptical about this strange narrative; but,
being in Mindanao Island six years afterwards, I went to visit Datto
Mandi, who most readily confirmed all the above particulars, and
presented me with his portrait. Prior to the American advent, Datto
Mandi, _protégé_ as well as protector of the Spaniards, exercised a
sort of feudal dominion over the services and the sundry cherished
belongings of his people. Speaking of him as I myself found him, he
was extremely affable and hospitable. The invitation to Datto Mandi
was perhaps the most singular event of this period, and goes to show
with what desperate fear the Spaniards retained their hold on the
island up to the evacuation, which took place on December 26, 1898.
In the provinces north of Manila the rebellion was again in full
vigour, and, all trust in Spanish good faith was irrevocably lost. The
Spanish quarters at Subig (Zambales) and Apalit (Pampanga) were
attacked and looted in the first week of March. The new movement bore
a more serious aspect than that under Aguinaldo and his colleagues,
who, at least, were men of certain intelligence, inspired by a wish
to secure reforms, whereas their successors in revolt were of far
less mental capacity, seeking, apparently, only retaliation for the
cruelties inflicted on the people. It is possible, too, that the
premium of P800,000 per 35 rebel chiefs inflamed the imaginations of
the new leaders, who were too ignorant to appreciate the promised
reforms linked with the same bargain. During the month of February
the permanent-way of the Manila-Dagúpan Railway had been three times
torn up to prevent the transport of loyal troops. At the same time
the villages around were looted and burnt. Early in March the rebels,
under the chief leadership of Yocson, of Malolos, attacked and killed
the garrisons and the priests in the north of Pangasinán and Zambales,
excepting six soldiers who managed to escape. [187] Some of the
garrison troops were murdered after surrender. The telegraph-line
between Lingayen (Pangasinán) and a place a few miles from Bolinao
(Zambales) was cut down and removed. A lineman was sent out to repair
it under escort of civil guards, who were forced by the rebels to
retire. On March 7, about 2 a.m., the Eastern Extension Telegraph
Company's cable-station at Bolinao was besieged by rebels. The village
was held by about 400 armed natives, who had killed one native and
two European soldiers on the way. The lighthouse-keeper and the
Inspector of Forests safely reached Santa Cruz, 40 miles south, in
a boat. The other civilian Spaniards and priests escaped in another
boat, but were pursued and captured by the insurgents, who killed
two of the civilians and brought the European women and friars into
the village as prisoners at 4.30 the same afternoon. Eight soldiers
had taken refuge in the cable-station, and at 6 a.m. a message was
sent to the British staff requiring them to turn out the soldiers or
quit the premises themselves. They refused to take either course, and
declared their neutrality. A similar message was sent several times,
with the same result. By 4 p.m. the soldiers had fortified the station
as well as they could, and the rebels attacked, but were repulsed
with a few shots. Nothing happened during the night, but the next day
(March 8) another message was sent to the British staff urging them to
withdraw as the rebels would renew the assault at 10 a.m. The staff
again refused to comply. Then it appears that the rebels delayed
their attack until the arrival of their chief, hourly expected. An
ultimatum was at length received at the station, to the effect that
if all arms were given up they would spare the soldiers' lives. They
also demanded the surrender of the two rebels held prisoners by these
soldiers. At this stage one of the company's staff, who were allowed
to go and come as they pleased, volunteered to interview the rebels;
but matters could not be arranged, as the Spanish corporal (a plucky
youth of twenty years of age) in the station refused to surrender
anything at any price. Still parleying was continued, and on March 11
one of the company's staff again visited the rebel camp to state that
if the regular bi-monthly steamer failed to arrive on the morrow the
corporal would surrender arms. Then the rebel chief proposed that the
corporal should meet him half-way between the company's office and the
rebel camp, the rebel pledging his word of honour that no harm should
befall the corporal. The corporal, however, could not do this, as it
would have been contrary to the Spanish military code to capitulate
on his own authority, but he confirmed his willingness to surrender
arms if no steamer arrived the next day, and the company's employee
returned to the camp to notify this resolution. But in a few minutes
he observed a commotion among the insurgents; some one had descried
a warship approaching, and the native canoes were very busy making
ready for escape or attack. The British delegate, therefore, hastened
back to the station, and at 3 p.m. a Spanish gunboat arrived, to
their immense relief, and landed 107 marines. Heavy firing continued
all that afternoon, inflicting great loss on the rebels, whilst the
Spaniards lost one soldier. On March 12 a Spanish cruiser anchored
off the Bay of Bolinao; also a merchant steamer put into port bringing
the Company's Manila Superintendent with apparatus for communicating
with Hong-Kong in case the station were demolished. The next day
H.M.S. _Edgar_ entered, and Bolinao was again perfectly safe.
In consequence of this threatened attack on the cable-station the
cable was detached from Bolinao and carried on to Manila in the
following month (_vide_ p. 267).
As soon as the news reached Manila that Bolinao was menaced, General
Monet proceeded north with 1,000 men, whilst 3,000 more followed by
railway as far as they could reach. On the way the General had five
engagements with the enemy, between Lingayen (Pangasinán) and Bolinao,
where he arrived on the night of March 14, having routed the insurgents
everywhere with great loss to them. On the Spanish side one lieutenant
and one soldier were killed. After leaving a garrison of 300 men in
Bolinao, General Monet returned to Manila in the Spanish cruiser the
next day.
On March 31 Father Moïses Santos, who had caused all the members of the
Town Council of Malolos to be banished in 1895, was assassinated. He
had been appointed Vicar of the Augustine Order and was returning to
Malolos station, en route for Manila, in a buggy which stuck fast in
a mud-pool (the same in which I have found myself several times),
where he was stabbed to death. His body was recovered and taken by
special train to Manila, where it was interred with great pomp in
the Church of St. Augustine. He was 44 years of age, and had been 19
years in the Colony (_vide_ p. 364).
In April, 1898, the Home Government recalled General Primo de Rivera,
appointing in his stead General Basilio Augusti, who had never before
held chief command in the Islands. Primo de Rivera was no doubt
anxious to be relieved of a position which he could not well continue
to hold, with dignity to himself, after the Madrid Government had
shelved his recommendations for reforms. His subsequent speeches in
the Senate incline one to draw this conclusion. The Colonial Minister,
Segismundo Moret (who became Prime Minister in 1905), warmly supported
the proposed reforms, but monastic influences were brought to bear
which Práxedes Sagasta had not the moral courage to resist.
Don Pedro A. Paterno, the peacemaker, was sorely disappointed, too,
that the Government had failed to remunerate him for his services. His
position will be best understood from the subjoined translation of
the letter which he addressed to a high authority on the subject. The
original document was read in public session of Congress in Madrid
on June 16, 1898, by the Deputy Señor Muro.
_Manila_, _23rd of February_, 1898.
_My Esteemed Friend_,--
As it appears that, at last, one is thinking of giving me something
for the services rendered by me, and as, according to you, the
recompense is going to be a title of Castile, I wish to speak
frankly, in secret, on the subject. I do not wish to fall into
ridicule, because in such a material and mercantile place as Manila
a title without rent-roll, or grandeur, or anything of the nature
of an employment, or Cross of Maria Christina, or rewards such
as have been showered broadcast by three Captain-Generals would,
in Philippine circles, make me appear as the gullible boy and
the laughing-stock of my fellows. To express my private opinion,
I aspire, above all, to the preservation of my name and prestige,
and if I were asked to renounce them for a childish prize,
even though it be called a title of Castile, despised by serious
statesmen in Europe, I think I should be obliged to refuse it. But
I am willing to meet half-way the state of Spanish society in
the Philippines, and as I belong to the family of the _Maguinoó_
Paterno, I must express myself in another way. That title of
Castile might become the cherished ideal in the Philippines if
it were valued as I desire.
In the first place, it _must not be less than that of Duke_,
because the natives have obeyed me as the _Great Maguinoó_, or
Prince of Luzon, and the ex-revolutionists call me the arbiter
of their destinies.
The reward from Spain must not be less than the Philippine public
already award to me.
In the second place, the reward, to be accepted by me with dignity
and preservation of prestige, must be presented to me in the sense
that it is for the general welfare of the Philippines as implied
in the title of _Grandee of Spain of the First Class_ with the
consequent right to a seat in the Senate to defend the interests
of the Colony, seeing that we have no Members of Parliament,
and parliamentary representation is anxiously desired.
I can show that I possess an income of P25,000 and more,
if necessary.
In the third place, it must be in the nature of a gift and not
a purchase, that is to say, the patent of nobility must be a
free gift.
In the fourth place, it must be valued in dollars, so that the
reward may not be held in contempt by the public, who know my
liberality when I pay, with splendid generosity, sea voyages,
river and land journeys for myself and for my emissaries, or
when I distribute with abundant profusion pecuniary and material
recompenses _to buy over the wills of and unite all the insurgent
chiefs to bring them to surrender to Spain_. Up to the present,
I have not received a cent from the revolutionists or from the
Spanish Government to cover these expenses.
It is notorious that I have worked so grandly that no one can
now ask me to sink into insignificance.
The recent concessions made by the Spanish Government have been
seen by the Philippine public. The grade of Captain-General was
given for subjecting a few Moslem chiefs of Mindanao; promotions
and grand crosses with pensions have been awarded, and I, who have
put an end to the war at a stroke, saving Spain many millions of
dollars--I, who, amidst inundations and hurricanes have assaulted
and conquered the barracks and military posts of the enemy, causing
them to lay down their arms to Spain without bloodshed, and at my
command surrender all their chiefs and revolutionary Government
with their brigades and companies, I think I have good right to
ask Spain, if she wishes to show herself a mother to me, to give
me as much as she has given to other sons for lesser services.
To conclude, for family reasons, _ I want a title of Castile,
that of Prince or Duke, if possible, and to be a Grandee of the
first class_, free of nobility patent fees and the sum of P----
once for all.
I think that the title of Castile, or Spain's reward, if it
reaches me without the mentioned formalities, will be an object
of ridicule, and Spain ought not to expose me to this, because
I wish to serve her always, in the present and in the future.
I also recommend you very strongly to procure for my brother
Maximino Molo Agustin Paterno y Debera Ignacio the title of Count
or a Grand Cross free of duties, for he has not only rendered
great services to the nation, but he has continually sustained
the prestige of Spain with the natives.
I am, etc., etc.,
_Pedro A. Paterno_.
N.B.--1. I told you verbally that if my merits did not reach two
millimetres, it is the friend's duty to amplify them and extend
them and make others see them as if they were so many metres,
especially as they have _no equal_.
Prince of Limasaba is the first title of Castile conceded to a
native of the Philippines. He was the first king of the Island
of Limasaba in the time of Maghallanes, according to Father José
Fernandez Cuevas, of the Company of Jesus, in his "Spain and
Catholicism in the Far East," folio 2 (years 1519 to 1595). In
Spain, in modern times, Prince of Peace, Prince of Vergara, etc.
2. and 3. Verbally I mentioned _one million_ of dollars, and
that Parliament should meet sometimes for the Philippines and for
extraordinary reasons. Take note that out of the 25,000 men sent
here by Spain on account of the insurrection, statistics show
6,000 struck off the effective list in the first six months and
many millions of dollars expenses. The little present, or the
Christmas-box (_mi Aguinaldo_) is of no mean worth.
Some biographical notes of Don Pedro A. Paterno, with most of which
he furnished me himself, may be interesting at this stage.
His Excellency Don Pedro Alejandro Paterno belongs to the class of
Filipinos--the Chinese half-caste--remarkable in this Colony for that
comparative intellectual activity of which Don Pedro himself is one of
the brightest living examples. In the early decades of last century
a Chinaman, called Molo, carried on a prosperous trade in the _Calle
del Rosario_, in the Manila district of Binondo. His Philippine wife,
whose family name was Yamson, carried in her veins the "blue blood,"
as we should say in Europe, of Luzonia. She was the direct descendant
of the Great _Maguinoó_, or Prince of Luzon, a title hereditary,
according to tradition. Three sons were the issue of this marriage,
one of whom, Maximino Molo, was the father of Pedro. Averse to indolent
pleasure during his father's lifetime, Maximino, with his own scant
but independent resources, started active life with a canoe and a
barge, conveying goods out as far as Corregidor Island to secure the
first dealings with the ships entering the port. In this traffic
he made money so fast that he opened an office, and subsequently
a store of his own, in the _Escolta_. His transactions attained
large proportions, and by the time this kind of trade in the bay
became obsolete, he was already one of the most respected middlemen
operating between the foreign houses and provincial producers. His
Christian name was abbreviated to Máximo; and so proverbial were his
placidity and solicitude for others that his friends affectionately
nicknamed him Paterno (paternal), which henceforth became the adopted
cognomen of the family. His unbounded generosity won for him the
admiration of all his race, who graciously recognized him as their
_Maguinoó_. Sympathetic in the ambitions and in the distress of his
own people, he was, nevertheless, always loyal to Spanish authority;
but whether his fortune awakened Spanish cupidity, or his influence
with the masses excited the friars' jealousy, the fact is that in 1872
he was banished to the Ladrone Islands, accused of having taken part
in the rising of Cavite. Ten years afterwards he was again in Manila,
where I had the pleasure of his acquaintance, and on his decease,
which took place July 26, 1900, he left considerable wealth.
Born in 1857, Pedro A. Paterno, at the early age of 14 years, was
sent for his education to Spain, where he resided 11 years. The
preparatory period over, he entered the University of Salamanca, and
later on that of Madrid, where, under the protection and tutelage of
the Marquis de Heredia, he was introduced into aristocratic circles,
in which he became a great favourite. Amongst his college companions
was the Marquis de Mina. At one time it was proposed that he should
wed the daughter of the Marchioness de Montolibar, a suggestion which
he disregarded because his heart already inclined towards the Filipina
who is now his wife.
His assistance to the Home Government was of no mean importance. In
1882 he supported the abolition of the Government Tobacco Monopoly. In
1893 he again rendered valuable service to the State, in consideration
of which he was awarded the Grand Cross of Isabella the Catholic, with
the distinction of "Excellency." In 1895 the oft-discussed question
of the title of nobility he was to receive was revived. After the
Peace of Biac-na-bató he fully expected that the usual Spanish custom
would have been followed of conceding a title to the Peacemaker. The
precedents for such an act, in modern times, are the titles given
to Manuel Godoy (1795) and to General Espartero [188] (1840), who
became respectively Prince of Peace and Prince of Vergara for similar
services rendered to the Crown. A dukedom, Paterno believes, would
have been his reward if the revolution had definitely terminated with
the retirement of Emilio Aguinaldo from the Islands in 1897.
A man of versatile gifts, Pedro A. Paterno has made his mark in
literature with works too numerous to mention; he is a fluent orator,
a talented musician, and the composer of the argument of an opera,
_Sangdugong Panaguinip_ ("The Dreamed Alliance"). As a brilliant
conversationalist and well-versed political economist he has few
rivals in his country. A lover of the picturesque and of a nature
inclined to revel in scenes of aesthetic splendour, his dream of
one day wearing a coronet was nurtured by no vulgar veneration for
aristocracy, but by a desire for a recognized social position enabling
him, by his prestige, to draw his fellow-men from the sordid pleasure
of mere wealth-accumulation towards the sentimental, imaginative
ideals of true nobility. In 1904 Pedro A. Paterno was the editor and
proprietor of the newspaper _La Patria_, the mission of which was (1)
to support the American dominion as a _fait accompli_, (2) to urge
the fulfilment of the promise of eventual Philippine home rule, (3)
to sustain a feeling of gratitude towards Spain, whence the Filipinos
derived their civilization, and (4) to support Roman Catholic unity,
on the ground that unity is strength.
In the second week of April, 1898, General Primo de Rivera left Manila
for Spain, on the arrival of his successor in the Captain-Generalcy,
General Basilio Augusti, in the s.s. _Isla de Mindanao_. [189] Some
days before General Primo de Rivera's departure the American Consul
at Manila had received despatches from his Government to prepare
to quit the Islands, as war was imminent between Spain and the
United States. He was further instructed to hand over his consulate
archives to the British Consul, who would take charge of American
interests. But without the concurrence of the Spanish authorities no
official transfer could be made from one consulate to the other, and
the General professed ignorance of the existing relations between his
country and America. He cabled to Madrid for information, but managed
to delay matters until his successor assumed office, when the transfer
was duly made. Consul Oscar F. Williams was in no way molested. He
passed to and fro in the city without the least insult being offered
him by any Spaniard. The Gov.-General courteously proposed to send
a large bodyguard to his consulate, but it was not necessary. Yet,
as soon as Consul Williams closed his office and went on board the
s.s. _Esmeralda_, the American Consulate escutcheon was painted out,
and the notice boards outside the doors were kicked about the streets.
General Primo de Rivera was so well aware of the strained relations
between Spain and America, that the s.s. _Leon XIII._, in which he
travelled from Manila to Barcelona, was armed as a cruiser, with two
4-inch Hontoria guns mounted aft of the funnel and two Nordenfeldts
in the bows. This steamer, crowded with refugee Spanish families,
some of whom slept on the saloon floors, made its first stoppage at
Singapore on April 17. At the next port of call General Primo de Rivera
learnt that the United States of America had presented an ultimatum
to his Government. Before he reached Barcelona, in the third week of
May, war between the two countries had already broken out (April 23,
1898). There were riots in Madrid; martial law was proclaimed; the
Parliamentary Session was suspended; a strict censorship of the press
was established; the great disaster to Spanish arms in Philippine
waters had taken place; the Prime Minister Sagasta had intimated
his willingness to resign, and Primo de Rivera entered Madrid when
it was too late to save the Philippine Islands for Spain, even had
the rebel version of the implied reforms under the alleged Treaty of
Biac-na-bató been fulfilled to the letter.
The leaders of the principal political parties were hastily summoned
to the palace to consult separately with the Queen-Regent on the
situation, and they were unanimously of opinion that the Prime Minister
who had accepted war should carry them through the crisis. Spain was
apparently more concerned about the salvation of the Antilles than
of her Far Eastern Colony.
The friars, fully alive to their moral responsibility towards the
nation for the loss of the Philippines, were, nevertheless, desirous
of finding a champion of their cause in the political arena, and Deputy
Uria was willing to accept this onerous task. The Bishop-elect of Porto
Rico (an Austin friar) was a fellow-passenger with General Primo de
Rivera. According to _El Liberal_ of June 3, 1898, when he arrived
in Madrid he went with the Procurator of his Order to interview the
Colonial Minister, Señor Romero Girón, on the prospects of Deputy
Uria's proposed debate when Congress should meet again. The Minister
pointed out to them the attendant difficulties, and referred them to
the Prime Minister. They immediately went to Señor Sagasta's residence,
where they were promptly given to understand that _if any one could
be found to defend them, there might well be others who would oppose
them_, so their champion withdrew.
When, months later, Parliament was re-opened, the Minister of War
denied in Congress that the Treaty of Biac-na-bató had ever existed,
[190] and in support of his contention he cited a cablegram which
the Gov.-General Primo de Rivera is alleged to have sent to the
Prime Minister Sagasta. It was published in the _Gaceta de Madrid_
of December 16, 1897, and reads as follows:--
_(Translation)_
_Manila_, 12th of December, 1897
To the President of the Council of Ministers, from the
Governor-General
At the expiration of the time allowed and announced in the
_Gazette_ of November 28, after which rigorous and active
war measures would be taken against the rebels, a deputation
from the enemy came to me on behalf of the brothers Aguinaldo,
Llaneras, and the so-called Republican Government, offering to
surrender themselves, their followers, and their arms, _on the
sole conditions of their lives being spared and that they should
receive means with which to emigrate_. It appears to me, and to the
general officers of this army, that this surrender is the result
of the successive combats by which we have held the positions
taken in Mórong, Paray, Minuyan, and Arayat, and the enthusiasm
displayed by the resolute volunteers in the provinces outside
Tagálog sphere. I feel sure of being able to take Biac-na-bató,
as well as all the other points occupied by the rebels, but I am
not so certain of being able to secure the persons of the chiefs
of the rebellion with their followers. The war would then be
carried on by roving parties who, from their hiding-places in
the forests and mountains, might appear from time to time, and
although of little importance, they would sustain the rebellion.
The generals agree with me that the peace will save the honour
of Spain and the army, but in view of the importance of the event
I consider it necessary to solicit the approval of the Government.
If the Government should accept the proposals, I will bring them
to an issue at once, but I so far distrust them that I cannot
be sure of anything until I have the men and the arms in my
possession. In any case, it is now the unanimous opinion that
the situation is saved.
_Primo de Rivera_.
_(Translation of reply)_
_Madrid_, 13th of December, 1897
President of the Council of Ministers to the Governor-General,
Manila
Colonial Ministry Code. H.M. the Queen has perused with great
satisfaction your Excellency's telegram, and commands me to
congratulate you in the name of the nation. In view of the opinion
of your Excellency and the generals under your orders that _the
honour of the army is saved_, the Government fully authorizes
your Excellency to accept the surrender of the rebel chiefs and
their Government on the terms specified in your telegram. Please
advise the surrender as soon as possible in order to give due and
solemn publicity to the event. Receive my sincere congratulations
and those of the Government.
_Sagasta_.
At the period of the above despatches the Peninsular and the Insular
authorities were living in a fool's paradise with respect to Philippine
affairs. Had it been officially admitted that those reforms which the
clerical party so persistently opposed, but which the home legislators
were willing to concede, had been granted to the rebels as a condition
of peace, "the honour of the army" would have suffered in Spanish
public opinion. Hence, the Spaniards' conception of national dignity
imposed on the Government the necessity of representing the rebel
chiefs as repentant, begging for their lives, and craving the means
of existence in exile as the result of Spanish military valour.
But abroad, where the ministerial denial, mentioned on p. 414, was
published by the foreign press, Aguinaldo was universally spoken of
as having been "bought off."
A wiser government would have learnt a lesson from a sixteen-months'
rebellion and have afterwards removed its causes, if only to ensure
the mother country's sovereignty. The probability of the Filipinos
being able to subvert Spanish rule by their own unaided efforts was
indeed remote, but a review of Spanish colonial history ought to
have suggested to the legislators that that extraneous assistance to
sedition which promoted emancipation in the former Spanish-American
territories might one day be extended to the Filipinos.
The publication of the above documents, however, did little to calm
the anger of the Madrid politicians who maintained that Spanish
dominion in the Philippines could only be peacefully assured by a
certain measure of reform in consonance with the natives' aspirations.
Months afterwards, when Spanish sovereignty in the Archipelago
was drawing to a close, the Conde de las Almenas opened a furious
debate in the Senate, charging all the Colonial Govs.-General with
incompetency, but its only immediate effect was to widen the breach
between political parties.
CHAPTER XXIII
The Tagálog Rebellion of 1896-98
Second Period
American Intervention
The prelude to the American occupation of Manila was the demand made
on Spain by the Government of the United States of America to evacuate
the Island of Cuba.
Generations of Spanish misrule in that Island had produced a recurrence
of the many attempts to throw off the sovereignty of Spain. In
February, 1895, the flag of insurrection was again unfurled, and at
Baira a proclamation, claiming independence, was issued at the instance
of one of Cuba's most intelligent patriots--Marti. This civil leader,
however, died a natural death a few months afterwards, but the chief
command of the insurgents in the field was continued by the mulatto
Antonio Maceo. The rebellion was assuming a serious aspect when General
Martinez Campos, who had been instrumental in duping the Cubans in
1878 by the Treaty of Zanjón, was again sent out as Captain-General
of the Island. But the Cubans refused to be caught a second time in
the same trap. Martinez Campos' theme of "political action combined
with military force" held no weight. During his mild _régime_ the
insurrection increased rapidly, and in one encounter he himself was
very near falling a prisoner. In eight months he was relieved of his
post, and General Weyler, Marquis de Teneriffe, who had a reputation
for severity, succeeded him in command. He was a man of the Duke of
Alba type--the ideal of the traditional Spanish Colonial party who
recognized no colonists' rights, and regarded concessions of liberty
to the colonies as maternal dispensations to be hoped for only,
but never demanded. Antonio Cánovas, the ultra-Conservative Prime
Minister, had declared that so long as an armed rebel remained in
the field he would not grant reforms, so the prospect of a settlement
of the disputes between the Government and the governed was hopeless
during that administration. The duration of the civil war had seriously
prejudiced American trade interests; the pursuance of a conflict under
the conditions imposed by General Weyler, who caused all non-combatant
Islanders to be "concentrated" in places where they were left to
starve, aroused the just indignation of America and Europe alike. The
hand of the assassin brought the Cánovas Ministry to an end on August
8, 1897; General Weyler was recalled six weeks later, and the United
States Government, which had so repeatedly protested against the
indefinite and wanton waste of lives and fortune in Cuba, dictated to
Spain a limit to its continuance. After a Conservative interregnum
of six weeks under the leadership of General Marcelo Azárraga,
Práxedes Sagasta came into power at the head of a Liberal ministry
and with a Cuban autonomy bill in his portfolio. The newly-appointed
Gov.-General, Ramon Blanco, Marquis de Peña Plata, ex-Gov.-General
of the Philippines (_vide_ p. 377)--a more noble and compassionate
man than his predecessor--unsuccessfully essayed the policy of
coercing the rebels in arms whilst cajoling peaceful autonomists and
separatists with the long-talked-of self-government. Nevertheless,
the separatist movement had in no way abated when the Autonomy Bill was
promulgated, and an insular Cuban Government was formed on January 1,
1898. In the meantime the incident of the blowing-up of the American
warship _Maine_, the cause of which has not yet been made clear to
the satisfaction of the world, had further incensed the war party
in the United States. [191] Autonomy had come too late; examined in
detail it was but another form of Spanish dominion, open to almost
similar abuses; it was not the will of the people, and it failed
to bring peace. The thousands "concentrated" under Weyler's rule
still formed a moribund mass of squalid misery which Spain was still
unable or unwilling to relieve. America's offer to alleviate their
wretchedness materially was received with suspicion, hemmed in with
conditions, and not openly rejected for the want of physical power to
do so. Three months of insular government and over 200,000 Spanish
troops had effected practically nothing; the prospect of peace was
hopeless, and the United States of America formally called upon Spain
to evacuate the Island. Spain argued the point; America insisted on
the course dictated, and sent an ultimatum to Madrid on April 20,
1898, to be accepted or otherwise within three days. The ministers
Polo de Bernabé and General Woodford withdrew from Washington and
Madrid respectively, and war broke out between the United States and
Spain on Saturday, April 23, 1898.
In anticipation of hostilities an American fleet had concentrated at
Hong-Kong. On April 23 Major-General Black, the officer administering
the Colony, issued a proclamation of neutrality, and Commodore Dewey
withdrew his fleet from British waters to Mirs Bay, [192] at that
time within Chinese jurisdiction.
It was known in Manila that the hostile squadron was on the way to
the Philippine capital. Submarine mines were laid, or said to have
been laid, for some old cable was purchased for the purpose from the
telegraph-ship _Sherard Osborn _when the submarine cable was removed
from Bolinao and carried on to Manila. Admiral Patricio Montojo went
with four ships to await the arrival of the enemy off Subig (Zambales)
on the west coast of Luzon. Subig is a fine natural harbour, but
with precipitous shores just as Nature has made it. For years the
"project" had existed to carry a State railway there from Manila, and
make Subig the principal Government Naval Station and Arsenal instead
of Cavite. But personal interests and the sloth of the Government
combined to frustrate the plan. Under the pressing circumstances
the military authorities pretended to be doing something there,
and sent up a commission. Admiral Montojo expected to find batteries
of artillery mounted and 14 torpedoes in readiness, but absolutely
nothing had been done, so he at once returned to Manila Bay, and
prepared to meet the adversary off Cavite. In Cavite there were two
batteries, with three guns between them, but at the last moment two
defective guns were put ashore there from the _Don Juan de Austria_
and two similar pieces from the _Castilla_.
In Hong-Kong there was great agitation among the members of the
Philippine Patriotic League (_Junta Patriotica_) and the rebel chiefs
exiled under the alleged Treaty of Biac-na-bató. The League had
presented to several European Governments, through its own agents,
a sort of _Memorandum_, to which no official recognition could be
given. The leaguers were now anxious to co-operate with the Americans
in compelling the Spaniards to evacuate the Archipelago. An influential
American in Hong-Kong accepted the honorary post of treasurer of the
Patriotic League Fund, but quarrels over the spoil resulted in General
Aguinaldo being obliged by one of his ex-ministers to pay him his
share, amounting to several thousands of Mexican dollars. Under these
circumstances General Aguinaldo and his suite proceeded to Singapore,
travelling _incognito_, so as to avoid any undue interference,
and Aguinaldo took the opportunity to explain in certain official
quarters the existing conditions in the Philippines. The rebel general
opportunely arrived in Singapore at or about the time of the outbreak
of American-Spanish hostilities. Certain American authorities in
the Far East were desirous of utilizing Aguinaldo's services and
prestige with the armed natives to control them and prevent reprisals
when the American forces should appear before Manila. It was hoped
that, in this way, the lives of many Spaniards in the Islands would
be spared. Indeed, it eventually resulted so, for Aguinaldo, with
admirable tact, restrained any impolitic movement on the part of his
followers during the American operations against the Spaniards. Only
one who had lived in the Islands could adequately appreciate the
unbounded confidence some 20,000 armed natives must have had in
Aguinaldo to have refrained, at his bidding, from retaliating on
their old masters. According to _El Liberal _newspaper of Madrid,
dated June 28, 1898 (which quotes from _El Dia_), the aspirations
of the Revolutionary Party would appear to have been, at that date,
as follows, viz.:--
1. Philippine Independence to be proclaimed.
2. A Federal Republic to be established by vote of the rebels;
pending the taking of this vote Aguinaldo was to appoint the
members of that Government.
3. The Federal Republic to recognize a temporary intervention of
American and European Administrative Commissions.
4. An American Protectorate to be recognized on the same terms
as those fixed for Cuba.
5. Philippine ports to be opened to all the world.
6. Precautionary measures to be adopted against the influx
of Chinese.
7. The existing judicial system to be reformed.
8. Liberty of the press and right of assembly to be proclaimed.
9. Ample tolerance of all religions and sects, but abolition and
expulsion of all monastic Orders.
10. Measures to be adopted for working up the natural resources
of the Archipelago.
11. The wealth of the country to be developed by the construction
of highroads and railways.
12. The obstacles operating against the development of enterprises
and employment of foreign capital to be removed.
13. The new Government to preserve public order and check all
reprisals against the Spaniards.
14. Spanish officials to be transported to another safe and
healthy island until there should be an opportunity for their
return to Spain.
From Singapore, General Emilio Aguinaldo returned with his suite to
Hong-Kong, where instructions had been given apparently favouring
his plans for co-operation in the Islands. Consequent on this,
General Aguinaldo and his staff made preparations for proceeding to
Manila in an American warship when it should be deemed opportune to
do so. About the same time the Philippine Patriotic League issued a
proclamation which is too long to reproduce here, as it covers eight
folios of print. This document sets forth that whereas the Treaty of
Biac-na-bató had not been fulfilled by the Spanish Government, the
Revolutionists considered themselves absolved therefrom, and morally
free again to take the offensive in open warfare for the security of
their rights and liberty. But this document does not quote any of the
text of the above alleged treaty. Proclamations and exhortations to
the rebels were issued with such frequency that it would be tedious
to cite them all, but the following is a fair example:--
_(Translation of Full Text)_
_Philippine Patriots_:--
A nation which has nothing good can give nothing. It is evident
we cannot depend on Spain to obtain the welfare we all desire. A
country like Spain, where social evolution is at the mercy of
monks and tyrants, can only communicate to us its own instincts
of calumny, infamy, inquisitorial proceedings, avarice, secret
police, false pretences, humiliation, deprivation of liberties,
slavery, and moral and material decay which characterize its
history. Spain will need much time to shake off the parasites
which have grown upon and cling to her; she has no self-dependence
so long as her nationality is composed of inquisitorial monks,
ambitious soldiers, demoralized civil servants, and a populace
bred to support this state of things in silence. It is therefore
useless to expect anything from Spain.
During three and a half centuries Spain's policy has been a
delusion. Is there a conflict between Spain and England or
Holland? Then the friars come and relate to us preposterous
absurdities of the miracles of Saint Francis and of the Image of
the Virgin of the Rosary, whilst Simon de Anda calls the Pampango
natives his brothers so long as they fight to save the Spanish
flag falling into the hands of English or Dutch _savages!_
Is the foreign invasion ended? Then the friars, through their
salaried agents in the press, reward us with epithets such as
monkey, buffalo, etc. Is there another conflict imminent between
Germany and Spain? Then the friars call the natives Spaniards and
the military officers own us as their sons and they dub us brave
soldiers. Is the conflict finished? Then we are again overgrown
boys, beings of inferior race and incapable of being civilized. Is
there now to be a struggle with Americans? Then General Augusti,
who is the living symbol of Spanish authority, who ought to be the
most prudent of the prudent, the most cultivated of the cultivated,
points at America as a nation composed of all social excrescences;
the friars and their enslaved Spaniards want again to cajole
and cheat us with offers of participation in public affairs,
recognition of the military grades of ex-rebel chiefs, and other
twaddle degrading to those who would listen to it. In fact,
they have called into their councils the sons of the country,
whilst they exclusively carry out their own ideas, and reserve
to themselves the right to set aside all the resolutions at a
stroke. They offer to enrol in their ranks the insurgents of
yesterday, so that they can have them all shot on the morrow of
the present difficulty. What irrision! Do you want another trick
exposed? Now that Spain is in danger of losing the Philippines,
the executioners of the other day--the everlasting tyrants--tell us
that America will sell the Islands to England. No, America has its
past and its present. America will preserve a clear intelligence;
she is not dominated by friars and tyrants like Spain; she is
liberal; she has liberated her slaves against the will of the
Spaniards who were, for the most part, their owners. A country
is known by its national character; review its past history
and it is easy to understand the calumny launched against the
Americans. But even though we became English, should we not gain
by it? The English have conceded self-government to many of their
colonies, and not of the frail delusive sort that Spain granted
to Cuba. In the English colonies there are liberties which Spain
never yielded to hers in America or the Philippines.
Our country is very rich, and as a last resource we can buy it
from the Americans. Do not be deceived by the Spaniards! Help
the Americans, who promise us our liberty. Do not fall into
the error of taking Spain to be a civilized country. Europe and
America consider her the most barbarous of the century. There the
weakest is the most persecuted. In no country to-day but Spain is
the Inquisition tolerated. It is proved by the tortures imposed on
the prisoners of Montjuich, of the Philippines, and of Cuba. Spain
did not fulfil the agreement entered into with Maximo Gomez at
Zanjón, nor that made with Aguinaldo at Biac-na-bató. Spain is
a nation always more ready to promise than to perform. But ask
for friars, soldiers, and State dependents to come and devour
our wealth, and instantly you will get them. Spain has nothing
else to give, and God grant she will keep what she has. Spain
will flatter you under the present circumstances, but do not be
deceived. Submit every fawning offer to your conscience. Remember
the executions of the innocents, the tortures and atrocities which
have been the means of covering with decorations the breasts of
those who took the blood of your fathers, brothers, relations
and friends. Providence will aid the Americans in their triumph,
for the war is a just one for the nation elected to lead us to the
goal of our liberty. Do not rail against the designs of Providence;
it would be suicidal. Aid the Americans!
_(Anonymous.)_
On the other side, far richer in poetic imagination and religious
fervour, is the Allocution of the Archbishop of Madrid-Alcalá published
in Madrid on the day hostilities commenced. The following extract
will suffice to show how the religious sentiment of the people was
indirectly appealed to to convince them that Spain was defending a
noble cause.
_Very Beloved Sons_:--
The cursed hunger for gold and the unquenchable thirst for power
have combined to tarnish that flag which the Great Queen Isabella
raised, by the hand of Columbus, in the West Indies. With justice
trodden under foot, the voice of the Pope unheeded, and the
intervention of the nations despised with arrogance, every road
to the counsels of peace has been barred and the horrors of war
have become a necessity. Let Heaven be witness that we are not
the authors of this disaster, and let the responsibility before
God be on that vain people whose dogma seems to be that money
is the God of the world.... There, ploughing the seas, go our
soldiers and our sailors. Have no fear, let no one weep, unless,
indeed, it be for fear of arriving too late for the fray. Go,
braves, to fight with the blessing of the Fatherland. With you
goes all Spain, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, from Irun
to Tarifa. With what envy do We contemplate you weighing anchor
to leave our shores! Oh! why does juvenility, or decrepitude, or
duty deprive us of the joy of taking part in your enterprise? But
no! with you goes our Spanish heart.... May the Immaculate Virgin,
whose scapulary hangs around your necks and whose blessed image
floats on your flags, protect you under her mantle in the moment
of danger, deliver you from all evil, and shower blessings upon
you! May Saint James, patron of Spain, and the martyr Nicodemus
and Saint Telmo and Saint Raymond and the King Saint Ferdinand
go before you and ever march in the vanguard wherever you may go
and make you invulnerable to the bullets of the enemy, so that you
may return victorious to tread once more this noble soil and kiss
the cheek of the weeping mother who bore you!... We, who cannot
go to take part in the battles, will hold and brandish the arms
of prayer, like Moses who prayed on the mountain, whilst Joshua
slew his ferocious enemies in the valley.... God has triumph in
His hand and will give it to whom He pleases. He gave it to Spain
in Covadonga, in Las Navas, in El Salado, in the river of Seville,
on the plain of Granada, and in a thousand battles which overflow
the pages of history. O Lord, give it us now! Let the nations
see that against the right of might there is the might of right!
To all beloved sons, from our heart We have pleasure in sending
you our pastoral benediction, in the name of the Father, and the
Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Given in our palace in Madrid on the 23rd of April, 1898.
_José Ma_
_Archbishop-bishop of Madrid-Alcalá_.
This Allocution calls to mind Spain's last struggle with Mexico. Was
it a battle of the saints? The Spaniards relied on Santa Isabel;
the Mexicans appealed to Santa Guadalupe, and the latter came out
victorious.
In Manila, as the critical day approached, Gov.-General Augusti issued
his general order as to special military service and his proclamation
to the Philippine people. The latter is couched in vituperative and
erroneously prophetic language, but both can be better appreciated
from the following translated texts:--
_Special Military Service_
Whereas it is necessary to adopt every possible means for the
defence of this territory and to render assistance to the army
and the fleet in the approaching operations against the United
States of North America, I order:
1. It is hereby declared that a state of war exists.
2. All public functionaries of the State and the municipalities,
not exceeding 50 years of age and not physically unfit, are obliged
to take up arms in defence of the country and serve whenever they
are required. They will proceed, at once, to their offices and
lodge their names and serve under their present chiefs.
3. All Spaniards and sons of Spaniards (although not born in the
Peninsula) above the age of 20 and not more than 50, living in
the Provinces, are also hereby required to take up arms.
4. All those not comprised in the foregoing are at liberty to
serve as Volunteers.
(_a_) All native Spaniards who are not employed in the
public offices.
(_b_) All those who are under 20 and more than 50 years of age,
and who are strong enough to endure the fatigue of a campaign.
(_c_) All foreigners (except North Americans) who are domiciled
in Manila or in the capitals of the Provinces.
5. The General Sub-Inspector will organize these Volunteers,
and distribute them as required for defensive purposes.
6. Public functionaries will receive their orders for military
service from their respective administrative chiefs.
7. From this date no one capable of bearing arms is allowed to
leave these Islands. This prohibition does not apply to those
who are seriously ill.
_Proclamation_
_Spaniards_:--
Between Spain and the United States of North America hostilities
have broken out.
The moment has arrived to prove to the world that we possess
the spirit to conquer those who, pretending to be loyal friends,
take advantage of our misfortunes and abuse our hospitality, using
means which civilized nations consider unworthy and disreputable.
The North American people, composed of all the social excrescences,
have exhausted our patience and provoked war with their perfidious
machinations, with their acts of treachery, with their outrages
against the law of nations and international treaties.
The struggle will be short and decisive. The God of Victories
will give us one as brilliant and complete as the righteousness
and justice of our cause demand. Spain, which counts upon the
sympathies of all the nations, will emerge triumphantly from
this new test, humiliating and blasting the adventurers from
those States that, without cohesion and without a history, offer
to humanity only infamous traditions and the sorry spectacle
of Chambers in which appear united insolence and defamation,
cowardice and cynicism.
A squadron manned by foreigners, possessing neither instruction
nor discipline, is preparing to come to this Archipelago with
the blackguardly intention of robbing us of all that means life,
honour, and liberty. Pretending to be inspired by a courage of
which they are incapable, the North American seamen undertake
as an enterprise capable of realization the substitution of
Protestanism for the Catholic religion you profess, to treat you
as tribes refractory to civilization, to take possession of your
riches as if they were unacquainted with the rights of property,
and to kidnap those persons whom they consider useful to man their
ships or to be serviceable in agricultural or industrial labour.
Vain designs! Ridiculous boastings!
Your indomitable bravery will suffice to frustrate the attempt
to carry out their plans. You will not allow the faith you
profess to be made a mockery of, with impious hands placed on
the temple of the true God, the images you adore to be thrown
down by unbelief. The aggressors shall not profane the tombs of
your fathers, they shall not gratify their lustful passions at
the cost of your wives' and daughters' honour, or appropriate
the property that your industry has accumulated as a provision
for your old age. No, they shall not perpetrate any of the crimes
inspired by their wickedness and covetousness, because your valour
and your patriotism will suffice to punish and abase the people
who, claiming to be civilized and polished, have exterminated the
natives of North America instead of bringing to them the life of
civilization and of progress.
Filipinos, prepare for the struggle, and united under the
glorious Spanish banner, which is ever bedecked with laurels,
let us fight with the conviction that victory will reward our
efforts; against the shouts of our enemies let us resist with
Christian decision and the patriotic cry of "Viva España!
_Manila_, _23rd of April_, 1898.
Your General,
_Basilio Augusti y Davila_.
The volunteers and guerilla battalions which had been so recently
disbanded by General Primo de Rivera, because they terrorized the
peaceful inhabitants, were now publicly thanked and praised for their
past services and called upon again to serve their country. The Mayor
of Manila issued his own proclamation, exhorting the inhabitants
to help the Spaniards against the Americans. Archbishop Nozaleda
also made his appeal to the people, assuring them that four Spanish
battleships were on their way out (although, as a matter of fact,
only one existed, namely, the _Pelayo_ 8,500 tons, built in 1887),
and that from direct communication with the Almighty he had learnt that
the most Christian Spain would be victorious in the next engagement.
There was a general stampede of those who could get away; numbers
of families fled up the Pasig River towards the Lake of Bay. The
approaches to Manila from the north were held by the rebels; Cavite
Province threw off the cloak of pacification and sent fresh levies to
invest the highroads leading from the south to the capital. General
Augusti's wife and children, who had been conducted for safety to
Macabebe (Lower Pampanga), were kidnapped by the rebels. All Americans
(about 25), except one family, took refuge on board foreign ships in
the bay. The one exception was a Mr. Johnson, who had been travelling
through the Islands with a cinematograph show, and he refused to remove
his wife, who had just given birth. The well-known s.s. _Esmeralda_
took on board a crowd of passengers for Hong-Kong at fancy rates of
passage. Refugees offered as much as four times the usual passage-money
for a saloon berth, and deck-passengers were willing to pay three
times the normal rate. The Chinese were leaving the Islands by
hundreds by any available opportunity, for they had just as much to
fear from the loyal as the rebel faction. The rich Chinese were robbed
and the labouring class were pressed into service fit for beasts of
burden. Despised by the Spaniards and hated by the natives, their lives
were not safe anywhere. Foreign families of neutral nationality sought
more tranquil asylum far beyond the suburbs or on ships lying in the
harbour. Two days before the Americans arrived a native regiment was
suspected of disaffection. The Spanish officers therefore picked out
six corporals and shot them forthwith, threatening to do the same
on the morrow if the ringleaders were not handed over. During the
night the whole regiment went over to the rebels with their rifles
and accoutrements. No intelligent European foreigner entertained any
doubt as to the result of the coming contest, but the general fear
(which happily proved to be unfounded) was that it would be followed
by an indiscriminate massacre of the Spaniards.
There were warships of several nations in the bay, and the Spanish
fleet was moored off Cavite awaiting the arrival of the adversary's
squadron. The Spanish men-of-war, which were always painted white, had
their colour changed to dark grey like the American ships. All coast
lights were extinguished. The Island of Corregidor and Funta Restinga
were hastily supplied with a few 6-inch guns from the _Castilla_. Punta
Gorda, Punta Larisi, the rock El Fraile, and Caballo Island had toy
batteries compared with the American armament.
The American men-of-war left Mirs Bay (opposite to Hong-Kong Island)
on April 27, under the command of Commodore Dewey, and on the way made
a reconnaissance at Subig, but finding no opponent there, they steamed
on to Manila. With all lights put out the American ships entered the
bay, passing Corregidor Island at 3 a.m. on Sunday, May 1, 1898. The
_Olympia_, with Commodore Dewey aboard, led the way. The defenders of
Corregidor Island [193] were apparently slumbering, for the _Olympia_
had already passed when a solitary cannon-shot was heard and responded
to. Then a shot or two were fired from the rock El Fraile and from
the battery of Punta Sangley. The American squadron kept its course
in line of battle; the Spanish ships, under the command of Admiral
Montojo, who was on board the _Reina Cristina_, cleared for action,
and the opposing fleets took up positions off the north of Cavite
(_vide_ plan of Cavite).
After an intimation of "no surrender" from the Spaniards, by a
cannon-shot fired from the Fort of Santiago towards the approaching
United States fleet, the American ships opened fire, to which the
Spanish fleet responded with a furious broadside; but being badly
directed it did very little damage. The _Don Antonio de Ulloa_
discharged a broadside at the enemy's ships with almost no effect,
and simultaneously the drums were beaten, whilst the officers and
crews shouted "Long live the King, Queen, and Spain!" Firing on both
sides then became general. The well-aimed shots of the Americans were
beginning to tell forcibly against the Spaniards. The _Don Juan de
Austria_ advanced towards the _Olympia_ and was met with a shower
of shot and shell, obliging her to turn back. The _Reina Cristina_,
seeing the failure of the _Don Juan de Austria_, steamed full-speed
towards the _Olympia_, intending to engage her at short range,
but a perfect hurricane of projectiles from the _Olympia_ made her
retreat with her decks strewn with the dead and dying. The _Baltimore_
had one gun put out of action by the Hontoria guns of Punta Sangley,
whilst half a dozen men were slightly injured. The _Boston_ also was
slightly damaged, but further than that the American ships suffered
little or nothing. By 7.30 a.m. the Spanish flagship _Reina Cristina_
was in flames, so a boat was lowered to transfer the Admiral and his
staff to the _Isla de Cuba_. The captain of the _Reina Cristina_,
Don Luis Cadarso, although mortally wounded, heroically commanded
his men up to the moment of death. By 8 a.m. the Spanish ships were
decidedly crippled, and the American squadron withdrew to another
part of the bay, where, behind a number of foreign war and merchant
ships, they had left two supply transports, from which they took fresh
ammunition. Meantime the little Spanish gunboats _General Lezo, Marqués
del Duero, Manila, Velasco_, and _Argos_, which were quite unfit for
action, ran ashore at Cavite Viejo. The three shore-batteries of Fort
Santiago, the Luneta battlement, and Fort San Antonio Abad (Malate)
respectively continued ineffectual firing towards the American fleet
until the Commodore sent a message telling them to cease fire or he
would shell the city. At 11 a.m. the Americans returned in line of
battle, and opened fire on the Spanish ships which still had their
flags flying, and cannonaded and silenced the forts at Punta Sangley
and Cañacao. These operations lasted about one hour. Of the Spanish
ships the _Castillo_, and _Reina Cristina_ were burnt; the _Don Juan
de Austria_ was blown up, and the _Don Antonio de Ulloa_, pierced all
over with shot, sank after the action, and about half of her crew
which had survived the battle were drowned. Only the two cruisers
_Isla de Cuba_ and _Isla de Luzon_ remained in fighting condition,
but the position was so hopeless that Admiral Montojo ordered them
to run aground in the Bay of Bacoor.
The Americans then opened fire on the Arsenal and Fort of Cavite,
which had not a single gun left in place. Soon a Spanish officer,
named Lostoa, signalled for a truce to save the women, children, and
wounded. An American officer met him and replied that having destroyed
the fleet the American mission was ended for the present, and agreed
to suspend firing provided the shore-batteries at the river-mouth
were silent. General Augusti was consulted as to this condition, and
agreed to it. The mail-steamer _Isla de Mindanao_ was aground off Las
Piñas, and being armed as a cruiser the Americans fired on her and
she was soon ablaze. There was still another parley with reference
to Cavite. The Americans demanded the surrender of the Arsenal, the
Admiral, and the surviving crews of the destroyed fleet. As General
Peña declined to surrender Cavite, the Americans gave the Spaniards
two hours to evacuate, under the threat of bombarding Manila if the
demand were not complied with. Again the answer was negative, and
five hours were allowed so that General Peña could consult with the
Captain-General. General Augusti having authorized the evacuation, in
less than two hours Cavite and the whole isthmus, including San Roque,
Caridad, Estanzuela, and Dalahican, were under American control. All
the Spanish families returned to Manila by land. The next day (May 2)
the _débris_was cleared away from Cavite and the environs, and the
dwellings were cleansed and put in order for indefinite military
occupation.
The evacuation of Corregidor Island was demanded by the Americans,
and the 100 men composing the garrison were allowed to depart in
boats for Naig on the west coast of Cavite. Their commander, however,
surrendered himself prisoner, and went on board the _Baltimore_ with
his family. He was at once offered (but wisely refused) his liberty,
and later on he was put ashore at Balanga (Bataan).
On the Spanish side the losses in men and officers amounted to about
400 killed. It was a decisive victory for the Americans; the entire
Spanish fleet in Philippine waters was destroyed, excepting a few small
gunboats stationed about the southern islands. [194] After a 15 months'
cruise one of these--the _Callao_--steamed into Manila Bay on May
12 in complete ignorance of what had happened. The Americans fired a
warning shot, and ordered her to lower her flag. With little hesitation
she did so, in view of the immensely superior force displayed. The
vessel became a prize, and the commander a prisoner of war. But he
was shortly offered his liberty on parole, which he unfortunately
accepted, for the Spaniards in Manila had so lost their heads that
they accused him of cowardice in not having fought the whole American
squadron! He was actually court-martialled and condemned to death,
but afterwards reprieved.
The Spaniards exhibited great bravery in the battle of Cavite, and
man for man they proved themselves to be in no way inferior to their
opponents. Considering the wretched condition of their old-fashioned
ships and armament compared with the splendid modern equipment which
the Americans brought, no other result could have been expected. The
American losses were seven men wounded, none killed, and only slight
damage to one vessel.
Long before sunset Admiral Montojo and his surviving officers found
their way to Manila. [195] In the evening the Admiral serenely
passed the hours in his suburban villa, whilst the Americans were in
possession of the Port of Manila, and the stars and stripes floated
over the town and arsenal of Cavite, and the forts of Cañacao and Punta
Sangley. So little did the people and the ignorant Spanish priests
understand how a modern military occupation was conducted that when
Commodore Dewey landed his marines a deputation of friars and nuns
met him to humbly crave clemency for the vanquished. The entry of the
American squadron, without opposition, into the Bay of Manila, was
a great surprise to the inhabitants of the capital. Whilst the women
and children were driven off to the suburbs of the city and near-lying
villages, male Spaniards, from the highest to the lowest--merchants,
State dependents, Spanish troops, and even those native auxiliaries
who still remained loyal hastened to assure the Gov.-General that
"the enemy should not land in Manila without passing over their dead
bodies." Subsequent facts, however, proved these pompous vows to
be merely a figure of speech. From the city walls, the terraces of
houses, the church towers, and every available height, thousands of
curious sightseers witnessed the brave defence and the complete defeat
of the Spaniards. As the American fleet advanced in line of battle a
Spanish transport was scuttled at the mouth of the Pasig River to bar
the entrance. All the small steamers and sailing-craft in the river
moved up as near as possible to the _Puente de España_. The obsolete
guns on the Luneta battlement fired a few solitary shots without the
least effect; the Fort of Santiago, defending the Pasig River entrance,
was almost silent, although guns, said to be over a century old, had
been hastily mounted there, notwithstanding the fact that the colonel,
who was instructed to have the rust chipped off these ancient pieces
of artillery, committed suicide in despair. Not a single torpedo had
been brought into action by the Spaniards. There were several in stock
at Cavite Arsenal, but, when wanted, each had an important piece
missing, so they were unserviceable. About 4.30 p.m. the American
ships changed their position, and moved towards Manila City. A
formal demand was made on the Gov.-General Augusti to surrender the
capital. The British Consul, who had received instructions to look
after American interests pending hostilities, served as the medium
of communication between the representatives of the conflicting
parties. The Consuls had an interview with the Captain-General, who,
after a brief consultation with his colleagues, gave the customary
Spanish reply to the effect that he would resist to the last drop of
blood in his veins. Frequent intercourse took place between the Spanish
Gov.-General and the American Commodore through the intermediary of the
British Consul. The same afternoon another British, another French,
and another German man-of-war entered the Bay. Rear-Admiral Dewey
(for he had just been promoted in rank) declared the port blockaded.
On May 2 he demanded to be put in possession of the telegraph-station,
and on this being refused he ordered the cable connecting Luzon with
Hong-Kong to be cut. The Spanish authorities had just time before this
measure was taken to report the bare facts to Madrid by cable. The
news produced immense consternation in the Spanish capital. The whole
city was instantly in uproar. Mobs of people filled the streets,
wildly denouncing the incapability of a Government which could lead
them to such disaster. The newspaper offices were thronged. Special
supplements were issued as quickly as possible. The cafés, clubs,
and other public meeting-places were besieged. General Borbon drove
out in a carriage from which he harangued the populace, and was,
in consequence, sent to a fortress for three months. There was an
attempt at holding a mass meeting in the _Puerta del Sol_, but the
surging crowd started down the _Calle de Sevilla_ and the _Carrera
de San Gerónimo_ shouting, "Long live Weyler!" "To the house of
Weyler!" They reached his residence, and after a series of frantic
_vivas_ for the army, navy, etc., they called on General Weyler
to appear at the balcony. But being himself in somewhat strained
relations with the existing Government, he did not think it prudent
to show himself. Then some one having set up the cry of "Down with
the whole Government!" which was responded to with frenzied applause,
the rioters set out for Sagasta's house, returning by the _Carrera de
San Gerónimo_. At that moment the mounted civil guard met and charged
the crowd. Many were trodden under foot, and arrests were made. The
Civil Governor, Señor Aguilera, followed up in his carriage, and when
the military police had dispersed the general mass, leaving only here
and there a group, the Civil Governor stepped out of his carriage and
addressed them. His words were hissed from the balcony of a club,
and it was already past midnight when the first outburst of public
indignation and despair had exhausted itself. On May 2 the _Heraldo_
of Madrid, calmly reviewing the naval disaster, commented as follows:--
It was no caprice of the fortune of war. From the very first
cannon-shot our fragile ships were at the mercy of the formidable
hostile squadron; were condemned to fall one after the other
under the fire of the American batteries; they were powerless
to strike, and were defended only by the valour and breasts of
their sailors. What has been gained by the illusion that Manila
was fortified? What has been gained by the intimation that the
broad and beautiful bay on whose bosom the Spanish Fleet perished
yesterday had been rendered inaccessible? What use was made of the
famous Island of Corregidor? What was done with its guns? Where
were the torpedoes? Where were those defensive preparations
concerning which we were requested to keep silence?
Several merchant vessels were seized in and about Manila Bay, and
supplies from seawards were cut off from the city, which was quite at
the mercy of Admiral Dewey, who could have bombarded it and forced
surrender the same day. But it was not easy to foresee what might
follow. Admiral Dewey had full discretion to act as circumstances might
seem to guide him, but it was evident that whatever the surrender of
the Captain-General of the Archipelago might theoretically imply,
a military occupation of Manila was far from being tantamount to
possession of the Islands. Hemmed in everywhere on land by the
insurgent forces which now occupied and collected taxes in several
Luzon provinces, the Spaniards could have been shelled out of the
capital and forced to capitulate, or driven to extermination by the
thousands of armed natives thirsting for their blood. The Americans
had, consequently, a third party to consider. The natives' anxiety
to oust the Spaniards was far stronger than their wish to be under
American, or indeed any foreign, control. But whilst a certain section
of the common people was perfectly indifferent about such matters,
others, wavering at the critical moment between their opposition
to the Spaniards and repulsion of the foreign invader, whoever he
might be, proclaimed their intention to cast in their lot with the
former. Lastly, there was Aguinaldo's old rebel party, which rallied
to the one cry "Independence." "Nothing succeeds like success," and
if the rebel version of the alleged Treaty of Biac-na-bató had been
fulfilled in the spirit, no doubt Aguinaldo would have been unanimously
revered as a great reformer. But the relinquishment of the strife
by the leaders, the money transaction, and the immediate renewal of
Spanish severities, together created an impression in the minds of
the rebel rank-and-file that, in some way, their general welfare had
been sacrificed to personal interest. It was doubtful, therefore,
how Aguinaldo would be received on his return to the Islands. With
the object of investigating the feelings of the old rebel party,
the leader José Alejandrino and two other rebels accompanied the
American expedition to Cavite, where they disembarked. Several days
passed in convincing the rebels of Aguinaldo's good faith in all
that had occurred, and in the meantime Aguinaldo himself arrived on
May 19 with 12 other rebel leaders in the American despatch-boat
_Hugh McCulloch_. It yet remained doubtful whether he still held
the confidence of the rank-and-file; but when he at length landed
at Cavite, his old companions-in-arms, and many more, rallied to
his standard with the greatest enthusiasm. The rebels at that date
were computed to number 30,000, and Aguinaldo, on taking the command,
declared himself Dictator. Aguinaldo was, naturally, at that period,
on the most amicable terms with Admiral Dewey, who allowed him to have
two modern field-pieces, 500 rifles, and 200,000 rounds of ammunition,
enjoining on him the strict observance of his engagement to repress
reprisals against the Spaniards.
To prepare the natives for the arrival of the Americans, Emilio
Aguinaldo sent over in advance of the American Fleet the following
exhortation:--
_Compatriots_:--
Divine Providence is about to place independence within our reach,
in a manner most acceptable to a free and independent people.
The Americans, not for mercenary motives but for the sake of
humanity, in response to the woes of the persecuted, have thought
fit to extend their protecting arm to our beloved country,
now that they have been obliged to sever their relations with
Spain on account of the tyranny practised in Cuba, to the great
prejudice of the large commercial interests which the Americans
have there. An American squadron is at this moment preparing
to sail for the Philippines. We, your brothers, fear you may be
induced to fire on the Americans. No, brothers, never make this
mistake. Rather blow out your own brains than treat with enmity
those who are your liberators.
Your natural enemies, your executioners, the authors of your
misery and your woe, are the Spaniards who rule you. Raise
against these your weapons and your hatred. Understand well,
against the Spaniards; never against the Americans. Do not
heed the Governor-General's decree, calling you to arms, even
though it cost you your lives. Die rather than be ungrateful
to our American liberators. The Governor-General calls you
to arms. Why? To defend your Spanish tyrants? To defend those
who have despised you and in public speeches called for your
extermination--those who have treated you little better than
savages? No! no! a thousand times, no!
Glance at history and you will see that in all Spain's wars
undertaken in the Far East, Philippine blood has been sacrificed;
we were sent to fight for the French in Cochin China over a
matter which in no way concerned us; we were forced by Simon de
Anda to spill our blood against the English, who, in any case,
would have been better rulers than the Spaniards; every year our
sons are taken away to be sacrificed in Mindanao and Sulu against
those who, we are led to believe, are our enemies when, in reality,
they are our brothers, fighting, like us, for their liberty. After
such a sacrifice of blood against the English, the Annamites,
the Mindanaos, etc., what reward or thanks have we received from
the Spanish Government? Obscurity, poverty, the slaughter of our
dear ones. Enough, brothers, of this Spanish tutelage!
Note that the Americans will attack by sea and prevent any
reinforcements coming from Spain, therefore the insurgents must
attack by land.
You will, probably, have more than sufficient arms, because the
Americans, having arms, will find means to help us. Wherever
you see the American flag, there flock in numbers. They are
our redeemers.
Our unworthy names are nothing, but we all invoke the name of the
greatest patriot our country has seen, certain in the hope that
his spirit will be with us and guide us to victory, our immortal
_José Rizal_.
Cavite being occupied by the American forces, foreign Manila residents
were permitted to take refuge there, for no one could tell when the
Spaniards would be forced to capitulate, or what might happen if they
did. Meantime the rebels had cut off, to a considerable extent, but
not entirely, supplies of food to the capital, which was, however,
well stored; and at no time during the three and a half months'
siege was there a danger of famine among the civilian population,
although prices of commodities gradually advanced to about double
the normal rates. Even the hotels in the city only charged double
prices. The Spanish troops fared far worse; their condition became
more and more deplorable. All were badly and insufficiently fed, as
much from disorganized commissariat arrangements as from actual want
of supplies. The latest arrivals of youthful raw recruits particularly
felt the pangs of hunger, and as the swarming rebels took one outpost
after another from its emaciated defenders and raided the adjacent
provinces, the Spanish prisoners in their hands (soldiers, friars,
and civil servants) reached the figure of thousands. Among them was
Brig.-General Garcia Peña (lately in command of Cavite), a colonel,
several other officers, a civil governor, etc., and some hundreds
of volunteers.
Of the neutral warships in the bay, Germany had sent the largest
number, and the actions of their commanders caused much anxiety to
the blockading forces. In the city the German Consul made little
secret of his sympathies for Spain, and was in frequent consultation
with the Captain-General. German and Spanish officers fraternized
freely in the streets and cafés. On May 18 a German steamer, with
cargo and provisions, was reported outside Manila Bay, but her entry
into the port was forbidden by the Americans. Later on the commander
of a German man-of-war and his staff were received and fêted by the
Captain-General. These German officers were invited to a picnic at San
Juan del Monte accompanied by several general and other high Spanish
military officers. The German commander's post-prandial oration at
the feast was much commented upon, for he is said to have declared
(presumably on his own responsibility) that so long as William II was
Emperor of Germany the Philippines should never come under American
sway. The party then rode back to Manila, watched by the rebels, who
were too wise to intercept them and so jeopardize their own cause by
creating international complications. There is little doubt that the
attitude taken up by the Germans nurtured the hope entertained by
Spaniards all over the world, that at the last hour some political
entanglement between the other Powers might operate beneficially for
Spain's interests.
The city and commercial suburb of Binondo wore their usual aspect,
although trade was almost at a standstill. The undisguised sympathies
of Great Britain for America revived the long dormant feeling of
distrust and ill-will towards the British residents, which now became
so marked that the Captain-General issued a proclamation commanding due
respect to be paid to neutral foreigners. Even this did not prevent
a Spanish officer spitting in the face of an Englishman. Indeed,
at any time, there was far more danger to all civilian classes from
the Spanish soldiery than from the rebels, who were strictly enjoined
by Admiral Dewey not to attempt to enter the city. Had they done so,
certainly their choicest prize would have been the Archbishop Nozaleda,
who, well aware of this, escaped, long before the capitulation of
the city, to Shanghai on board the German warship _Darmstadt_.
The volunteers, too, were constantly giving trouble to the Spanish
authorities, from whom they demanded their pay, and once when this
was refused they threatened to seize the stores.
Although trade in and with Manila had been more or less suspended,
and at intervals absolutely so, since the great naval engagement, just
a few profited by the circumstances of war. One British firm there,
figuratively speaking, "coined" money. They were able frequently to
run a steamer, well known in Chinese waters (in which I have travelled
myself), between Manila and Hong-Kong carrying refugees, who were
willing to pay abnormally high rates of passage. In ordinary times
fares ranged from P50 saloon accommodation to P8 a deck passage. On one
trip, for instance, this steamer, with the cabins filled at P125 each,
carried 1,200 deck passengers (no food) at P20, and 30 deck passengers
(with food) at P30. Their unsold cargoes on the way in steamers when
Manila was blockaded came in for enormously advanced prices. Shiploads
of produce which planters and native middlemen were glad to convert
into pesos at panic rates were picked up "dirt cheap," leaving
rich profits to the buyers. When steamers could not leave Manila, a
Britisher, Mr. B----, walked for several days under the tropical sun
to embark for Yloilo with trade news, and steamers were run at high
war rates in and out of Borneo, Hong-Kong, and the Philippine southern
ports. One British firm obtained a special licence to run a steamer
between Hong-Kong and the port of Dagúpan, hitherto closed to foreign
traffic. These were, naturally, the exceptions, for, upon the whole,
the dislocation and stoppage of trade entailed very serious losses
to the general body of merchants. A few days after the bombardment of
Cavite the natives refused to accept the notes of the _Banco Español
Filipino_ (the Spanish bank), and a run was made on the bank to convert
them into silver. However, the managers of the Hong-Kong and Shanghai
Banking Corporation, and the Chartered Bank of India, Australia, and
China, came to the rescue of the _Banco Español-Filipino_ and agreed
to honour the paper issue in order to check the scare. The three
banks thereupon opened their doors and satisfied the note-holders,
ordinary business being, meanwhile, suspended.
Aguinaldo had not only been busy organizing his forces, but had, in
several engagements with the Spaniards, driven them back with loss,
made prisoners, and replenished his own armouries. He then assumed
the _Dictatorship_ and issued the following proclamation:--
_Filipinos_:--
The Great North American nation, example of true liberty, and,
as such, the friend of freedom for our country oppressed and
subjugated by the tyranny and despotism of its rulers, has
come to offer its inhabitants protection as decisive as it is
disinterested, regarding our unfortunate country as _gifted with
sufficient civilization and aptitude for self-government_. In
order to justify this high conception formed of us by the great
American nation, we ought to abstain from all acts which would
destroy that opinion, such as pillage, robbery and every kind of
outrage against persons or property. So as to avoid international
conflicts during the period of our campaign I order as follows:--
_Article_ 1.--The lives and properties of all foreigners shall
be respected, including in this denomination the Chinese and all
Spaniards who have not directly or indirectly contributed to the
bearing of arms against us.
_Article_ 2.--Those of the enemy who shall surrender their arms
shall be, in like manner, respected.
_Article_ 3.--Medical establishments and ambulances shall also be
respected as well as the persons and effects connected therewith,
provided they show no hostility.
_Article_ 4.--Persons disobeying the above three articles shall
be summarily tried and executed if their disobedience should lead
to assassination, incendiarism, robbery or rape.
Given at Cavite, May 24, 1898.
_Emilio Aguinaldo_.
On June 8, at 5 p.m., a Philippine deputation, headed by Dr. Santos,
waited on the American Consul-General in Singapore and delivered to
him a congratulatory address on the American successes in the war
with Spain. In reply to this address, the Consul-General made some
pleasing remarks which were received with vociferous cheers by the
Filipinos for the President of the United States and all sympathizers
with their welfare. At the close of the reception a band of Philippine
musicians played a selection of graceful airs of their native isles.
With his despatch No. 229, dated Singapore, June 9, the Consul-General
sent press reports of these proceedings to the Secretary of State in
Washington, who replied as follows [196]:--
No. 87.
_Department of State_,
_Washington, July_ 20, 1898.
_Sir_,--
Your No. 229 of the 9th ultimo, inclosing printed copies of
a report from the _Straits Times_ of the same day ... with a
view to its communication to the Press, has been received and
considered. By Department's telegram of the 17th of June you were
instructed to avoid unauthorized negotiations with the Philippine
insurgents. The reasons for this instruction were conveyed to you
in my No. 78 of the 16th of June, by which the President's views
on the subject of your relations with General Aguinaldo were
fully expressed. The extract now communicated by you from the
_Straits Times_ of the 9th of June, has occasioned a feeling of
disquietude and a doubt as to whether some of your acts may not
have borne a significance and produced an impression which this
Government would be compelled to regret. The address presented
to you by the 25 or 30 Filipinos who gathered about the consulate
discloses an understanding on their part that the object of Admiral
Dewey was to support the cause of General Aguinaldo, and that the
ultimate object of our action is to secure the independence of
the Philippines "under the protection of the United States." Your
address does not repel this implication, and it moreover represents
that General Aguinaldo was "sought out by you," whereas it had
been the understanding of the Department that you received him
only upon the request of a British subject ... who formerly lived
in the Philippines. Your further reference to General Aguinaldo
as "the man for the occasion" and to your "bringing about" the
"arrangement" between "General Aguinaldo and Admiral Dewey which
has resulted so happily" also represents the matter in a light
which causes apprehension lest your action may have laid the
ground of future misunderstandings and complications. For these
reasons the Department has not caused the article to be given to
the Press, lest it might seem thereby to lend a sanction to views,
the expression of which it had not authorized.
Respectfully yours,
_William R. Day_.
During the first few weeks following the Cavite naval battle nothing
remarkable occurred between the belligerents. The British Consul
and Vice-Consul were indefatigable in the services they rendered
as intermediaries between Admiral Dewey and General Augusti. The
American fleet was well supplied with coal from British vessels. The
Manila-Dagúpan Railway was in working order, and bringing supplies
into the city. The Spanish authorities issued a decree regulating the
price of meat and other commodities. American vessels made occasional
trips outside the Bay, and brought in captive sailing-vessels. Neutral
passenger-steamers were allowed to take away refugees other than
Spanish subjects. The rebels outside Manila were very active in the
work of burning and pillaging churches and other property. Streams
of smoke were daily seen rising from the valleys. In the outskirts
of the city, skirmishes between Spanish troops and rebels were of
frequent occurrence. The Spaniards still managed to preserve routes
of communication with the country districts, although, little by
little, the rebels were closing in upon them. Aguinaldo and his
subordinate leaders were making strenuous efforts effectually to cut
off all supplies to the city, with the view of co-operating with the
Americans to starve the Spaniards into capitulation. The hospitals in
the capital were crowded with wounded soldiers, brought in at great
risk from the rural districts. Spanish soldiers sauntered about the
city and Binondo--sad spectacles of emaciation in which body and soul
were only kept together by small doles of rice and dried fish. The
volunteers who had enlisted on the conditions of pay, food, and
clothing, raised an unheeded cry of protest, and threatened revolt,
whilst the officers whiled away the time in the cafés with resigned
indifference. The Archbishop issued his Pastoral Letter, in which he
told the natives that if the foreigners obtained possession of the
Islands there would be an end to all they most dearly cherished. Their
altars would be desecrated; the churches would become temples of
heresy; Christian morality would be banished, and vice would become
rampant. He reminded them (with the proviso "circumstances permitting")
that he had appointed June 17 as the day on which the consecration
of these Islands to the "Heart of Jesus" would be solemnly confirmed.
To draw the remnant of loyalty to his side, the Gov.-General instituted
a reformed "Consulting Assembly" composed of 15 half-castes and
natives, under the nominal presidency of Pedro A. Paterno, the
mediator in the Biac-na-bató negotiations. Señor Paterno, whose
sympathy for Spain was still unalienated, issued a _Manifiesto_
of which the following is a translation (published in _El Comercio_
of Manila on June 2, 1898):--
_Filipinos: Beloved Brethren_.
I love our country as none other does. I want it to be great,
free, and happy, and to shape its own destinies according to
its desires and aspirations. Therefore, I respect all the vital
forces in it at the cost of my life and my fortune. A long time
ago I risked my existence for the rights and liberties of the
Philippine people, who were sorely agitated, by bringing the
majority together, and directing the salvation of their interests
based on liberty and justice. My ideas are neither strange nor new;
they are the _result of study and political experience,_ and not
recently conceived under the existing circumstances. I desire,
with all the vehemence of my soul, to see my country strong and
great--its honour and dignity respected and in the enjoyment
of the greatest happiness. But however great our efforts may be
we need an ally. Let us imitate the example of the Great Powers;
they cannot exist alone, however strong and great they may be. They
need help, and the union of strength increases their power. Russia
seeks France; Germany seeks Italy and Austria. Unhappy is the Power
that isolates itself! And what better ally can we have than Spain,
a nation with which we are united for nearly four centuries in
religion, laws, morals, and customs, understanding full well her
virtues and her defects? The evil days of Spanish colonization are
over, and by dint of experience and the sacrifice of blood Spain
has understood that we are already of age, and require reforms
in our territory such as the formation of Philippine Militia,
which gives us the force of arms, and the Consulting Assembly,
which gives us the power of speech, participation in the higher
public employments, and the ability to control the peaceful
development and progress of society. Spain is at war with the
United States; we neither know that nation nor its language. The
Americans will endeavour by all imaginable means to induce us to
help them against Spain. And then, alas! they, the all-powerful,
will absorb us and reward our treachery to Spain by betraying
us, making us slaves and imposing upon us all the evils of a new
colonization. On the other hand, by helping Spain, if we die, we
do so in the fulfilment of our duty; if we live, we shall obtain
the triumph of our aspirations without the dangers and risks of
a civil war. We shall not die! No! Under the flag which shields
us and our garrisons, fighting with faith, decision, and ardour,
as a country does which yearns to be free and great, the enemy
will disappear like the wave which washes the seashore. Let us
hope to obtain from Spain all the good that the American stranger
can offer to us. Let us help our old ally, our old friend Spain,
and realize, with her, more quickly our aspirations. These are
they:--With the greatest decentralization possible consistent with
national unity, the organization and attributions of public powers
must be based on three principles:--(1) Spanish sovereignty. (2)
Local representation. (3) Colonial Government responsibility. Three
institutions correspond to these three principles, viz.: (1)
The institution of the General Government of the Philippines. (2)
The Insular Deputation or Philippine Assembly. (3) The Governative
Council. In this way the rights of the Government and those of
the Colony are harmonized. Let us shun the policy of suspicion
and doubt. With these firm and solid guarantees let us establish
civil and political liberty. The Assembly, representing the will of
the people, deliberates and resolves as one would treat one's own
affairs in private life, and thus constitutes the legislative power
of the Archipelago. Its resolution will be put into practice with
all fidelity by the executive power in its character of responsible
government. There are only Spaniards in the Archipelago; we are all
Filipinos and all European Spaniards. Such is _the programme of
the party who want home rule for the Philippines--ever Spanish!_
Thus shall we see the destinies of this country guided under the
orange and red flag. Thus will my beloved country be governed,
without detriment to the integrity of Spain. Finally, under Spain
our future is clear, and with all certainty we shall be free and
rule. Under the Americans our future is cloudy; we shall certainly
be sold and lose our unity; some provinces will become English,
others German, others French, others Russian or Chinese. Let us
struggle, therefore, side by side with Spain, we who love the
Philippines united and free. Long live Spain!
_Pedro Alejandro Paterno_.
_Manila_, _31st of May_, 1898.
This _Manifiesto_ was replied to a week later by the rebel party,
who published a Refutation, of which the following is a translation:--
_Refutation_ of the _Manifiesto_ of Señor Paterno.
"Actions speak louder than words."
A better phrase, or idea, could not be found with which to reply
to the _Manifiesto_ of Don Pedro A. Paterno, published in _El
Comercio_ of the 2nd instant, than the epigraph which heads
these lines.
Señor Paterno begins by saying that he loves his country as
none other does; he wants it to be great, free, and happy,
and to shape its own destinies according to its own desires and
aspirations. _Would to God such beautiful language represented
the truth_, for it is just what we wish and what we have, long
ago, been aiming at, at the risk of our lives and property,
as proved by our actions and our arguments, especially since
the middle of the glorious year of 1896, the period in which we
commenced the conquest, by force of arms, of our most cherished
liberties. May Señor Paterno forgive us if we cite a little of
the history of this movement, so that he may see that neither
are we ungrateful, nor are we acting with precipitation, but as
a logical and undeniable consequence of the vile conduct and bad
faith of the Spanish Government.
For over 300 years the country slumbered in ignorance of all that
referred to its rights and political liberties. It was resigned to
the Spanish governmental system of spoliation, and no one thought
of reforms. But when the Revolution of September, 1868, broke
out in Spain and overthrew the throne of Isabella II., the first
revolutionary leaders, inspired by ideas of humanity and justice,
caused an Assembly of Reformists to be established here, one of
the members of which, if we remember rightly, was Don Máximo Molo
Paterno, father of Don Pedro. The Assembly agreed to and proposed
good and appropriate reforms, amongst which was that relating
to the incumbencies which were monopolized by the friars. What
did the Spanish Government do with these reforms? What did the
friars do? Ah! though it may appear cruel to Señor Paterno,
historical facts oblige us to remind him that the Government,
in agreement with the friars, engineered the military rising
of the City of Cavite in January, 1872, and at the instigation
of its authors and accomplices, sentenced the secular priests
Father José Burgos, Father Jacinto Zamora, Father Mariano Gomez,
parish priests of Manila, Santa Cruz (suburb), and Bacoor (Cavite)
respectively, to be garotted. Moreover, another secular priest,
Father Agustin, the Philippine lawyers and landed proprietors, Don
Joaquin Pardo de Tavera, Don Antonio Regidor, Don Pedro Carrillo,
Don José Basa, and others, amongst whom was Don Maximo Molo
Paterno, the father of Don Pedro, were banished to the Ladrone
Islands. This virtuous grand old man (Don Máximo Paterno) did
indeed (and we proclaim it with pride) make sacrifices of health
and fortune for the advancement of the liberties of his native
country. From the year 1872 the Spanish Government carried on a
persistent persecution of all the Philippine reformers by unjust
imprisonment and banishment. In 1888 the authorities went so far
as to prosecute 700 representative men of the suburbs of Manila,
simply for having presented a petition of rights and aspirations
to the Gov.-General Don Emilio Terrero. There is not a single
insalubrious island or gloomy corner in the country which has not
been the forced home of some banished Filipino. No one was sure
of his personal liberty; none were safe in their homes, and if
three or four Filipinos met together for an innocent purpose,
they were spied, arrested, and banished. Calumny has brought
about enough banishments to Fernando Po, Chafarinas Islands,
Ceuta, and other African and Spanish places to demonstrate the
bad faith, cruelty, and injustice of the Spanish Government with
respect to the Philippine people. This virile, intelligent people
received the supreme decree of reforms with joy and enthusiasm,
sharing the feelings of those who felt in their souls the flame
of liberty. This people worked, through legitimate channels, to
advance its ideal, inspired by the purest loyalty to Spain. How
did the Spanish Government fulfil, on its part, the decree
spontaneously issued in 1868? By prosecuting and banishing the
reformists, and employing a system of terror to damp the courage
of the Filipinos. Vain, ridiculous fallacy!--for it ought to
have known better after three centuries of rule of that country
of intelligence, birthplace of Rizal, Luna, Rosario and other
living examples of Philippine energy. The Filipinos, lovers
of their liberty and independence, had no other recourse open
to them than an appeal to arms, to bring force against force,
terror against terror, death for death, resolute and sworn to
practise the system of fire and blood, until they should attain
for the whole Philippine Archipelago absolute freedom from the
ignominious sovereignty of Spain. Now let us continue our comments
on the _Manifiesto_.
Señor Paterno says that a long time ago he risked his existence
for the rights and liberties of the Philippine people, even at
the cost of his health and his fortune. We, however, do not see
how he put into practice such magnificent ideas, for what we do
know is that Señor Paterno passed his younger days in Madrid,
where, by dint of lavish expenditure, he was very well treated
by the foremost men in Spanish politics, without gaining from
Spain anything whereby the Philippine people were made free and
happy during that long period of his brilliant existence. On
the contrary, the very epoch of the persecutions narrated above
coincided with the period of Don Pedro A. Paterno's brilliant
position and easy life in Madrid, where, because he published a
collection of poems under the title of "Sampaguitas," he became
distinguished by the nickname of _Sampaguitero_. We know, also,
that Señor Paterno came back to this, his native soil, appointed
director of a Philippine Library and Museum not yet established,
without salary, but with the decoration of the Grand Cross of
Isabella the Catholic. This was no gain to us, no distinction to
him, seeing that the same decoration was given to the Chinaman
Palanca and two others, without their leaving their homes to
obtain them.
How are we then to understand those generous sacrifices of health
and fortune for the cause of Philippine liberty? Perhaps he
refers to the recently created Philippine Militia and Consulting
Assembly. Well, admitting for argument sake, that with such
Militia and Consulting Assembly the liberty and happiness of the
Philippines were assured (a doubtful hypothesis, Señor Paterno),
this happiness is not due to Señor Paterno's efforts, but simply
to the circumstances. Spain is at war with North America, and
now offers us this sugar-plum to draw us to her side to defend
her against invasion.
We ask you again, Señor Paterno, where are those sacrifices?
We do not see them, although we seek them with the light of
impartiality, for, as the splendour of justice shines on our flag,
we should not fail to do this even for our greatest enemies,
amongst whom we do not count you.
Do you allude to the Peace of Biac-na-bató? If so, we ask, what
have you done with that peace to which we subscribed in good
faith, and which you and General Primo de Rivera together have
stupidly and scandalously torn into shreds? You have, indeed,
bungled the amnesty when many of the banished are, up to now,
suffering the miseries of their sad and unjust fate.
You have put off the promised reforms which, even yet, have
not come.
You have delayed the payment of the P400,000 for the second and
third instalments of the agreed sum.
You have not delivered into the hands of our chief, Don Emilio
Aguinaldo, the money as agreed upon.
Ah! You thought that when we had surrendered to you our arms and
our garrisoned strongholds--when our forces were dispersed and we
were absent--you could turn back to the Government of iniquity
without reflecting that Divine Providence could permit, in the
hour of great injustice, her emissary Don Emilio Aguinaldo to
return resolved to chastise energetically the immoral and impotent
Spanish Government.
Then comes Señor Paterno, telling us that however great our efforts
may be in the cause of liberty, we cannot live without an ally,
and that we can find no better alliance than the sovereignty of
Spain. Frankly, we must say that this is inconceivably incompatible
with Señor Paterno's clear intelligence. How do you understand an
alliance with sovereignty? How can you imagine a people great,
free and happy under the sovereignty of Spain? Señor Paterno
cites, as examples, the alliances between Russia and France,
Germany and Italy and Austria, but, so far, we do not know that
Russia is the sovereign power of the French, nor the Germans that
of the Italians and Austrians. Señor Paterno further says that by
helping Spain in the war with the United States, if we die, we do
so in the fulfilment of our duty; if we live, we shall obtain the
triumph of our aspirations without the dangers and risks of a civil
war. Know, Señor Paterno, and let all know, that in less than six
days' operations in several provinces we have already taken 1,500
prisoners, amongst whom is the Brigadier-General Garcia Peña,
one Colonel, several Lieutenant-Colonels, Majors and officers,
besides the Governor of the Province of Bulacan, his wife and all
the civil service staff of that province. We also have about 500
Philippine volunteers as prisoners, of whom 10 have died and 40
are wounded, whilst among the European prisoners there is only one
wounded. This goes to prove that the Europeans were too cowardly
to defend the sovereignty of Spain in these Islands, therefore we
do not understand the appeal you make to the Filipinos to defend
Spain as a duty, when the Spaniards themselves are heedless of
that which ought to be a more rigorous and strict obligation
with them, seeing that they defend their own possession which
brings them so much lucre and profit. This does not say much for
the duty when the favoured ones themselves forget it and trample
upon it. To die to-day for cowardly Spain! This implies not only
want of dignity and delicate feeling, but also gross stupidity in
weaving a sovereignty of frightened Spaniards over the heads of
brave Filipinos. It is astonishing that in the face of such an
eloquent example of impotence there should still be a Filipino
who defends the sovereignty of Spain.
Remember, Señor Paterno, that we make war without the help of any
one, not even the North Americans; but no! we have the help of God,
who is the eternal ally of the great and just causes such as that
which we defend against Spain--our own beloved _independence_!!!
Señor Paterno concludes by explaining his political and
administrative principles on the basis of Spanish sovereignty, but,
as we have charged that sovereignty with cowardice and immorality,
we dismiss this detail.
To conclude, we will draw the attention of Señor Paterno to two
things, viz.:
1. That he _commits an injustice in imputing to the North Americans
the intention of taking possession of these Islands_ as soon as we
have conquered the Spaniards, for, besides having no grounds on
which to make such an allegation against a nation distinguished
for its humanity like the Federal Republic, there is the fact
that _its own constitution prohibits the absorption of territory
outside America, _in accordance with that principle laid down
by the immortal Monroe, of America for the Americans. There is,
moreover, the historical antecedent that the independence of
South America, once under Spanish dominion, is largely due to
the protection of the United States; and
2. That Señor Paterno should reflect on the fact that the Spaniards
would never have allowed him to publish his _Manifiesto_ had it not
been for the existence and attitude of our Dictator, Don Emilio
Aguinaldo. This ought to serve Señor Paterno as further proof of
the cowardice of the Spaniards, who, notwithstanding all that has
been shown, insist on creating discord by provoking civil war:
on their heads will fall the responsibilities of the moment and
of the historical past.
_Cavite_, _9th of June_, 1898.
_The Revolutionists_.
The feeling against Don Pedro A. Paterno in the rebel camp was very
strong for the time being, because of his supposed complicity in the
alleged Biac-na-bató fraud.
The rebels stopped all the traffic on the Tondo-Malabon steam tramway
line, and shortly afterwards the Manila-Dagúpan railway trains had
temporarily to cease running.
On June 10, 1898, General Monet received, through a Chinaman,
a message from the Gov.-General to hasten to Manila with all
the force he could bring. Monet had been so long in the northern
provinces unsuccessfully trying to hold them against the rebels
that his fate was, for a time, despaired of in the capital. Hemmed
in on all sides by the enemy, concentration of all his detachments
for general retreat was impossible. The forces spread over Tárlac,
North Pangasinán and Nueva Ecija had to be left to their fate; their
junction was quite impracticable, for, surrounded everywhere by
the enemy, each group was then only just able to defend itself, and
subsequently most of them fell prisoners. With only 600 fighting men,
escorting 80 wounded, General Monet set out on his terrible southward
march amidst recurring scenes of woe and despair. At every few miles
between San Fernando and Macabebe his progress was hampered by an
ever-increasing terror-stricken, weeping crowd of European women
and children who besought him not to let them fall into the hands
of a revengeful enemy. In the course of his march at most another
hundred fighting men, a few of whom were natives, were able to join the
retreating column. Their ammunition was scarce; they had no artillery
waggons; every _carromata_ (gig) of the districts traversed had been
seized by the enemy. Near San Fernando his passage was disputed,
but he entered the town, nevertheless, and evacuated it immediately
after, having secured only 12 carts for the transport of the sick
and the wounded and what little remained of the war-material. The
greatest difficulty was how to feed the swelling mob of refugees. At
6 a.m. on June 14 a start was made for Santo Tomás, but they were
so fiercely attacked on the road that, for the moment, annihilation
seemed inevitable. Concentrated between Apálit, Santo Tomás, Bacolor,
and Mexico the rebel forces were estimated at 9,000 well-armed men,
between whom Monet's column had to pass or die. The sobs of the
children, the lamentations of the women, the invocation of the saints
by the helpless were drowned in the united yelling of half-starved
troopers in their almost superhuman struggle for existence. Fortunately
the best order possible, under such distressing circumstances, was
maintained by the splendid officers supporting Monet. They were men
personally known to many of us years before. Lieut.-Colonel Dujiols
commanded the vanguard; the rearguard was under Major Roberto White;
the refugee families were in charge of Lieut.-Colonel Oyarzábal, all
under the superior orders of Colonel Perez Escotado. At length they
cut their way through to Apálit, where the railway station served
them as a stronghold, which they were able to defend whilst food
was served out and some attention could be bestowed on the sick and
wounded. On leaving Apálit a group of rebels approached the column
with a white flag saying they were friendly Macabebes, but when they
were close enough they opened fire. Nearly the whole town turned out
against the fugitives, and Monet had to hasten the march by deploying
his troops to keep the road clear. Understanding well that Monet was
acting only on the defensive to cover his retreat, the rebels sent him
an audacious message offering to spare the lives of his people if he
would surrender their arms. The general's reply was in the negative,
adding that if he once reached Santo Tomás not a stick or stone of
it would he leave to mark its site. This defiant answer nonplussed
the rebels, who had private interests to consider. To save their
property they sent another message to General Monet, assuring him
that he would not be further molested; and to guarantee their promise
they sent him the son of a headman as hostage, whose life they said
he could take if they broke their word. That night was, therefore,
passed, without attack, at Mandaling, around which outposts were
established and trenches occupied. The following day the retreating
column and the refugees reached Macabebe safely, [197] but what became
of their leader at this crisis we must leave to future historians to
explain. Some nine months afterwards the acts of two generals were
inquired into by a court of honour in Spain; one of them was disgraced,
[198] and the other, who was accused of having abandoned his whole
party to escape alone in disguise, was acquitted.
General Augusti's wife and family were chivalrously escorted
from Macabebe, where they were quite safe, by a loyal Philippine
volunteer named Blanco (the son of a planter in Pampanga), who was
afterwards promoted to effective rank of colonel in Spain. They were
conducted from the Hagonoy marshes to the Bay of Manila and found
generous protection from the Americans, who allowed them to quit the
Islands. The Spanish garrisons in the whole of La Laguna and Pampanga
had surrendered to the rebels, who were in practical possession of
two-thirds of Luzon Island. General Augusti was personally inclined
to capitulate, but was dissuaded from doing so by his officers.
Several American generals arrived with reinforcements, more were
_en route_, and about the middle of July the Commander-in-Chief,
Maj.-General Wesley Merritt, reached the Islands and remained
there until the end of the following month, that is to say, for
about 10 or 12 days after the Spanish surrender and the American
military occupation of Manila were accomplished facts. On the way
out from San Francisco to Manila some American ships called at the
Ladrone Islands and brought the Spanish garrison of about 40 men
prisoners. The surrender of the capital had been again demanded
and refused, for the Spaniards were far from being starved out, and
the American commander had strictly forbidden Aguinaldo to make an
attack on the city. Aguinaldo, however, had been wonderfully active
elsewhere. In several engagements the Spaniards were completely
routed, and in one encounter the rebel party took over 350 prisoners,
including 28 officers; in another, 250 prisoners and four guns; and 150
Spaniards who fled to Cavite Viejo church were quietly starved into
surrender. Amongst the prisoners were several provincial governors,
one of whom attempted to commit suicide. At Bacoor a hotly-contested
battle was fought which lasted about nine hours. The Spaniards were
surprised very early one morning, and by the afternoon they were
forced to retreat along the Cavite-Manila road to Las Piñas. The
Spanish loss amounted approximately to 250 troops wounded, 300 dead,
and 35 officers wounded or dead. The rebels are said to have lost more
than double this number, but whatever may have been the sacrifice,
the victory was theirs. The Spaniards would probably have come
better out of this combat but for the fact that a native regiment,
hitherto loyal, suddenly murdered their officers and went over to
the rebels. The Spaniards undoubtedly suffered much from unexpected
mutinies of native auxiliaries and volunteers at critical moments,
whilst in no case did rebels pass over to the Spanish side. [199]
They were not long left in possession of Las Piñas, where a subsequent
attack in overwhelming numbers drove the survivors still nearer to
the capital.
Long before the capitulation of Manila the rebels were as well armed
as they could wish from three sources,--that is to say, the Americans,
the Spanish arms seized in warfare, and consignments from China. They
also made good use of their field-pieces, and ever and anon the
booming of cannon was heard in the streets of Manila. The Spaniards,
hard pressed on all sides, seemed determined to make their last stand
in the old citadel. The British banks shipped away their specie to
China, and the British community, whose members were never united as
to the course they should adopt for general safety, was much relieved
when several steamers were allowed, by the mutual consent of Admiral
Dewey and General Augusti, to lie in the bay to take foreigners on
board in case of bombardment. Emilio Aguinaldo, on his return to the
Islands, had declared himself Dictator. The Dictatorial Government
administered the provinces as they were conquered from the Spaniards,
collected taxes, and enacted laws. In a month's time the management
of these rural districts had so far assumed shape that Aguinaldo
convened deputies therefrom and summoned a Congress on June 18. He
changed the name of Dictatorial to Revolutionary Government, and on
June 23 proclaimed the Constitution of that provisional government,
of which the statutes are as follows:--
_(Translation)_
_Don Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy_,
President of the Philippine Revolutionary Government and
Commander-in-Chief of its army
This Government, desirous of demonstrating to the Philippine
people that one of its objects is to abolish with a firm hand
the inveterate vices of Spanish administration, substituting
a more simple and expeditious system of public administration
for that superfluity of civil service and ponderous, tardy and
ostentatious official routine, I hereby declare as follows, viz:--
CHAPTER I
Chapter I
Of the Revolutionary Government
_Article_ 1.--The Dictatorial Government shall be henceforth called
the Revolutionary Government, whose object is to struggle for
the independence of the Philippines, until all nations, including
Spain, shall expressly recognize it, and to prepare the country
for the establishment of a real Republic. The Dictator shall be
henceforth styled the President of the Revolutionary Government.
_Article_ 2.--Four Government Secretaryships are created: (1)
of Foreign Affairs, Navy and Trade; (2) of War and Public Works;
(3) of Police, Public Order, Justice, Public Education and Health;
(4) of Finance, Agriculture, and Manufactures. The Government has
power to increase the number of secretaryships when experience has
shown that the above distribution of public offices is insufficient
to meet public requirements.
_Article_ 3.--Each Secretary shall assist the President in the
administration of affairs concerning his particular branch. The
Secretary at the head of each respective department shall not
be responsible for the Presidential Decrees, but shall sign the
same to give them authenticity. But if it should appear that
the decree has been issued on the proposal of the Secretary of
the corresponding branch, then the Secretary shall be jointly
responsible with the President.
_Article_ 4.--The Secretaryship of Foreign Affairs shall be
divided into three centres, one of Diplomacy, one of Navy, and
another of Trade. The first centre shall study and execute all
affairs which concern the direction of diplomatic negotiations
with other Powers and the correspondence of this Government
connected therewith. The second shall study all that relates to
the formation and organization of our Navy, and the fitting out
of whatever expeditions the circumstances of the Revolution may
require; and the third shall attend to all matters concerning
home and foreign trade and the preliminary work in connection
with the Treaties of Commerce to be made with other nations.
_Article_ 5.--The Secretaryship of War shall be divided into two
centres, the one exclusively of War and the other exclusively
of Public Works. The first centre shall be divided into four
sections, one of Campaign, one of Military Justice, one of Military
Administration, and the other of Military Health.
The Campaign section shall draw up and attend to all matters
concerning the service and enlistment of the Revolutionary Militia,
the direction of campaigns, the making of plans, fortifications,
and the editing of the announcements of battles, the study of
military tactics for the Army, and organization of the respective
staffs, artillery, and cavalry corps, and all other matters
concerning campaigns and military operations.
The section of Military Justice shall attend to all matters
concerning courts-martial and military sentences, the appointment
of judges and assistant judges in all military-judicial
affairs. The military administrator shall take charge of the
commissariat department and all Army equipment, and the Military
Health department shall take charge of matters concerning the
health and salubrity of the Militia.
_Article_ 6.--The other secretaryships shall be divided into so
many centres corresponding to their functions, and each centre
shall be sub-divided into sections as the nature and importance
of the work requires.
_Article_ 7.--The Secretary of each department shall inspect and
watch over the work therein and be responsible to the President
of the Government. At the head of each section there shall be
a director, and in each section there shall be an official in
charge assisted by the necessary staff.
_Article_ 8.--The President shall have the sole right to appoint
the secretaries, and in agreement with them he shall appoint all
the staff subordinate to the respective departments. Nevertheless,
in the election of individuals favouritism must be avoided on
the understanding that the good name of the Fatherland and the
triumph of the Revolution need the services of the most really
capable persons.
_Article_ 9.--The secretaries can take part in the sessions of the
Revolutionary Congress, whenever they have a motion to present in
the name of the President, or on the interpellation of any deputy,
but when the question under debate, or the motion on which they
have been summoned is put to the vote, they shall retire and not
take part in that voting.
_Article_ 10.--The President of the Government is the
personification of the Philippine people, and as such he cannot be
held responsible for any act whilst he holds that position. His
position is irrevocable until the Revolution shall triumph,
unless extraordinary circumstances should compel him to tender
his resignation to Congress, in which case only Congress shall
elect whomsoever is esteemed most fit.
CHAPTER 2
Chapter II
Of the Revolutionary Congress
_Article_ 11.--The Revolutionary Congress is the assembly of those
deputies from the Philippine provinces, elected in due form, as
prescribed in the Decree of the 18th inst. Nevertheless, if any
province could not elect deputies because the majority of its towns
had not yet been able to free themselves from Spanish dominion,
the Government can nominate provisional deputies chosen from the
persons of highest consideration by reason of their education
and social position up to the number fixed by the said Decree,
always provided that such persons shall have been born or have
resided for a long time in the provinces to be represented.
_Article_ 12.--When the deputies shall have met in the town and
in the building to be provided by the Revolutionary Government
the preliminary act shall be the election by majority of votes
of a commission of five persons who shall examine the documents
accrediting the personality of each person, and another commission
of three persons who shall examine the documents exhibited by
the first commission of five.
_Article_ 13.--The next day the said deputies shall again meet
and the two commissions shall read their respective reports on
the validity of the said documents, all doubts on the same to
be resolved by an absolute majority of votes. They shall then
at once proceed to the election, by absolute majority, of a
president, a vice-president, and two secretaries, to be chosen
from among the same deputies, after which the Congress shall be
held to be constituted, and notice of the same shall be given to
the Government.
_Article_ 14.--The meeting-place of Congress is sacred and
inviolable, and no armed force can enter therein except on the
summons of the President of the Congress for the purpose of
restoring order, should the same have been disturbed by those
who know not how to honour themselves and their solemn functions.
_Article_ 15.--The powers of Congress are:--To look after the
general interests of the Philippine people and the fulfilment of
the revolutionary laws; to discuss and vote laws; to discuss and
approve, before ratification, all treaties and loans to examine
and approve the accounts of the general expenses which shall
be presented annually by the Finance Secretary and to fix the
extraordinary taxes, and others which, in future, may be imposed.
_Article_ 16.--The voice of Congress shall also be heard in all
matters of grave importance the resolution of which will admit of
delay, but the President of the Government can resolve questions of
an urgent character, rendering an account of his acts to Congress
by means of a message.
_Article_ 17.--Any Deputy can present a bill in Congress, and any
Secretary can do so by order of the President of the Government.
_Article_ 18.--The sessions of Congress shall be public, and only
in cases where reserve is necessary shall secret sessions be held.
_Article_ 19.--The order of debate and parliamentary usages shall
be determined by instructions to be formulated by Congress. The
President shall lead the debate, but shall not vote, unless
there fail to be a majority, in which case he shall give his
casting vote.
_Article_ 20.--The President of the Government cannot, in any
manner, impede the meeting of Congress, nor interfere with the
sessions of the same.
_Article_ 21.--Congress shall appoint a permanent judicial
commission, to be presided over by the Vice-President, assisted
by one of the Secretaries and composed of these persons and
seven assessors, elected by majority of votes, from among the
deputies. This commission shall revise the sentences given in
criminal cases by the provincial councils, and shall judge and
sentence, without right of further appeal, cases brought against
the Government Secretaries, Provincial Chiefs and Provincial
Councillors.
_Article_ 22.--In the office of the Secretary to Congress there
shall be a Book of Honour, in which shall be noted the great
services rendered to the Fatherland and esteemed as such by
Congress. Any Filipino, military or civil, can solicit of Congress
inscription in the said book on producing the documents which
prove the praiseworthy acts performed by him for the good of the
Fatherland since the present Revolution began. For extraordinary
services which may, in future, be rendered, the Government will
propose the inscription, the proposal being accompanied by the
necessary justification.
_Article_ 23.--Congress shall determine, on the proposal of the
Government, the money rewards to be paid, once for all, to the
families of those who were victims to duty and patriotism in the
execution of heroic acts.
_Article_ 24.--The resolutions of Congress shall not be binding
until they have received the sanction of the President of the
Government. When the said President shall consider any resolution
undesirable, or impracticable, or pernicious, he shall state his
reasons to Congress for opposing its execution, and if Congress
still insist on the resolution the said President can outvote it
on his own responsibility.
CHAPTER III
Chapter III
Of Military Justice
_Article_ 25.--When any commandant of a detachment shall receive
notice of an individual in the service having committed a fault or
having performed any act reputed to be a military misdemeanour,
he shall inform the Commandant of the District of the same, and
this officer shall appoint a judge and secretary to constitute
a Court of Inquiry in the form prescribed in the instructions
dated 20th instant. If the accused held the rank of lieutenant,
or a higher one, the same Commandant shall be the judge, and if the
Commandant himself were the accused the Superior Commandant of the
Province shall appoint as judge an officer of a higher rank, and
if there were none such the same Commandant of the Province shall
open the inquiry. The judge shall always hold the rank of chief.
_Article_ 26.--When the Court of Inquiry has finished its labours,
the Superior Commandant shall appoint three assistant judges of
equal or superior rank to the judge, and a Court-Martial shall be
composed of the three assistant judges, the judge, the assessor,
and the president. The Commandant of the District shall be the
judge if the accused held the rank of sergeant, or a lower one,
and the Superior Commandant shall be judge if the accused held the
rank of lieutenant, or a higher one. This court shall pass sentence
in the same form as the Provincial Courts, but the sentence can
be appealed against before the Superior Council of War.
_Article 27_.--The Superior Council of War shall be composed
of six assistant judges, who shall hold the minimum rank of
Brigadier-General, and the War Office adviser. If the number of
generals residing in the capital of the Revolutionary Government
be insufficient, the number shall be made up by deputies to
be appointed on commission by Congress. The President of this
Council shall be the general of the highest rank amongst them,
and if there were more than one of the same rank, one shall be
elected by themselves by majority of votes.
_Article 28_.--The Superior Council shall judge and sentence,
without right of further appeal, Superior Commandants, Commandants
of Districts, and all officers who hold rank of Commandant,
or a higher one.
_Article 29_.--Military misdemeanours are the following:--
(1) Violation of the immunity due to foreigners, both as to
their persons and their goods, and violation of the privileges
appertaining to sanitary establishments and ambulances, as well
as the persons and effects in, or belonging to, one or the other,
and persons employed in the service of the same so long as they
commit no hostile act. (2) Want of respect for the lives, money,
and jewellery of the enemy who surrenders his arms, and for
prisoners of war. (3) The entry of Filipinos into the service of
the enemy as spies, or to discover war secrets, make plans of the
revolutionists' positions and fortifications, or present themselves
to parley without proving their mission or their individuality. (4)
Violation of the immunity due to those who come with this mission,
duly accredited, in the form prescribed by international law.
The following persons also commit military misdemeanours:--
(1) Those who endeavour to break up the union of the
revolutionists, fomenting rivalry between the chiefs, and forming
divisions and armed bands. (2) Those who collect taxes without
being duly authorized by Government, or misappropriate public
funds. (3) Those who, being armed, surrender to the enemy or
commit any act of cowardice before the same; and (4) Those who
sequester any person who has done no harm to the Revolution, or
violate women, or assassinate, or seriously wound any undefended
persons, or commit robbery or arson.
_Article_ 30.--Those who commit any of the above-named
misdemeanours shall be considered declared enemies of the
Revolution and shall be punished on the highest scale of punishment
provided for in the Spanish Penal Code. If the misdemeanour be
not provided for in the said code, the culprit shall be confined
until the Revolution has triumphed, unless his crime shall have
caused an irreparable injury which, in the opinion of the court,
would justify the imposition of capital punishment.
Additional Clauses
_Article_ 31.--The Government shall establish abroad a
Revolutionary Committee, composed of an indefinite number of
the most competent persons in the Philippine Archipelago. This
Committee shall be divided into three sections, viz.:--Of
diplomacy; of the navy; and of the army. The diplomatic section
shall negotiate with the foreign cabinets the recognition of
belligerency and Philippine independence. The naval section shall
be intrusted with the study and organization of a Philippine
navy and prepare the expeditions which the circumstances of the
Revolution may require. The army section shall study military
tactics and the best form of organizing staff, artillery and
engineer corps, and all that is necessary to put the Philippine
army on a footing of modern advancement.
_Article_ 32.--The Government shall dictate the necessary
instructions for the execution of the present decree.
_Article_ 33.--All decrees of the Dictatorial Government which
may be in opposition to the present one are hereby rescinded.
Given at Cavite, June 23, 1898.
_Emilio Aguinaldo_.
The Promulgation of the Constitution of the Revolutionary Government
was accompanied by a Message from Emilio Aguinaldo, of which the
following is a translation:--
_Message of the President of the Philippine Revolution_
It is an established fact that a political Revolution, judiciously
carried out, is the violent means employed by nations to recover
the sovereignty which naturally belongs to them, when the same has
been usurped and trodden under foot by tyrannical and arbitrary
government. Therefore, the Philippine Revolution cannot be more
justifiable than it is, because the country has only resorted
to it after having exhausted all peaceful means which reason and
experience dictated.
The old Kings of Castile were obliged to regard the Philippines
as a sister nation united to Spain by a perfect similarity
of aims and interests, so much so that in the Constitution of
1812, promulgated at Cádiz, as a consequence of the Spanish War
of Independence, these Islands were represented in the Spanish
Parliament. But the monastic communities, always unconditionally
propped up by the Spanish Government, stepped in to oppose the
sacred obligation, and the Philippine Islands were excluded from
the Spanish Constitution, and the country placed at the mercy of
the discretional or arbitrary powers of the Gov.-General.
Under these circumstances the country clamoured for justice,
and demanded of the Peninsular Government the recognition and
restitution of its secular rights, through reforms which should
gradually assimilate it to Spain. But its voice was soon stifled,
and its children were rewarded for their abnegation by punishment,
martyrdom and death. The religious corporations, whose interests
were always at variance with those of the Filipinos and identified
with the Spanish Government, ridiculed these pretensions, calmly
and persistently replying that liberty in Spain had only been
gained by the sacrifice of blood.
What other channel, then, was open to the country through which
to insist upon the recovery of its lawful rights? No other remedy
remained but the application of force, and convinced of this,
it had recourse to revolution.
Now its demands are no longer limited to assimilation with the
Spanish Constitution. It asks for a definite separation therefrom;
it struggles for its independence, with the certainty that the
time has arrived when it is able and ought to rule itself.
Hence, it has constituted a Revolutionary Government, based
on wise and just laws, suited to the abnormal circumstances
it is passing through, preparatory to the founding of a real
Republic. Accepting Right as the only standard of its acts,
Justice as its sole aim, and honourable Labour as its sole means,
it calls upon all Filipinos, without distinction of birth, and
invites them to unite firmly with the object of forming a noble
society, not by bloodshed, nor by pompous titles, but by labour
and the personal merit of each one; a free society where no egoism
shall exist--where no personal politics shall overflow and crush,
nor envy nor partiality debase, nor vain boasting nor charlatanry
throw it into ridicule.
Nothing else could be expected from a country which has proved
by its long suffering and courage in tribulation and danger,
and industry and studiousness in peace, that it is not made for
slavery. That country is destined to become great; to become one of
the most solid instruments of Providence for ruling the destinies
of humanity. That country has resources and energy sufficient to
free itself from the ruin and abasement into which the Spanish
Government has drawn it, and to claim a modest, though worthy,
place in the concert of free nations.
Given at Cavite, June 23, 1898.
_Emilio Aguinaldo_.
These public documents were supplemented by the issue, on June 27,
of "Instructions," signed by Emilio Aguinaldo, which, as they relate
solely to working details of the Revolutionary Government offices,
are of minor interest to the general reader.
Since June 30 the rebels were in possession of Coloocan (the first,
station--beyond Manila--on the Manila-Dagúpan Railway) and the Manila
suburbs of Santa Cruz and Tondo. The rebels purchased four vessels in
Singapore and armed them, but, later on, Admiral Dewey forbade them to
fly their flag pending the ultimate settlement of the whole Philippine
problem. They also took possession of the waterworks of Santólan
(near San Juan del Monte), but did not cut off the water-supply to the
capital. Dissensions arose in the rebel camp between Emilio Aguinaldo
and the leaders Yocson and Sandico. Yocson was the chief who carried
on the war in the northern provinces during the absence of Aguinaldo
and his companions (_vide_ pp. 399, 407). The Americans had no less
difficulty in dealing with the natives than with the Spaniards. There
were frequent altercations between individual rebels and American
soldiers which, in one case at least, near Cavite, resulted very
seriously. The rebels were irritated because they considered
themselves slighted, and that their importance as a factor in the
hostilities was not duly recognized; in reality, there was nothing
for them to do in co-operation with the Americans, who at any time
could have brought matters to a crisis without them (by shelling the
city) but for considerations of humanity. Aguinaldo's enemies were
naturally the Spaniards, and he kept his forces actively employed in
harassing them in the outlying districts; his troops had just gained
a great victory in Dagúpan (Pangasinán), where, on July 22, the whole
Spanish garrison and a number of civilian Spaniards had to capitulate
in due written form. But experience had taught him that any day an
attempt might be made to create a rival faction. Such a contingency
had been actually provided for in Article 29 of the Statutes of the
Revolutionary Government already cited. Presumably with a view to
maintaining his prestige and keeping his individuality well before
the people, he was constantly issuing edicts and proclamations. He was
wise enough to understand the proverbs, "_L'union fait la force_," and
"A house divided against itself shall surely fall." Not the least of
his talents was that of being able to keep united a force of 30,000 to
40,000 Filipinos for any object. His proclamation of the Constitution
of the Revolutionary Government on June 23 implied a declaration of
independence. He really sought to draw the American authorities into
a recognition of it; but he did not seem to see, what others saw, the
inopportunity of their doing so at that stage of America's relations
with Spain. The generals were not the arbiters of the _political_
situation. Then Aguinaldo adopted a course quite independently of
the Great Power which had undertaken the solution of the Philippine
question, and addressed a Memorandum to the foreign Governments, with a
copy of an Act of Independence. The result was altogether negative; not
a single Power chose to embarrass America, at that critical period, by
a recognition of Aguinaldo's party. The Memorandum read as follows:--
(_Translation_)
_To the Powers_:--
The Revolutionary Government of the Philippines, on being
constituted, explained, by means of a message of the 23rd June
last, the real causes of the Philippine Revolution, and went on to
show that this popular movement is the result of those laws which
regulate the life of a nation ardently desiring progress, and
the attainment of perfection by the only possible road of liberty.
The Revolution, at the present moment, is predominant in the
provinces of Cavite, Batangas, Mindoro, Tayabas, La Laguna, Mórong,
Bulacan, Bataán, Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Tárlac, Pangasinán, La
Union, La Infanta, and Zambales, and is besieging the capital,
Manila. In these provinces the most perfect order and tranquillity
reign; they are administered by the authorities elected by
themselves in conformity with the decrees of the 18th and 23rd
of June last.
Moreover, the Revolution has about 9,000 prisoners of war, who are
treated with the same consideration observed by cultured nations,
agreeably with the sentiments of humanity, and a regular organized
army of more than 30,000 men fully equipped on a war footing.
Under these circumstances the representatives of the townships
comprised within the provinces above mentioned, interpreting the
popular will of those who have elected them, have proclaimed the
Independence of the Philippines, and requested the Revolutionary
Government to petition and solicit of the foreign Powers
an acknowledgment of their belligerency and independence,
under the conviction that the Philippine nation has arrived
at that state in which it can and ought to govern itself. As a
consequence, the annexed document has been signed by the said
representatives. Wherefore the undersigned, using the faculties
reserved to him as President of the Revolutionary Government
of the Philippines, and in the name and representation of the
Philippine nation, implores the protection of all the Powers of
the civilized world, and beseeches them formally to recognize the
belligerency, the Revolutionary Government, and the Independence of
the Philippines, because these Powers are the bulwarks designated
by Providence to maintain the equilibrium amongst nations by
sustaining the weak and _restraining the ambitions of the more
powerful_, in order that the most faultless justice may illuminate
and render effective indefinitely the progress of humanity.
Given under my hand and seal in Bacoor, in the Province of Cavite,
this 6th day of August 1898.
_Emilio Aguinaldo_,
_The President of the Revolutionary Government._
The accompanying Act of Independence, dated August 1, 1898, and couched
in the flowery language of the preceding edicts and proclamations,
was signed by those Filipinos who had been appointed local presidents
of the townships in the provinces referred to. The allusion to "the
ambitions of the more powerful" could well be understood to signify
an invitation to intervene in and counteract America's projects, which
might, hereafter, clash with the Aguinaldo party's aspirations. At the
same time a group of agitators, financed by the priests in and out of
the Islands, was straining every nerve to disseminate false reports
and create discord between the rebels and the Americans, in the hope
of frustrating their coalition. But, even then, with a hostile host
before Manila, and the city inevitably doomed to fall, the fate of
Spanish sovereignty depended more on politicians than on warriors.
In the absence of a Spanish Ambassador at Washington the French and
Austro-Hungarian Governments had accepted, conjointly, the protection
of Spanish subjects and interests in the United States on terms set
forth in the French Ambassador's letter to the Secretary of State in
Washington, dated April 22, 1898. In August the city of Santiago de
Cuba was beleaguered by the Americans under General Shafter; the forts
had been destroyed by Admirals Schley and Sampson; General Linares,
in command there, had been wounded and placed _hors de combat_; the
large force of Spanish troops within the walls was well armed and
munitioned, but being half-starved, the _morale_ of the rank-and-file
was at a low ebb, and General Toral, who succeeded General Linares,
capitulated. The final blow to Spanish power and hopes in Cuba was the
destruction of Admiral Cervera's fleet outside the port of Santiago de
Cuba. Cuba was lost to Spain. No material advantage could then possibly
accrue to any of the parties by a prolongation of hostilities, and on
July 22 the Spanish Government addressed a Message to the President
of the United States (Mr. William McKinley) to inquire on what terms
peace might be re-established between the two countries. In reply to
this inquiry the U.S. Secretary of State sent a despatch, dated July
30, conveying an outline of the terms to be stipulated. The French
Ambassador at Washington, M. Jules Cambon, having been specially
appointed "plenipotentiary to negotiate and sign," by decree of the
Queen-Regent of Spain, dated August 11, 1898, peace negotiations were
entered into, and a Protocol was signed by him and the U.S. Secretary
of State, Mr. William R. Day, for their respective Governments at
4.25 p.m. on August 12, 1898. It is interesting to note the exact
hour and date, in view of subsequent events.
Protocol of Peace
_The English Text_ [200]
_Article_ 1.--Spain will relinquish all claim of sovereignty over
and title to Cuba.
_Article_ 2.--Spain will cede to the United States the Island of
Porto Rico and other islands now under Spanish sovereignty in the
West Indies, and also an island in the Ladrones to be selected
by the United States.
_Article_ 3.--_The United States will occupy and hold the city,
bay, and harbour of Manila, pending the conclusion of a treaty
of peace which shall determine the control, disposition, and
government of the Philippines_.
_Article_ 4.--Spain will immediately evacuate Cuba, Porto Rico, and
other islands now under Spanish sovereignty in the West Indies; and
to this end each Government will, within ten days after the signing
of this protocol, appoint Commissioners, and the Commissioners so
appointed shall, within 30 days after the signing of this protocol,
meet at Havana for the purpose of arranging and carrying out
the details of the aforesaid evacuation of Cuba and the adjacent
Spanish islands; and each Government will, within ten days after
the signing of this protocol, also appoint other Commissioners,
who shall, within 30 days after the signing of this protocol,
meet at San Juan, in Porto Rico, for the purpose of arranging and
carrying out the details of the aforesaid evacuation of Porto Rico
and other islands now under Spanish sovereignty in the West Indies.
_Article_ 5.--The United States and Spain will each appoint
not more than five Commissioners to treat of peace, and the
Commissioners so appointed shall meet at Paris not later than
October 1, 1898, and proceed to the negotiation and conclusion of
a treaty of peace, which treaty shall be subject to ratification
according to the respective constitutional forms of the two
countries.
_Article_ 6.--Upon the conclusion and signing of this protocol,
hostilities between the two countries shall be suspended, and
notice to that effect shall be given as soon as possible by each
Government to the commanders of its military and naval forces.
Done at Washington in duplicate, in English and in French, by
the undersigned, who have hereunto set their hands and seals,
the 12th day of August, 1898.
_William R. Day_.
_Jules Cambon_.
For a month before the Protocol was signed the relations between
Spaniards and Americans were verging towards a crisis. The respective
land forces were ever on the point of precipitating the end. General
F. V. Greene had his brigade encamped along the Cavite-Manila road,
about 2 1/2 miles from the Spanish fort at Malate, with outposts thrown
forward to protect the camp. The rebel lines were situated nearer
to Manila, between the Americans and Spaniards. On July 28 General
Greene took possession of a line, from the road already occupied by
his forces, in front of the rebels' advanced position, to be ready to
start operations for the reduction of Manila. The American soldiers
worked for three days at making trenches, almost unmolested by the
Spaniards, who had a strong line of breastworks not more than 1,000
yards in front. No Americans were killed or wounded whilst so working.
On July 31, at 11 p.m., the Spaniards opened a furious infantry
and artillery fire upon the American lines and kept it up for two
hours. Fort San Antonio Abad (Malate) with five guns, Blockhouse No. 14
with two guns, and connecting infantry trenches, concentrated fire
upon the American breastworks, which caused considerable annoyance
to the Americans. The night was pitch-dark, it rained in torrents,
there was mud and water everywhere, and the ground was too flat
to drain. The 10th Pennsylvania Regiment and four guns of the Utah
Batteries occupied the American line, with two batteries of the 3rd
Foot Artillery in reserve. The last was brought up under a heavy fire,
and taking up a position on the right, silenced the Spaniards, who
were pouring in a flanking fire. The whole camp was under arms, and
ammunition and reinforcements were sent. The regiments were standing
expectantly in the rain. The 1st California was ordered forward,
the bugle sounded the advance, the whole camp cheered, and the men
were delighted at the idea of meeting the enemy. Over a flat ground
the American troops advanced under a heavy Spanish fire of shell and
Maüser rifles, but they were steady and checked the Spaniards' attack.
General Greene went forward to the trenches, firing was exchanged, and
the wounded were being brought back from the front in _carromatas_. The
contending parties were separated by bamboo thickets and swamp. The
Americans lost that night 10 killed and 30 wounded. The Spanish
loss was much heavier. Most of the Americans killed were shot in the
head. The Maüser bullet has great penetrating power, but does not kill
well; in fact it often makes a small wound which hardly bleeds. As
pointed out at p. 369, four Maüser bullets passed right through Sancho
Valenzuela at his execution and left him still alive. Captain Hobbs,
of the 3rd Artillery, was shot through the thigh at night, and only
the next morning saw the nature of the wound.
During the following week the Spaniards made three more night-attacks,
the total killed and wounded Americans amounting to 10 men. The
American soldiers were not allowed to return the fire, unless the
Spaniards were evidently about to rush the breastworks. There was
some grumbling in the camp. The Spaniards, however, got tired of
firing to so little purpose, and after the third night there was
silence. Meanwhile, in the daytime the Americans went on strengthening
their line without being molested.
On August 7 Admiral Dewey and General Merritt sent a joint note
to the Captain-General in Manila, giving him 48 hours to remove
women and children, as, at any time after that, the city might be
bombarded. The Captain-General replied thanking the Admiral and
General for their kind consideration, but pointed out that he had no
ships, and to send the women and children inland would be to place
them at the mercy of the rebels. On the expiration of the 48 hours'
notice, i.e., at noon on August 9, another joint note was addressed
to General Augusti, pointing out the hopelessness of his holding out
and formally demanding the surrender of the city, so that life and
property of defenceless persons might be spared. The Captain-General
replied requesting the American commanders to apply to Madrid; but
this proposal being rejected, the correspondence ceased.
On August 11 a Council of War was held between Generals Merritt,
Anderson, McArthur, and Greene, and the plan of combined attack
arranged between General Merritt and Admiral Dewey was explained. For
some hours a storm prevented the landing of more American troops
with supplies, but these were later on landed at Parañaque when the
weather cleared up, and were hurriedly sent on to the camp, where
preparations were being made for the assault on the city.
Whilst the Protocol was being signed in Washington the American troops
were entrenched about 350 yards from the Spaniards, who were prepared
to make their last stand at the Fort San Antonio Abad (Malate). From
the morning of that day there were apparent signs of an intended
sortie by the Spaniards, and, in view of this, the rebels marched
towards the American lines, but were requested to withdraw. Indeed,
the native forces were only too anxious to co-operate with the American
troops, or at least, to have the semblance of doing so, in order to
justify their claim to enter the beleaguered city as allies of the
invaders. General Merritt, however, discouraged any such alliance,
and issued precise orders to his subordinate officers to avoid,
as much as possible, all negotiation with the Aguinaldo party.
Why the Spaniards were still holding the city of Manila at this date
is perhaps best understood by the Americans. To the casual observer
it would have appeared expedient to have made the possession of
Manila a _fait accompli_ before the Protocol of Peace was signed. The
Americans had a large and powerful fleet in Manila Bay; they were
in possession of Cavite, the arsenal and forts, and they had a large
army under Maj.-General Merritt and his staff. General Augusti was,
for weeks previous, personally disposed to surrender, and only refused
to do so as a matter of form, hence the same means as were finally
employed could apparently have brought about the same result at an
earlier date. [201] The only hope the Spaniards could entertain was a
possible benefit to be derived from international complication. From
the tone of several of the Captain-General's despatches, published
in Madrid, one may deduce that capitulation to a recognized Power
would have relieved him of the tremendous anxiety as to what would
befall the city if the rebels did enter. It is known that, before the
bombardment, Admiral Dewey and his colleagues had given the humane
and considerate assurance that the city should not be left to the
mercy of the revolutionary forces.
The next day, Saturday, August 13, the Americans again demanded the
surrender of the city within an hour, which was refused, according
to Spanish custom. Without the slenderest hope of holding the city
against the invaders, the Spaniards preconcerted a human sacrifice,
[202] under the fallacious impression that the salvation of their
honour demanded it, and operations commenced at 9.45 a.m. The ships
present at the attack were the _Olympia_ (flagship), _Monterey,
Raleigh, McCulloch, Petrel, Charleston, Baltimore, Boston_, and
_Concord_, with the little gunboat _Rápido_, and the captured (Spanish)
gunboat _Callao_, and the armed steam-launch _Barceló_. The _Concord_
watched the Fort Santiago at the Pasig River entrance. The American
commanders confined the bombardment to the forts and trenches situated
to the south of the city. The whole of the walled city and the trading
quarter of Binondo were undamaged. The fighting-line was led by the
_Olympia_, which sent 4-inch shells in the direction of the fort at
Malate (San Antonio de Abad). A heavy shower of rain made it difficult
to get the range, and every shell fell short. The _Petrel_ then took
up position and shelled the fort with varying result, followed by
the _Raleigh_. The _Rápido_ and the _Callao_, being of light draught,
were able to lie close in shore and pour in a raking fire from their
small-calibre guns with considerable effect. The distance between the
ships and the fort was about 3,500 yards, and, as soon as this was
correctly ascertained, the projectiles had a telling effect on the
enemy's battery and earthworks. The _Olympia_ hurled about 70 5-inch
shells and 16 8-inch shells, and the _Petrel_ and the _Raleigh_
about the same number each. There was rather a heavy wash in the
bay for the little _Callao_ and the _Barceló_, but they were all the
time capering about, pouring a hail of small shell whenever they had
a chance. The Spaniards at Malate returned the fire and struck the
_Callao_ without doing any damage. The transport _Zafiro_ lay between
the fighting-line and the shore, having on board General Merritt, his
staff, and a volunteer regiment. The transport _Kwonghoi_ was also in
readiness with a landing-party of troops on board. In another steamer
were the correspondents of the London _Times_ and _New York Herald_,
and the special artists of the _Century Magazine_ and the _Herald_. The
field artillery took no part in the operations. The shelling of the
Fort San Antonio Abad from the ships lasted until about 11 a.m., when
the general signal was given to cease firing. One shell, from Malate,
reached the American camp. The firing from the ships had caused the
Spaniards to fall back. General Greene then ordered the 1st Colorado
to advance. Two companies deployed over a swamp and went along the
beach under cover of the Utah Battery. Two other companies advanced in
column towards the Spanish entrenchments with colours flying and bands
of music playing lively tunes. The first and second companies fired
volleys to cover the advance of the other columns. They crossed the
little creek, near Malate, in front of the fort; then, by rushes, they
reached the fort, which they entered, followed by the other troops,
only to find it deserted. The Spaniards had retreated to a breastwork
at the rear of the fort, where they kept up a desultory fire at the
Colorado troops, killing one man and wounding several. Fort San Antonio
Abad was now in possession of the 1st Colorado under Lieut.-Colonel
McCoy, who climbed up the flagstaff, hauled down the Spanish flag, and
hoisted the Stars and Stripes amidst cheers from the army and fleet.
Four companies of the 1st Colorado advanced across the fields, entered
the Spanish trenches, crossed the bridge, and moved up the road,
the Spaniards still keeping up an ineffective fire from long range.
The 3rd Colorado came up with a band of music, and then the whole
regiment deployed in skirmishing order and maintained a continual rifle
fire until they halted on the Luneta Esplanade. The band took up a
position in an old Spanish trench and played as the troops filed past
along the beach. The Spaniards were gradually falling back on the city,
and the rebels who were located near the Spanish lines continued the
attack; but the Americans gave them the order to cease firing, which
they would not heed. The Americans thereupon turned their guns upon
the rebels, who showed an inclination to fight. Neither, however,
cared to fire the first shot; so the rebels, taking another road,
drove the Spaniards, in confusion, as far as Ermita, when Emilio
Aguinaldo ordered his men to cease firing as they were just outside
the city walls. The rebel commander had received strict orders not
to let his forces enter Manila. The American troops then developed
the attack, the Spaniards making, at first, a stubborn resistance,
apparently for appearance' sake, for the fight soon ended when the
Spaniards in the city hoisted the white flag on a bastion of the old
walls. Orders were then given to cease firing, and by one o'clock the
terms of capitulation were being negotiated. General F. V. Greene then
sent an order to the troops for the rear regiments to muster on the
Luneta Esplanade, and there half the American army waited in silent
expectation. The Spanish entrenchments extended out from the city
walls in different directions as far as three miles. The defenders were
about 2,500 in number, composed of Spanish regular troops, volunteers,
and native auxiliaries; about the same number of troops being in the
hospitals inside the city. The opponent force amounted to about 15,000
rebels and 10,000 Americans ashore and afloat. The attacking guns threw
heavier shot and had a longer range than the Spanish artillery. The
Americans were also better marksmen than the Spaniards. They were,
moreover, better fed and in a superior condition generally. The
Americans were buoyed up with the moral certainty of gaining an
easy victory, whereas the wearied Spaniards had long ago despaired
of reinforcements coming to their aid; hence their defence in this
hopeless struggle was merely nominal for "the honour of the country."
For some time after the white flag was hoisted there was
street-fighting between the rebels and the loyals. The rattle
of musketry was heard all round the outskirts. The rebels had
taken 300 to 400 Spanish prisoners and seized a large quantity
of stores. General Basilio Augusti, who was personally averse to
useless bloodshed, relinquished his command of the Colony about a
week prior to the capitulation. Just before the attack on the city
he went on board a German steam-launch which was waiting for him
and was conveyed to the German cruiser _Kaiserin Augusta_, which
at once steamed out of the bay northwards. General Fermin Jaúdenes
remained as acting-Captain-General. [203] Brig.-General of Volunteers
and Insp.-General Charles A. Whittier and Lieutenant Brumby then
went ashore in the Belgian Consul's launch, and on landing they
were met by an interpreter, Cárlos Casademunt, and two officers,
who accompanied them to the house of the acting-Captain-General,
with whom the draft terms of capitulation were agreed upon. In his
evidence before the Peace Commission at Paris, General Whittier said:
"I think the Captain-General was much frightened. He reported in great
trepidation that the insurgents were coming into the city, and I said
that I knew that that was impossible because such precautions had been
taken as rendered it so. "His fear and solicitude about the natives
entering the city when I received the surrender of Manila were almost
painful to witness." Lieutenant Brumby returned to Admiral Dewey to
report, and again went ashore with General Merritt. In the meantime
General Jaúdenes had taken refuge in the sacristy of a church which
was filled with women and children, presumably with the wise object of
keeping clear of the unrestrained mobs fighting in the suburbs. For
some time the Spanish officers refused to reveal his whereabouts,
but eventually he and General Merritt met, and on August 14 the
terms of the Capitulation were signed between General Nicolás de la
Peña y Cuellas and Colonels Jose Maria Olaguer Tellin and Cárlos Rey
y Rich, as Commissioners for Spain, and Generals F. V. Greene and
Charles A. Whittier, Colonel Crowder, and Captain Lamberton, U.S.N.,
as Commissioners for the United States. The most important conditions
embodied in the Capitulation are as follows, viz.:
1. The surrender of the Philippine Archipelago.
2. Officers to be allowed to retain their swords and personal
effects, but not their horses.
3. Officers to be prisoners of war on parole.
4. The troops to be prisoners of war and to deposit their arms
at a place to be appointed by General Merritt.
5. All necessary supplies for their maintenance to be provided
from the public Treasury funds, and after they are exhausted,
by the United States.
6. All public property to be surrendered.
7. The disposal of the troops to be negotiated, later on, by the
United States and Spanish Governments.
8. Arms to be returned to the troops at General Merritt's
discretion.
The Capitulation having been signed, Lieutenant Brumby immediately went
to Fort Santiago with two signalmen from the _Olympia_ and lowered
the Spanish flag, which had been flying there all day. Many Spanish
officers and a general crowd from the streets stood around, and as he
drew near to the flagstaff he was hissed by the onlookers. When the
orange-and-red banner was actually replaced by the Stars and Stripes,
many in the crowd shed tears. The symbol of Spanish sovereignty had
disappeared for ever. The attitude of the mob was not reassuring, so
Lieutenant Brumby asked an infantry officer who was present to bring
his detachment as a guard. A company of infantry happened to be coming
along, and presented arms, whilst the band, playing "The Star-spangled
Banner," enlivened this dramatic ceremony. Whilst this was going on the
Spaniards hoisted the Spanish flag on the transport _Cebú_ and brought
it down to the mouth of the Pasig River, where they set fire to it. A
party of American marines boarded her, hauled down the Spanish flag,
and tried to save the hull, but it was too far consumed. The Spaniards
also destroyed barges and other Government property lying in the river.
In the official reports furnished by Generals T. M. Anderson and
A. McArthur and published in America, the total casualties on the
American side are stated to be as follows, viz.:--On August 13, five
killed and 43 wounded. Previous to this in the trenches there were
14 killed and 60 wounded, making a total of 122.
The approximate number of European Spanish troops in the Archipelago
during the year 1898 would stand thus:--
Total of troops under Gen. Primo de Rivera in
January, 1898, say 25,000
Shipped back to Spain by Gen. Primo de Rivera
after Aguinaldo's withdrawal to Hong-Kong
(_vide_ p. 400) 7,000
At the date of the Capitulation of Manila
Prisoners (regular troops) in hands of the rebels 8,000
Detachments in the Luzon Provinces (subsequently
surrendered to, or killed by, the rebels) 1,000
Killed or mortally wounded in general combat 1,000
Wounded and diseased in Manila hospitals 2,600
Approximate total in Visayas and Mindanao Island
(General Rios' jurisdiction) 3,000
Approximate total of able-bodied troops in Manila,
prisoners of war (to America), up to December
10, 1898 2,400
25,000
General F. V. Greene marched his troops down the _Calzada_ and
entered the walled city, where he massed his forces. Sentinels
were placed at all the city gates; some rebels got inside the city,
but were disarmed and sent out again. At 7 p.m. the American troops
took up their quarters in public buildings, porches, and even on the
streets, for they were tired out. One might have imagined it to be a
great British festival, for the streets were bedecked everywhere with
the British colours displayed by the Chinese who were under British
protection. That night General Merritt, General Greene and the staff
officers were served at dinner by the late Captain-General's servants
in the Town Hall (_Plaza de la Catedral_), the splendid marble entrance
of which became temporarily a dépôt for captured arms, ammunition,
and accoutrements of war.
No hostile feeling was shown by Spaniards of any class. The inhabitants
of the city looked remarkably well after the 105 days' siege. Trade
was absolutely at a standstill, and American troops were drafted out
of the walled city to occupy the commercial quarter of Binondo on
the opposite side of the river. The government of the city was at
once taken over by Maj.-General Wesley Merritt, appointments being
made by him to the principal departments as follows, viz.:--
By General Order dated August 15, Brig.-General T. M. Anderson became
Commandant of the Cavite district, the garrison of which would be
increased on the arrival of the transports on the way. Brig.-General
Arthur McArthur became Military Commandant of the walled city of Manila
and Provost-Marshal of the city of Manila, including all the suburbs,
his barracks and staff-quarters to be within the walled city. The
Commandant was to take over the offices, staff, and functions of the
late Civil Governor. Colonel Ovenshine became Deputy Provost-Marshal
of the walled city south of the river; Colonel James S. Smith was
appointed Deputy Provost-Marshal of Binondo and all districts situated
north of the river.
By General Order dated August 16, Brig.-General F. V. Greene became
Treasurer-General; Brig.-General of Volunteers C. A. Whittier was
nominated Commissioner of Customs.
By General Order dated August 15, it was provided that within 10 days a
complete list should be sent to Washington of all public establishments
and properties of every description, including horses; that all private
property, including horses, would be respected, and that lodging for
the prisoners of war would be provided by the Military Commandant
of the city in the public buildings and barracks not required for
the American troops. Colonel C. M. C. Reeve was appointed Chief of
Police, with the 13th Regiment of Volunteer Minnesota Infantry for
this service.
On August 16 a notice was placarded outside the General Post Office
to the effect that, as all the Spanish staff had refused to work for
the Americans, the local and provincial correspondence could not be
attended to. This was, however, soon remedied.
In an order issued on August 22 it was enacted that all natives and
all Spanish soldiers were to be disarmed before they were admitted
into the walled city. The insurgent troops were included in the above
category, but their arms were restored to them on their leaving the
city. An exception was made in favour of the insurgent officers,
from the grade of lieutenant upwards, who were permitted to enter
and leave Manila with their swords and revolvers.
On August 25 a provisional agreement was entered into between the
American authorities and Emilio Aguinaldo, to remain in force pending
the result of the Paris Peace Commission, whereby their respective
spheres were defined. The Americans retained jurisdiction over Manila
City, Binondo, the right bank of the Pasig River up to the Calzada
de Iris and thence to Malacañan, which was included. The remaining
districts were necessarily in the hands of the rebels, there being
no recognized independent government in Luzon other than the American
military occupation of the capital and environs.
Towards the end of August, the American Commander-in-Chief,
Maj.-General Wesley Merritt, quitted the Islands in order to give
evidence before the Peace Commission at Paris, after having appointed
General E. S. Otis to be the first Military Governor of Manila.
The British Consul, Mr. E. A. Rawson Walker, who had rendered such
excellent service to both the contending parties, died of dysentery
in the month of August, and was buried at Paco cemetery.
Philippine refugees returned to the Islands in large numbers, but
the American authorities notified the Consul in Hong-Kong that only
those Chinese who could prove to his satisfaction previous residence
in Manila would be allowed to return there.
Trading operations were resumed immediately after the capitulation,
and the first shipment of cigars made after that date was a parcel
of 140,000 exported to Singapore in the first week of September
and consigned to the _Tabaqueria Universal_. Business in Manila,
little by little, resumed its usual aspect. The old Spanish newspapers
continued to be published, and some of them, especially _El Comercio_,
were enterprising enough to print alternate columns of English and
Spanish, and, occasionally, a few advertisements in very amusing
broken English. Two rebel organs, _La Independencia_ and _La República
Filipina_, soon appeared. They were shortly followed by a number
of periodicals of minor importance, such as _El Soldado Español, La
Restauracion_ (a Carlist organ), _Thé Kon Leche, El Cometa_ and _El
Motin_ (satirical papers) and two American papers, viz., _The Manila
American_ and _The Manila Times_. Liberty of the press was such a
novelty in Manila that _La Voz Española_ over-stepped the bounds of
prudence and started a press campaign against the Americans. Delgado,
the editor, after repeated warnings from the Provost-Marshal, was at
length arrested. The paper was suppressed for abusing the Americans
from the President downwards, and publishing matter calculated to
incite the Spanish inhabitants to riot. The capital was seething
with opposition to the new conditions; many were arrested, but few
lamented the incarceration, for the prison was the porch which led to
fame, and through it all who were ambitious to rise from obscurity
had to pass. Moreover, imprisonment (for mere trifles) was such a
commonplace event in Spanish times that no native lost caste by the
experience of it, unless it were for a heinous crime which shocked
his fellows. Meanwhile, in the public ways and the cafés and saloons,
altercations between the three parties, Spanish, native, and American,
were of frequent occurrence.
For some weeks before the capitulation there had been a certain amount
of friction between the American soldiery and the rebels, who resented
being held in check by the American authorities. Emilio Aguinaldo had
his headquarters at Bacoor, on the Cavite coast, situated between
two divisions of the American army, one at Cavite and the other at
Manila, and within easy shelling distance from the American fleet. For
obvious reasons he decided to remove his centre of operations,
for it was becoming doubtful how long peace between the two parties
would continue. The rebels had been sorely disappointed that they
were not allowed to enter Manila with the Americans, or even before,
for since the first few months of the rebellion they had pictured to
themselves the delights of a free raid on the city. Aguinaldo therefore
removed his headquarters to a place three miles north of Manila, but
General Otis requested him to go farther away from the capital. As
he hesitated to do so the General sent him an ultimatum on September
13 ordering him to evacuate that place by the afternoon of the 15th,
so during the night of the 14th Aguinaldo moved on with his troops to
Malolos. From this town, situate about 20 miles from Manila, he could
better unite and control the rebel factions here and there over the
northern provinces; he could, moreover, either make use of the line
of railway or cut off the connection with Manila, or he could divert
supplies from the rich rice districts and Pangasinán ports, whilst
the almost impregnable mountains were of easy access in case of need.
Aguinaldo declared Malolos to be the provisional capital of his
Revolutionary Government, and convened a Congress to meet there on
September 15 in the church of Barasoain. [204] Fifty-four deputies
responded to the summons, and in conformity with Aguinaldo's
proclamation of June 23 they proceeded to elect a President of
Congress, Vice-President, Secretaries, etc. The result of the voting
was a remarkable event of the revolution. Don Pedro A. Paterno was
elected President of Congress! The man whom the revolutionists had,
less than four months before, so satirically admonished for his
leaning towards Spanish sovereignty, was chosen to guide the political
destinies of this budding democracy and preside over their republican
legislative body! Deputies Benito Legarda and Ocampo were chosen
to be Vice-President and Secretary respectively. Congress voted
for Aguinaldo a salary of P50,000 and P25,000 for representation
expenses. These figures were afterwards reversed, i.e., P25,000
salary, and P50,000 for expenses; but Aguinaldo, who never showed any
desire for personal gain, was quite willing to set aside the vote. A
decree in Congress, dated September 21, imposed compulsory military
service on every able-bodied Philippine male over 18 years of age,
except those holding office under the Revolutionary Government. At
an early session of Congress Deputy Tomas del Rosario made a long
speech advocating Church Disestablishment. [205]
The night before Congress met to announce the election of President,
etc., an attempt was made to poison Emilio Aguinaldo. Dinner was
about to be served to him; the soup was in the tureen, when one of
the three Spanish prisoners who were allowed to be about the kitchen
tasted the soup in a manner to arouse suspicion. The steward at once
took a spoonful of it and fell dead on the spot. The three prisoners
in question, as well as 11 Franciscan friars, were consequently placed
in close confinement. At the next sitting of Congress the incident
was mentioned and it was resolved to go _en masse_ to congratulate
Aguinaldo on his lucky escape. At 5 p.m. the same day a _Te Deum_
was sung in Malolos Church anent this occurrence.
On October 1 the _Ratification of Philippine Independence_ was
proclaimed at Malolos with imposing ceremony. From 6 a.m. the Manila
(Tondo) railway-station was besieged by the crowd of sightseers on
their way to the insurgent capital (Malolos), which was _en fête_ and
gaily decorated with flags for the triumphal entry of General Emilio
Aguinaldo, who walked to the Congress House attired in a dress suit,
with Don Pedro A. Paterno on his right and Don Benito Legarda on his
left, followed by other representative men of the Revolutionary Party,
amidst the vociferous acclamations of the people and the strains of
music. After the formal proclamation was issued the function terminated
with a banquet given to 200 insurgent notabilities. This day was
declared by the Malolos Congress to be a public holiday in perpetuity.
By virtue of Article 3 of the Protocol of Peace the Americans were
in possession of the city, bay, and harbour of Manila pending the
conclusion of a treaty of peace. The terms of peace were referred to
a Spanish-American Commission, which met in Paris on October 1, five
commissioners and a secretary being appointed by each of the High
Contracting Parties. The representatives of the United States were
the Hon. William R. Day, of Ohio, ex-Secretary of State, President
of the American Commission; Senator Cushman K. Davis, of Minnesota;
Senator William P. Frye, of Maine; Senator George Gray, of Delaware;
and the Hon. Whitelaw Reid, of New York, ex-Minister Plenipotentiary
of the United States in France, assisted by the Secretary and Counsel
to their Commission, Mr. John Bassett Moore, an eminent professor
of international law. The Spanish Commissioners were Don Eugenio
Montero Rios, Knight of the Golden Fleece, President of the Senate,
ex-Cabinet Minister, etc., President of the Spanish Commission;
Senator Don Buenaventura Abarzuza, ex-Ambassador, ex-Minister,
etc.; Don José de Garnica y Diaz, a lawyer; Don Wenceslao Ramirez de
Villa-Urrutia, Knight of the Orders of Isabella the Catholic and of
Charles III., etc., Minister Plenipotentiary to the Belgian Court;
and General Don Rafael Cerero y Saenz, assisted by the Secretary
to their Commission, Don Emilio de Ojeda, Minister Plenipotentiary
to the Court of Morocco. The conferences were held in a suite of
apartments at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, placed at their
disposal by M. Delcassé. Among other questions to be agreed upon
and embodied in the treaty was the future of the Philippines. For
Washington officials these Islands really constituted a _terra
incognita_. Maj.-General Merritt and a number of other officials went
to Paris to give evidence before the Commission. At their request,
conveyed to me through the American Embassy, I also proceeded to
Paris in October and expressed my views before the Commissioners, who
examined me on the whole question. The Cuban debts and the future of
the Philippines were really the knotty points in the entire debate. The
Spanish Commissioners argued (1) that the single article in the
Protocol relating to the Philippines did not imply a relinquishment
of Spanish sovereignty over those Islands, but only a temporary
occupation of the city, bay, and harbour of Manila by the Americans
pending the conclusion of a treaty of peace. (2) That the attack on
Manila, its capitulation, and all acts of force consequent thereon,
committed _after_ the Protocol was signed, were unlawful because the
Protocol stipulated an immediate cessation of hostilities; therefore
the Commissioners claimed indemnity for those acts, a restoration
to the _status quo ante_, and "the immediate delivery of the place
(Manila) to the Spanish Government" (_vide_ Annex to Protocol No. 12
of the Paris Peace Commission conference of November 3).
The American Commissioners replied: (1) "It is the contention on the
part of the United States that this article leaves to the determination
of the treaty of peace the entire subject of the future government and
sovereignty of the Philippines necessarily embodied in the terms used
in the Protocol." (2) It is erroneous to suggest "that the ultimate
demands of the United States in respect of the Philippines were
embodied in the Protocol." (3) That there was no cable communication
with Manila, hence the American commanders could not possibly have been
informed of the terms of the Protocol on the day of its signature. The
Spanish Commissioners, nevertheless, tenaciously persisting in their
contention, brought matters to the verge of a resumption of hostilities
when the American Commissioners presented what was practically an
ultimatum, in which they claimed an absolute cession of the Islands,
offering, however, to pay to Spain $20,000,000 gold, to agree, for a
term of years, to admit Spanish ships and merchandise into the Islands
on the same terms as American ships and merchandise, and to mutually
waive all claims for indemnity--(_vide_ Annex to Protocol No. 15 of
the Paris Peace Commission conference of November 21).
For a few days the Spaniards still held out, and to appease public
feeling in the Peninsula a fleet under Admiral Cámara was despatched,
ostensibly to the Philippines. It was probably never intended that
the fleet should go beyond Port Said, for on its arrival there it was
ordered to return, the official explanation to the indignant Spanish
public being that America was preparing to seize the Archipelago by
force, if necessary, and send a fleet to Spanish waters under the
command of Admiral Watson. Sagasta's Government had not the least
intention of letting matters go so far as that, but it suited the
Spanish Cabinet, already extremely unpopular, to make an appearance of
resistance. Moreover, Señor Sagasta had personal motives for wishing
to protract the negotiations, the examination of which would lead
one too far away from the present subject into Spanish politics.
At the next conference of the Commission the demands of the Americans
were reluctantly conceded, and the form in which the treaty was to
be drafted was finally settled. The sitting of the Commission was
terminated by the reading of a strongly-worded protest by Señor
Montero Rios in which the Spanish Commissioner declared that they
had been compelled to yield to brute force and abuse of international
law against which they vehemently protested. The secretaries of the
respective Commissions were then instructed to draw up the document of
the Treaty of Peace, which was signed at 9 p.m. on Saturday, December
10, 1898, in the Grand Gallery of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in
Paris. The expenses of the Spanish Commission amounted to £8,400. A
delay of six months was agreed upon for the ratification by the two
Governments of the treaty, the text of which is given at the end of
this chapter. America undertook to establish equal duties on Spanish
and American goods for a period of ten years; but it subsequently
transpired that this was no special boon to Spain, seeing that America
declared shortly after the signing of the treaty that there would be
no preferential tariff, and that merchandise of all nations could
enter the Islands at the same rate of duty and on equal terms with
America. The clauses of the treaty relating to the Philippines met
with determined opposition in the United States, where politicians
were divided into three parties advocating respectively annexation,
protection, and abandonment of the Islands to the natives.
At the closing conferences of the Commission several additional
clauses to the treaty were proposed by the one party and the other and
rejected. Among the most singular are the following:--The Spaniards
proposed that America should pay annually to the descendants of
Christopher Columbus $7,400 to be charged to the treasuries of Porto
Rico and Manila. The Americans proposed that Spain should concede
to them the right to land telegraph-cables in the Canary Islands,
or on any territory owned by Spain on the coast of Africa, or in
the Peninsula, in consideration of a cash payment of one million
gold dollars.
We must now go back to September to follow the thread of events
which intervened from that period and during the 71 days' sitting of
the Peace Commission in Paris. My old acquaintance Felipe Agoncillo
was sent to Washington in September by Emilio Aguinaldo to solicit
permission from the American Government to represent the rebels'
cause on the Paris Commission, or, failing this, to be allowed to
state their case. The Government, however, refused to recognize
him officially, so he proceeded to Paris. Having unsuccessfully
endeavoured to be heard before the Commission, he drew up a protest in
duplicate, handing a copy to the Spanish and another to the American
Commissioners. The purport of this document was that whereas the
Americans had supplied the Filipinos with war-material and arms to gain
their independence and not to fight against Spain in the interests
of America, and whereas America now insisted on claiming possession
of the Archipelago, he protested, in the name of Emilio Aguinaldo,
against what he considered a defraudment of his just rights. His
mission led to nothing, so he returned to Washington to watch events
for Aguinaldo. After the treaty was signed in Paris he was received
at the White House, where an opportunity was afforded him of stating
the Filipinos' views; but he did not take full advantage of it, and
returned to Paris, where I met him in July, 1900, holding the position
of "High Commissioner for the Philippine Republic." His policy was,
then, "absolute independence, free of all foreign control." In 1904
we met again in Hong-Kong, where he was established as a lawyer.
In this interval, too, matters in Manila remained _in statu quo_
so far as the American occupation was concerned. General E. S. Otis
was still in supreme command in succession to General Merritt,
and reinforcements were arriving from America to strengthen the
position. General Otis's able administration wrought a wonderful change
in the city. The weary, forlorn look of those who had great interests
at stake gradually wore off; business was as brisk as in the old times,
and the Custom-house was being worked with a promptitude hitherto
unknown in the Islands. There were no more sleepless nights, fearing
an attack from the dreaded rebel or the volunteer. The large majority
of foreign (including Spanish) and half-caste Manila merchants showed
a higher appreciation of American protection than of the prospect
of sovereign independence under a Philippine Republic. On the other
hand, the drunken brawls of the American soldiers in the cafes,
drinking-shops, and the open streets constituted a novelty in the
Colony. Drinking "saloons" and bars monopolized quite a fifth of
the stores in the principal shopping street, _La Escolta_, where
such unruliness obtained, to the detriment of American prestige,
that happily the Government decided to exclude those establishments
altogether from that important thoroughfare, which has since entirely
regained its respectable reputation. The innovation was all the more
unfortunate because of the extremely bad impression it made on the
natives and Spaniards, who are remarkably abstemious. It must also
have been the cause of a large percentage of the sickness of the
American troops (wrongly attributed to climate), for it is well known
that inebriety in the Philippines is the road to death. With three
distinct classes of soldiers in Manila--the Americans, the rebels,
and the Spanish prisoners--each living in suspense, awaiting events
with divergent interests, there were naturally frequent disputes
and collisions, sometimes of a serious nature, which needed great
vigilance to suppress.
The German trading community observed that, due to the strange conduct
of the commanders of the German fleet, who showed such partiality
towards the Spaniards up to the capitulation of Manila, the natives
treated them with marked reticence. The Germans therefore addressed
a more than ample letter of apology on the subject to the newspaper
_La Independencia_ (October 17).
As revolutionary steamers were again cruising in Philippine waters,
all vessels formerly flying the Spanish flag were hastily placed on the
American register to secure the protection of the Stars and Stripes,
and ex-Consul Oscar F. Williams was deputed to attend to these and
other matters connected with the shipping trade of the port.
It was yet theoretically possible that the Archipelago might revert
to Spain; hence pending the deliberations of the Peace Commission,
no movement was made on the part of the Americans to overthrow
the _de facto_ Spanish Government still subsisting in the southern
islands. General Fermin Jáudenes, the vanquished Commander-in-Chief
of the Spanish forces in Manila (Sub-Inspector until General Augusti
left), was liberated on parole in the capital until the first week
of October, when the American Government allowed him to return
to Spain. He left in the s.s. _Esmeralda_ for Hong-Kong on October
15. Meanwhile, a month before, the Spanish Government appointed General
Diego de los Rios Gov.-General of the Philippines, with residence at
Yloilo. Spaniards of all classes were at least personally safe in
Manila under American protection. All who could reach the capital
did so, for Spanish sway in the provinces was practically at an
end. Aguinaldo therefore directed his attention both to matters of
government in Luzon and to the control of the southern islands.
Neither the Filipinos nor the Spaniards could foresee that the
evacuation by the Spaniards of _all_ the Islands would be insisted upon
by the American Commissioners in Paris. Moreover, it was no easy task
for Aguinaldo to maintain his own personal prestige (an indispensable
condition in all revolutions), carry out his own plans of government,
and keep together, in inactivity, a large half-disciplined fighting
force. Three weeks after the capitulation of Manila, Aguinaldo sent
several small vessels to the Island of Panay, carrying Luzon rebels to
effect a landing and stir up rebellion in Visayas. He was anxious to
secure all the territory he could before the conditions of peace should
be settled in Paris, in the hope that actual possession would influence
the final issue. General Rios was therefore compelled to enter on a
new campaign, assisted by the small gunboats which had remained south
since hostilities commenced north in May. Spanish troops were sent
to Singapore _en route_for Yloilo, and then a question arose between
Madrid and Washington as to whether they could be allowed to proceed
to their destination under the peace Protocol. The Tagálog rebels
landed in the province of Antique (Panay Is.), and a few natives of the
locality joined them. They were shortly met by the Spanish troops, and
severe fighting took place in the neighbourhood of Bugáson, where the
rebels were ultimately routed with great loss of men and impedimenta.
The survivors fled to their vessels and landed elsewhere on the same
coast. In several places on the Island the flag of rebellion had been
unfurled, and General Rios' troops showed them no quarter. At the
end of six weeks the rebels had been beaten in numerous encounters,
without the least apparent chance of gaining their objective point--the
seizure of Yloilo. In the Concepcion district (East Panay) the rebel
chief Perfecto Poblado took the command, but gained no victory with
his following of 4,000 men. So far, what was happening in the Islands,
other than Luzon, did not officially concern the Americans.
About this time, in Manila, there was by no means that _entente
cordiale_ which should have existed between the rebels and the
Americans, supposing them to be real allies. In reality, it was only in
the minds of the insurgents that there existed an alliance, which the
Americans could not, with good grace, have frankly repudiated, seeing
that General T. M. Anderson was frequently soliciting Aguinaldo's
assistance and co-operation. [206] Aguinaldo was naturally uneasy about
the possible prospect of a protracted struggle with the Spaniards,
if the Islands should revert to them; he was none the less irritated
because his repeated edicts and proclamations of independence received
no recognition from the Americans. General Anderson had already stated,
in his reply (July 22) to a letter from Aguinaldo, that he had no
authority to recognize Aguinaldo's assumption of dictatorship. The
native swaggering soldiery, with the air of conquerors, were ever
ready to rush to arms on the most trivial pretext, and became a
growing menace to the peaceful inhabitants. Therefore, on October 25,
Aguinaldo was again ordered to withdraw his troops still farther,
to distances varying from five to eight miles off Manila, and he
reluctantly complied. When this order was sent to him his forces
in the neighbourhood of Manila were estimated to be as follows:--At
Coloocan, 3,000 men, with two guns trained on Binondo; Santa Mesa,
380; Pasig, 400; Paco, Santa Ana, Pandácan, and Pasay, 400 to 500
each; south of Malate, 1,200, and at Santólan waterworks (on which
the supply of potable water to the capital depended), 380.
In Panay Island General Rios published an edict offering considerable
reforms, but the flame of rebellion was too widespread for it to
have any effect. The Island of Cebú also was in revolt; the harsh
measures of General Montero effected nothing to Spain's advantage,
whilst that miserable system of treating suspects as proved culprits
created rebels. Neither did the _Moro_ raid on the Cebuános, referred
to at p. 406, serve to break their spirit; more than half the villages
defied Spanish authority, refused to pay taxes, and forced the friars
to take refuge in Cebú City, which was, so far, safe. Those who were
able took passage to ports outside the Archipelago. In Leyte Island
there were risings of minor importance, instigated by Tagálogs, and
chiefly directed against the friars, who were everywhere obnoxious
to the people. At Catbalogan (Sámar Is.) an armed mob attacked the
Spaniards, who fled to the house of an American. General Rios had not
sufficient troops to dominate several islands covering such a large
area. He was so hard pressed in Panay alone that, even if he had had
ample means of transport, he could neither divide his forces nor afford
to spend time in carrying them from one island to another. Towards
the end of October he ran short of ammunition, but, opportunely,
the Spanish mail-steamer _Buenos Aires_ brought him a supply with
which he could continue the struggle. Fresh Tagálog expeditions were
meanwhile sent south, and coerced or persuaded the Panay people to
rise in greater force than ever, until, finally, General Rios had to
fall back on Yloilo. By the middle of November practically the whole
island, except the towns of Yloilo, Molo, Jaro and La Paz, was under
rebel dominion. In December General Rios held only the town and port
of Yloilo. He had ordered the bridge of Manduriao to be destroyed, so
as to establish a dividing line between him and the rebels who were
entrenched on the opposite bank of the river, neither party being
willing to make a bold onslaught on the other, although frequent
skirmishing took place. On receipt of the news of the conclusion of
the Treaty of Paris, General Rios proposed to the rebels a mutual
cessation of hostilities, on the ground that no advantage could
accrue to either party by a further sacrifice of blood and munitions
of war, seeing that within a few days he was going to evacuate the
town and embark his troops, and that, so far as he was concerned,
they could then take his place without opposition. But the rebels,
presumably interpreting his humane suggestion as a sign of weakness,
continued to fire on the Spanish troops.
The small detachments and garrisons in Negros Island had been unable
to resist the tide of revolt; the west coast of that island was
over-run by the rebels under the leadership of Aniceto Lacson and
Juan Araneta (a much respected planter of Bago, personally known to
me), and the local Spanish Governor, Don Isidro Castro, was forced to
capitulate, in due written form, at Bacólod, on November 6, with his
troops and all the Spanish civil and military employees. By December
1 it was evident that, although Spanish empire in Visayas had been
definitely broken, there was absolute discord among the (southern)
rebels themselves. They split up into rival factions, each one wanting
to set up a government of its own. The American Peace Commissioners
had made their formal demand for the cession of all the Islands,
and it was clear to the Spanish Government that General Rios would
sooner or later have to evacuate under the treaty. It was useless,
therefore, to continue to shed European blood and waste treasure in
those regions. In the first week of December the Madrid Government
ordered General Rios to suspend hostilities and retire to Mindanao
Island with his troops, pending arrangements for their return to
the Peninsula. General Rios replied to this order, saying that he
would make the necessary preparations. Meanwhile, on December 11,
the rebels approached the fortifications around Yloilo town, and the
Spaniards kept up an almost continuous fusillade. Before daybreak on
December 14 the rebels, armed with bowie-knives, attacked the Spanish
entrenchments in great force and drove the Spaniards back from their
first to their second redoubt. The Spaniards rallied, turned their four
field-pieces on the enemy, and opened a raking artillery and rifle fire
which mowed down the rebels, who retired in great disorder, leaving
about 500 dead and wounded. The Spaniards, who were well protected
behind their stockades, had 6 dead and 17 wounded. Notwithstanding
their severe repulse, the rebels again fired on the Spaniards until
some female relations of their General Araneta and others went out to
the rebel lines and harangued and expostulated with the leaders, and
so put them to shame with their tongues that thenceforth the rebels
ceased to molest the Spaniards. General Rios then took measures for
evacution. On December 23, 1898, he formally handed over Yloilo to the
mayor of the town in the presence of his staff, the naval commanders,
and the foreign consuls, and requested the German Vice-Consul to look
after Spanish interests. On the following day the Spanish troops,
numbering between five and six hundred, and several civilians were
embarked in perfect order, without any unfortunate incident occurring,
on board the s.s. _Isla de Luzon,_ which sailed for Zamboanga, the
rallying-place of the Spaniards, whilst some small steamers went to
other places to bring the officials to the same centre.
Before leaving Yloilo, after many tedious delays respecting the
conditions, an exchange of prisoners was effected with the rebels,
who at the outset were inclined to be unduly exacting.
The rebels at once took possession of Yloilo, but a controlling
American force arrived in the roadstead on December 27, under the
command of General Miller, and was afterwards reinforced up to a
total strength of about 3,000 troops.
The Caroline Islands (which were not ceded under the Treaty of
Paris) were provisioned for three months, and the Spanish troops in
Cebú Island and Ylígan (Mindanao Is.) had been already ordered to
concentrate and prepare for embarkation on the same day for Zamboanga
(Mindanao Is.), where the bulk of them remained until they could be
brought back to Spain on the terms of the treaty of peace. In a few
days General Rios left Zamboanga in the s.s. _Leon XIII._ for Manila,
and remained there until June 3, 1899, to endeavour to negotiate
the liberation of the Spanish prisoners detained by Aguinaldo. They
were kept under guard in the mountain districts, far away from the
capital, in groups miles distant from each other. No one outside
the rebel camp could ever ascertain the exact number of prisoners,
which was kept secret. The strenuous efforts made by the Spaniards
to secure their release are fully referred to in Chap. xxvi.
During this period of evacuation the natives in Balábac Island
assassinated all the male Europeans resident there, the Spanish
Governor, a lieutenant, and a doctor being among the victims. The
European women were held in captivity for awhile, notwithstanding
the peaceful endeavours to obtain their release, supported by the
Datto Harun Narrasid, Sultan of Paragua and ex-Sultan of Sulu (_vide_
p. 142). The place was then attacked by an armed force, without result,
but eventually the natives allowed the women to be taken away.
Some of the Spanish soldiers and the civil servants concentrated in
Zamboanga were carried direct to the Peninsula, _viá_ the Straits
of Balábac, in the steamers _Buenos Aires, Isla de Luzon_, and
_Cachemir_, and from Manila many of them returned to their country in
the s.s. _Leon XIII_. In conformity with the Treaty of Paris (Art. 5),
little by little all the Spanish troops, temporarily prisoners of
the United States in Manila, were repatriated.
The Philippine Republican Congress at Malolos had now (December 26,
1898) adjourned in great confusion. The deputies could not agree upon
the terms of a Republican Constitution. They were already divided
into two distinct parties, the Pacificos and the Irreconcilables. The
latter were headed by a certain Apolinario Mabini (_vide_ p. 546),
a lawyer hitherto unknown, and a notorious opponent of Aguinaldo
until he decided to take the field against the Americans. The Cabinet
having resigned, Aguinaldo prudently left Malolos on a visit to Pedro
A. Paterno, at Santa Ana, on the Pasig River.
At the end of the year 1898, after 327 years of sovereignty, all that
remained to Spain of her once splendid Far Eastern colonial possessions
were the Caroline, the Pelew, and the Ladrone Islands (_vide_ p. 39),
minus the Island of Guam. Under the treaty of peace, signed in Paris,
the Americans became nominal owners of the evacuated territories,
but they were only in real possession, by force of arms, of Cavite
and Manila. The rest of the Archipelago, excepting Mindanao and the
Sulu Sultanate, was virtually and forcibly held by the natives in
revolt. At the close of 1898 the Americans and the rebels had become
rival parties, and the differences between them foreboded either
frightful bloodshed or the humiliation of the one or the other.
Treaty of Peace
concluded between the United States of America and Spain, signed
in Paris on December 10, 1898, and ratified in Washington on
February 6, 1899. The original documents (in duplicate) are drawn
up in Spanish and in English respectively.
_The English Text_} [207]
_Article_ 1.--Spain relinquishes all claim of sovereignty over
and title to Cuba. And as the Island is, upon its evacuation by
Spain, to be occupied by the United States, the United States will,
so long as such occupation shall last, assume and discharge the
obligations that may under international law result from the fact
of its occupation, for the protection of life and property.
_Article_ 2.--Spain cedes to the United States the Island of Porto
Rico and other islands now under Spanish sovereignty in the West
Indies, and the Island of Guam in the Marianas or Ladrones.
_Article_ 3.--Spain cedes to the United States the archipelago
known as the Philippine Islands, and comprehending the islands
lying within the following line: A line running from W. to
E. along or near the 20th parallel of N. latitude, and through
the middle of the navigable channel of Bachi, from the 118th to
the 127th degree meridian of longitude E. of Greenwich, thence
along the 127th degree meridian of longitude E. of Greenwich to
the parallel of 4° 45' N. latitude, thence along the parallel
of 4° 45' N. latitude to its intersection with the meridian of
longitude 119° 35' E. of Greenwich, thence along the meridian of
longitude 119° 35' E. of Greenwich to the parallel of latitude 7°
40' N., thence along the parallel of latitude of 7° 40' N. to its
intersection with the 116th degree meridian of longitude E. of
Greenwich, thence by a direct line to the intersection of the 10th
degree parallel of N. latitude with the 118th degree meridian
of longitude E. of Greenwich, and thence along the 118th degree
meridian of longitude E. of Greenwich to the point of beginning.
The United States will pay to Spain the sum of $.20,000,000
within three months after the exchange of the ratifications of
the present treaty.
_Article_ 4.--The United States will, for the term of 10 years
from the date of the exchange of the ratifications of the present
treaty, admit Spanish ships and merchandise to the ports of the
Philippine Islands on the same terms as ships and merchandise of
the United States.
_Article_ 5.--The United States will, upon the signature of the
present treaty, send back to Spain, at its own cost, the Spanish
soldiers taken as prisoners of war on the capture of Manila by
the American forces. The arms of the soldiers in question shall
be restored to them.
Spain will, upon the exchange of the ratification of the present
treaty, proceed to evacuate the Philippines, as well as the
Island of Guam, on terms similiar to those agreed upon by the
Commissioners appointed to arrange for the evacuation of Porto
Rico and other islands in the West Indies, under the Protocol of
August 12, 1898, which is to continue in force till its provisions
are completely executed.
The time within which the evacuation of the Philippine
Islands and Guam shall be completed shall be fixed by the two
Governments. Stands of colours, uncaptured war-vessels, small arms,
guns of all calibres, with their carriages and accessories, powder,
ammunition, live-stock, and materials and supplies of all kinds,
belonging to the land and naval forces of Spain in the Philippines
and Guam, remain the property of Spain. Pieces of heavy ordnance,
exclusive of field artillery, in the fortifications and coast
defences, shall remain in their emplacements for the term of six
months, to be reckoned from the exchange of ratifications of the
treaty; and the United States may, in the meantime, purchase such
material from Spain, if a satisfactory agreement between the two
Governments on the subject shall be reached.
_Article_ 6.--Spain will, upon the signature of the present
treaty, release all prisoners of war, and all persons detained
or imprisoned for political offences in connection with the
insurrections in Cuba and the Philippines and the war with the
United States.
Reciprocally, the United States will release all persons made
prisoners of war by the American forces, and will undertake to
obtain the release of all Spanish prisoners in the hands of the
insurgents in Cuba and the Philippines.
The Government of the United States will at its own cost return to
Spain and the Government of Spain will at its own cost return to
the United States, Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines, according
to the situation of their respective homes, prisoners released
or caused to be released by them, respectively, under this article.
_Article_ 7.--The United States and Spain mutually relinquish all
claims for indemnity, national and individual, of every kind,
of either Government, or of its citizens or subjects, against
the other Government, that may have arisen since the beginning
of the late insurrection in Cuba and prior to the exchange of
ratifications of the present treaty, including all claims for
indemnity for the cost of the war.
The United States will adjudicate and settle the claims of its
citizens against Spain relinquished in this article.
_Article_ 8.--In conformity with the provisions of Articles 1,
2 and 3 of this treaty, Spain relinquishes in Cuba, and cedes in
Porto Rico and other islands in the West Indies, in the Island
of Guam, and in the Philippine Archipelago, all the buildings,
wharves, barracks, forts, structures, public highways and other
immovable property which, in conformity with law, belong to the
public domain, and as such belong to the Crown of Spain.
And it is hereby declared that the relinquishment or cession,
as the case may be, to which the preceding paragraph refers,
cannot in any respect impair the property or rights which by
law belong to the peaceful possession of property of all kinds,
of provinces, municipalities, public or private establishments,
ecclesiastical or civic bodies, or any other associations having
legal capacity to acquire and possess property in the aforesaid
territories renounced or ceded, or of private individuals, of
whatsoever nationality such individuals may be.
The aforesaid relinquishment or cession, as the case may be,
includes all documents exclusively referring to the sovereignty
relinquished or ceded that may exist in the archives of the
Peninsula. Where any document in such archives only in part relates
to said sovereignty, a copy of such part will be furnished whenever
it shall be requested. Like rules shall be reciprocally observed
in favour of Spain in respect of documents in the archives of
the islands above referred to.
In the aforesaid relinquishment or cession, as the case may be,
are also included such rights as the Crown of Spain and its
authorities possess in respect of the official archives and
records, executive as well as judicial, in the islands above
referred to, which relate to the said islands or the rights and
property of their inhabitants. Such archives and records shall be
carefully preserved, and private persons shall without distinction
have the right to require, in accordance with law, authenticated
copies of the contracts, wills and other instruments forming part
of notarial protocols or files, or which may be contained in the
executive or judicial archives, be the latter in Spain or in the
islands aforesaid.
_Article_ 9.--Spanish subjects, natives of the Peninsula,
residing in the territory over which Spain by the present
treaty relinquishes or cedes her sovereignty, may remain in such
territory, or may remove therefrom, retaining in either event all
their rights of property, including the right to sell or dispose
of such property or of its proceeds; and they shall also have
the right to carry on their industry, commerce and professions,
being subject in respect thereof to such laws as are applicable to
other foreigners. In case they remain in the territory they may
preserve their allegiance to the Crown of Spain by making before
a court of record, within a year from the date of the exchange
of ratifications of this treaty, a declaration of their decision
to preserve such allegiance; in default of which declaration
they shall be held to have renounced it and to have adopted the
nationality of the territory in which they may reside.
The civil rights and political status of the native inhabitants
of the territories hereby ceded to the United States shall be
determined by the Congress.
_Article_ 10.--The inhabitants of the territories over which
Spain relinquishes or cedes her sovereignty shall be secured in
the free exercise of their religion.
_Article_ 11.--The Spaniards residing in the territories over
which Spain by this treaty cedes or relinquishes her sovereignty
shall be subject in matters civil as well as criminal to the
jurisdiction of the courts of the country wherein they reside,
pursuant to the ordinary laws governing the same; and they shall
have the right to appear before such courts, and to pursue the
same course as citizens of the country to which the courts belong.
_Article_ 12.--Judicial proceedings pending at the time of the
exchange of ratifications of this treaty in the territories
over which Spain relinquishes or cedes her sovereignty shall
be determined according to the following rules: (1) Judgements
rendered either in civil suits between private individuals, or in
criminal matters, before the date mentioned, and with respect to
which there is no recourse, or right of review under the Spanish
law, shall be deemed to be final, and shall be executed in due
form by competent authority in the territory within which such
judgements shall be carried out: (2) Civil suits between private
individuals which may on the date mentioned be undetermined shall
be prosecuted to judgement before the court in which they may
then be pending or in the court that may be substituted therefor:
(3) Criminal actions pending on the date mentioned before the
Supreme Court of Spain, against citizens of the territory which
by this treaty ceases to be Spanish, shall continue under its
jurisdiction until final judgement; but, such judgement having
been rendered, the execution thereof shall be committed to the
competent authority of the place in which the case arose.
_Article_ 13.--The rights of property secured by copyrights and
patents acquired by Spaniards in the Island of Cuba and in Porto
Rico, the Philippines and other ceded territories, at the time of
the exchange of the ratifications of this treaty, shall continue
to be respected. Spanish scientific, literary and artistic works,
not subversive of public order in the territories in question,
shall continue to be admitted free of duty into such territories,
for the period of ten years, to be reckoned from the date of the
exchange of the ratifications of this treaty.
_Article_ 14.--Spain will have the power to establish Consular
officers in the ports and places of the territories, the
sovereignty over which has been either relinquished or ceded by
the present treaty.
_Article_ 15.--The Government of each country will, for the term
of ten years, accord to the merchant vessels of the other country
the same treatment in respect of all port charges, including
entrance and clearance dues, light dues, and tonnage duties,
as it accords to its own merchant vessels, not engaged in the
coastwise trade. This article may at any time be terminated on
six months' notice given by either Government to the other.
_Article_ 16.--It is understood that any obligations assumed
in this treaty by the United States with respect to Cuba are
limited to the time of its occupancy thereof; but it will,
upon the termination of such occupancy, advise any Government
established in the Island to assume the same obligations.
_Article_ 17.--The present treaty shall be ratified by the
President of the United States, by and with the advice and consent
of the Senate thereof, and by Her Majesty the Queen-Regent of
Spain; and the ratifications shall be exchanged at Washington
within six months from the date hereof, or earlier if possible.
In faith whereof, we, the respective Plenipotentiaries, have
signed this treaty and have hereunto affixed our seals.
Done in duplicate at Paris, the 10th day of December, in the year
of our Lord 1898.
_William R. Day_.
_Cushman K. Davis_.
_William P. Frye_.
_Geo. Gray_.
_Whitelaw Reid_.
_Eugenio Montero Rios_.
_B. de Abarzuza_.
_J. de Garnica_.
_W. R. de Villa-Urrutia_.
_Rafael Cerero_.
Two years afterwards a supplementary treaty was made between the
United States and Spain, whereby the Islands of Cagayán de Joló,
Sibutu, and other islets not comprised in the demarcation set forth
in the Treaty of Paris, were ceded to the United States for the sum
of $100,000 gold. These small islands had, apparently, been overlooked
when the Treaty of Paris was concluded.
CHAPTER XXIV
An Outline of the War of Independence, Period 1899-1901
"I speak not of forcible annexation because that is not to be
thought of, and under our code of morality that would be criminal
aggression."--_President McKinley's Message to Congress_; _December_,
1897.
"The Philippines are ours as much as Louisiana by purchase, or Texas
or Alaska."--_President McKinley's Speech to the 10th Pennsylvania
Regiment; August_ 28, 1899.
_Ignorance_ of the world's ways, beyond the Philippine shores,
was the cause of the Aguinaldo party's first disappointment. A
score of pamphlets has been published to show how thoroughly the
Filipinos believed America's mission to these Islands to be solely
prompted by a compassionate desire to aid them in their struggle
for immediate sovereign independence. Laudatory and congratulatory
speeches, uttered in British colonies, in the presence of American
officials, and hope-inspiring expressions which fell from their lips
before Aguinaldo's return to Cavite from exile, strengthened that
conviction. Sympathetic avowals and grandiloquent phrases, such as
"for the sake of humanity," and "the cause of civilization," which were
so freely bandied about at the time by unauthorized Americans, drew
Aguinaldo into the error of believing that some sort of bond really
existed between the United States and the Philippine Revolutionary
Party. In truth, there was no agreement between America and the
Filipinos. There was no American plenipotentiary empowered to make
any political compact with the Islanders. At that date there was
neither a Philippine policy nor any fixed programme regarding the
future disposal of the Islands, and whatever naval, military, or other
officers might have said to Aguinaldo was said on their own private
responsibility, and could in no way affect the action of the American
Government. Without any training in or natural bent for diplomacy,
Aguinaldo had not the faintest idea of what foreign "protection"
signified. He thought that after the capture of Manila the Americans
would sail away and leave the Filipinos to themselves, and only
reappear if any other Power interfered with their native government.
Admiral Dewey had a double task to perform. He had to destroy the
Spanish fleet, and to co-operate in the taking of Manila. In the
destruction of the fleet the attitude of the natives was of little
concern to him. In the taking of the capital it was important to know
what part the natives would play. It was certain they would not be
placid spectators of the struggle, wherever Aguinaldo might be. If
they _must_ enter into it, it was desirable to have them led by one who
could control them and repress excesses. It would have been better for
the Americans if, pending the issue with the Spaniards, no third party
had existed; but, as it did exist, both contending nations were anxious
for its goodwill or its control. Therefore Admiral Dewey's recognition
of Aguinaldo as a factor in the hostilities was nothing more nor
less than a legitimate stratagem to facilitate his operations against
the Spaniards. Dewey simply neutralized a possible adverse force by
admissible military artifice, and Aguinaldo was too ingenuous to see
that he was being outwitted. The fighting section of the Filipinos
was intensely irritated at not having been allowed to enter and sack
the capital. They had looked forward to it as the crowning act of
victory. The general mass of the christianized Islanders hoped that
Philippine independence would immediately follow the capitulation
of Manila, although, in the capital itself, natives of position
and property evinced little enthusiasm for the insurgents' triumph,
whilst some inwardly doubted it. In September a native lawyer, Felipe
Agoncillo, was sent to Washington to lay the Filipinos' case before the
President in the hope of gaining his personal support of their claims
(_vide_ p. 472). The first fear was that the Colony might revert to
Spain, but that idea was soon dispelled by the news of the stipulations
of the Treaty of Paris. Simultaneously Aguinaldo's revolutionary army
was being pushed farther and farther away from the capital, and it
was evident, from the mood of his fighting-men, that if the Americans
remained in possession of the Colony, hostilities, sooner or later,
must break out. The Americans officially ignored the Aguinaldo party as
a factor in public affairs, but they were not unaware of the warlike
preparations being made. Secret anti-American meetings were held at
places called clubs, where it was agreed to attack simultaneously
the Americans inside and outside the capital. General Pio del Pilar
slept in the city every night, ready to give the rocket-signal for
revolt. Natives between 18 and 40 years of age were being recruited
for military service, according to a Malolos Government decree
dated September 21, 1898. In every smithy and factory bowie-knives
were being forged with all speed, and 10,000 men were already armed
with them. General E. S. Otis was willing to confer with Aguinaldo,
and six sessions were held, the last taking place on January 29, six
days before the outbreak. Nothing resulted from these conferences, the
Americans alleging that Aguinaldo would make no definite statement of
his people's aims, whilst the Filipinos declare that their intentions
were so well understood by the American general that he would listen
to nothing short of unconditional submission.
The following manifesto, dated January 5, signed by Emilio Aguinaldo,
clearly shows the attitude of the Revolutionary Party at this period:--
_To My Brethren the Filipinos, and to All the Respected Consuls
and Other Foreigners_:--
General Otis styles himself Military Governor of these Islands,
and I protest one and a thousand times and with all the energy of
my soul against such authority. I proclaim solemnly that I have
not recognized either in Singapore or in Hong-Kong or in the
Philippines, by word or in writing, the sovereignty of America
over this beloved soil. On the contrary, I say that I returned to
these Islands on an American warship on the 19th of May last for
the express purpose of making war on the Spaniards to regain our
liberty and independence. I stated this in my proclamation of the
24th of May last, and I published it in my Manifesto addressed to
the Philippine people on the 12th of June. Lastly, all this was
confirmed by the American General Merritt himself, predecessor
of General Otis, in his Manifesto to the Philippine people some
days before he demanded the surrender of Manila from the Spanish
General Jaúdenes. In that Manifesto it is distinctly stated that
the naval and field forces of the United States had come to give
us our liberty, by subverting the bad Spanish Government. And I
hereby protest against this unexpected act of the United States
claiming sovereignty over these Islands. My relations with the
American authorities prove undeniably that the United States did
not bring me over here from Hong-Kong to make war on the Spaniards
for their benefit, but for the purpose of our own liberty and
independence. . . .
_Emilio Aguinaldo_.
Aguinaldo having been successively Dictator and President of the
Revolutionary Government (_vide_ p. 448), now assumed the new title of
President of the _Philippine Republic_, the Articles of Constitution
of which (drawn up by his Prime Minister Apolinario Mabini) were
dated January 21, 1899, and promulgated by him on the following
day. In due course the news came that the date of voting in the
Senate for or against the retention of the Islands was fixed. The
Americans already in the Colony were practically unanimous in their
desire for its retention, and every effort was made by them to that
end. The question of the treaty ratification was warmly discussed
in Washington. A week before the vote was taken it was doubtful
whether the necessary two-thirds majority could be obtained. It was
a remarkable coincidence that just when the Republican Party was
straining every nerve to secure the two or three wavering votes, the
first shots were exchanged between a native and an American outpost
in the suburbs of the capital. Each side accuses the other of having
precipitated hostilities. However that may be, this event took place
precisely at a date when the news of it in Washington served to secure
the votes of the hesitating senators in favour of retention. [208]
The provocative demeanour of the insurgents at the outposts was
such that a rupture was inevitable sooner or later, and if a Senate
vote of abandonment had come simultaneously with insurrection, the
situation would have been extremely complicated; it would have been
difficult for the Oriental not to have believed that the invader
was nervously beating a retreat. The Nebraska Regiment was at Santa
Mesa, guarding its front. Americans were frequently insulted, called
cowards, and openly menaced by the insurgents. In the evening of
Saturday, February 4, 1899, an insurgent officer came with a detail
of men and attempted to force his way past the sentinel on the San
Juan bridge. About nine o'clock a large body of rebels advanced on
the South Dakota Regiment's outposts, and to avoid the necessity
of firing, for obvious reasons, the picquets fell back. For several
nights a certain insurgent lieutenant had tried to pass the Nebraska
lines. At length he approached a sentinel, who called "halt" three
times without response, and then shot the lieutenant dead. Several
insurgents then fired and retreated; rockets were at once sent up by
the Filipinos, and firing started all along the line, from Caloocan
to Santa Mesa. By ten o'clock the Filipinos concentrated at Caloocan,
Santa Mesa, and Gagalanging, whence they opened a simultaneous, but
ineffectual, fusillade, supplemented by two siege guns at Balichalic
and a skirmishing attack from Pandacan and Paco. Desperate fighting
continued throughout the night; the Filipinos, driven back from every
post with heavy loss, rallied the next morning at Paco, where they
occupied the parish church, to which many non-combatant refugees
had fled. The American warships, co-operating with their batteries,
poured a terrific fire on the church, and kept up a continuous attack
on the insurgent position at Caloocan, where General Aguinaldo was in
command. At daylight the Americans made a general advance towards Paco
and Santa Ana. At the former place the Filipinos resisted desperately;
the church, sheltering refugees and insurgents, was completely
demolished; [209] the Filipinos' loss amounted to about 4,000 killed
and wounded, whilst the Americans lost about 175 killed and wounded. It
is estimated that the approximate number of troops engaged in this
encounter was 13,000 Americans and 20,000 Filipinos. The insurgents
at Santa Ana, the survivors of the Paco defeat, and the force which
had to abandon the Santólan water-works, where they left behind them
a howitzer, all concentrated at Caloocan. The insurgent and American
lines formed a semicircle some 15 miles in extent, making it impossible
to give a comprehensive description of the numerous small engagements.
Immediately the news of the rupture reached Washington the Philippine
Envoy, Felipe Agoncillo, fled to Montreal, Canada, in a great
hurry, leaving his luggage behind. No one was troubling him, and
there was not the least need for such a precipitate flight from a
country where civilized international usages obtain. On February 5
an engagement took place at Gagalanging, where the natives collected
in the hundreds of bungalows around that village awaiting the advance
of the Oregon Regiment. Amongst the spectators was the German Prince
Ludwig von Löwenstein. The Americans continued advancing and firing,
when suddenly the prince ran across an open space and took shelter in
a hut which he must have known would be attacked by the Oregons. The
order was given to fire into the native dwellings giving cover to
the insurgents, and the prince's dead body was subsequently found
perforated by a bullet. In his pocket he carried a pass issued by
Aguinaldo conceding to the bearer permission to go anywhere within
the insurgent lines, and stating that he was a sympathizer with their
cause. It was noticed that the prince several times deliberately threw
himself into danger. No one could ascertain exactly in what capacity
he found himself near the fighting-line. Less than two years previously
he had married the daughter of an English earl, and the popular belief
was that, for private reasons, he intentionally courted death.
The rebels were repulsed at every point with great loss. Lines of smoke
from the burning villages marked the direction taken by the Americans
advancing under the leadership of Generals Otis, Wheaton, Hale,
and Hall. An immense amount of impedimenta in the shape of pontoons,
telegraph posts and wires, ammunition, and provisions followed the
infantry in perfect order. On the line taken by the troops many
native householders hoisted white flags to indicate their peaceful
intentions. Ambulances were frequently seen coming in with the wounded
Americans and Filipinos, and among them was brought the chief of an
Igorrote tribe with a broken thigh. His tribe, who had been persuaded
by Aguinaldo to bring their bows and arrows to co-operate with him,
were placed in the front and suffered great slaughter. In hospital
the Igorrote chief spoke with much bitterness of how he had been
deceived, and vowed vengeance against the Tagálogs. The next day
at Caloocan the rebels made a determined stand, but were driven out
of the place by 10-inch shells fired from the _Monadnock_ over the
American lines. General Hall occupied Santólan and the pumping-station
there and repelled the repeated attacks made on his column. General
McArthur with a flying column cleared the surrounding district of the
enemy, but owing to the roughness of the country he was unable to
pursue them. Aguinaldo was therefore able to escape north with his
army, reinforced by native troops who had been trained in Spanish
service. There was also a concentration of about 2,500 natives from
the southern Luzon provinces. The insurgents had cut trenches at
almost every mile along the route north. In the several skirmishes
which took place on March 25 the Americans lost one captain and 25 men
killed and eight officers and 142 men wounded. The next day there was
some hard fighting around Polo and Novaliches, where the insurgents
held out for six hours against General McArthur's three brigades of
cavalry and artillery. After the defeat at Paco, Aguinaldo moved
on to the town of Malabon, which was shelled; the enemy therefore
immediately evacuated that place in great confusion, after setting
fire to the buildings. Over 1,000 men, women, and children hastened
across the low, swampy lands carrying their household goods and their
fighting-cocks; it was indeed a curious spectacle. General Wheaton's
brigade captured Malinta, and the insurgents fled panic-stricken after
having suffered severely. The American loss was small in numbers,
but Colonel Egbert, of the 22nd Infantry, was mortally wounded whilst
leading a charge. As he lay on the litter in the midst of the fight
General Wheaton cheered him with the words, "Nobly done, Egbert!" to
which the dying colonel replied, "Good-bye, General; I'm done; I'm
too old," and at once expired.
In March the natives tried to burn down one of the busiest Manila
suburbs. At 8 o'clock one evening they set fire to the Chinese
quarters in Santa Cruz, and the breeze rapidly wafted the flames. The
conflagration lasted four hours. The English Fire-Brigade turned out
to quench it. Hundreds of Chinese laden with chattels hurried to and
fro about the streets; natives rushed hither and thither frantically
trying to keep the fire going whilst the whites were endeavouring
to extinguish it; and with the confusion of European and Oriental
tongues the place was a perfect pandemonium. General Hughes was
at the head of the police, but the surging mob pressed forward and
cut the hose five times. With fixed bayonets the troops partially
succeeded in holding back the swelling crowd. The electric wires got
out of working order, and the city was lighted only by the glare of
the flaming buildings. Bullets were flying in all directions about
Tondo and Binondo. The intense excitement was intentionally sustained
by batches of natives who rushed hither and thither with hideous
yells to inspire a feeling of terror. Many families, fearing that the
insurgents had broken through the American lines and entered the city
_en masse_, frantically fled from the hotels and houses. Incessant
bugle-calls from the natives added to the commotion, and thousands
of Chinese crowded into the Chinese Consulate. Finally the rioters
were driven back, and a cordon of troops assured the safety of the
capital. Sharp engagements simultaneously took place at the Chinese
cemetery and at San Pedro Macatí. Bands of insurgents were arrested
in Tondo. A group of 60 was captured escorting two cartloads of arms
and ammunition to a house. Business was almost entirely suspended,
and a general order was issued by the Military Governor commanding
all civilians to remain in their houses after 7 p.m. This hour was
gradually extended to 8 o'clock, then 9 o'clock, and finally to
midnight, as circumstances permitted. An edict was posted up fixing
the penalties for incendiarism. During two days smoke hovered around
the neighbourhood, and the appearance of Manila from the bay was that
of a smouldering city.
In the fighting up country, one of the greatest difficulties for the
Americans was that the insurgents would not concentrate and have a
decisive contest. They would fire a few volleys from cover and retreat
to other cover, repeating these harassing, but inconclusive, tactics
over many miles of ground. On their march the Americans had to fight
a hidden foe who slipped from trench to trench, or found safety in
the woods. Sometimes a trenchful of the enemy would fire a volley and
half of them disappear through gullies leading to other cover. The
next point of importance to be reached was Malalos, and on the way
some thirty villages had to be passed. Besides the volleys delivered
by hidden insurgents all along the line, a hard-fought battle took
place on March 28 under the personal direction of General Aguinaldo,
who concentrated about 5,000 men near Marilao. Aguinaldo directed
the movements without appearing on the field; indeed it is doubtful
whether, during this war, he ever led his troops into action. General
McArthur's division had halted at Meycauayan the previous night,
and in the morning advanced north in conjunction with General Hale's
brigade, which took the right, whilst General Otis led his troops
to the left of the railroad, General Wheaton's brigade being held in
reserve. After a three-mile march these forces fell in with the enemy,
who opened fire from trenches and thickets; but General Otis's troops
charged them gallantly and drove them back across the river. There the
insurgents rallied, relying upon the splendid trenches which they had
dug. The battle raged for three hours, the combatants being finally
within fifty yards of each other. Eventually the American artillery
came into play, when the advanced works of the insurgent defences were
literally pulverized and the general rout of the enemy began. They
retreated to their second stronghold of bamboo thickets, pursued by the
1st South Dakota Infantry, which made a brilliant charge in the open,
under a galling fire, with a loss of three lieutenants and seven men
killed on the field and about a score wounded. The insurgents, however,
were completely defeated and scattered, leaving 85 dead counted in
the trenches and thickets, and a hundred prisoners in the hands of
the Americans. Before abandoning Marílao the insurgents burnt the town
to the ground and continued their hurried flight to Malolos. They had
plenty of time to rally, for the Americans found great difficulty in
bringing their artillery across the river at Guiguinto. It had to be
drawn over the railway bridge by hand whilst the mules swam across
to the northern bank, all being, at the same time, under a desultory
fire from the enemy. The resistance of the Filipinos to the passage of
the river at Guiguinto was so stubborn that the Americans lost about
70 killed and wounded. At 6 a.m. the Americans started the advance
towards Malolos in the same order taken for the march to Marilao,
General Hale's brigade taking the right and General Otis's the left
of the railroad. Several skirmishes took place on the way and General
Wheaton brought his reserves forward into the general advance. At
Bocaue the river presented the same difficulties for artillery
transport as were experienced at Guiguinto, except that the enemy was
nowhere to be seen. Bigaá was reached and not an armed native was in
sight, all having apparently concentrated in the insurgent capital,
Malolos. The American casualties that day, due solely to the morning
skirmishes, amounted to four killed and thirty wounded.
It is apparent, from the official despatches, that at this time
the American generals seriously believed the Aguinaldo party would
acknowledge its defeat and make peace if Malolos, the revolutionary
seat of government, fell. All that was going on in Manila was well
known to the insurgents in the field, as the news was brought to
them daily by runners who were able to enter the city during daylight
without interference. On March 30 General McArthur's division resumed
the advance and brought up the baggage trains, after having repaired
the several bridges damaged by the enemy. The environs of Malolos were
reconnoitred up to within a mile of the town, and the dead bodies
of insurgent soldiers were seen scattered here and there. Groups of
hundreds of non-combatants were hurrying off from the beleaguered
insurgent capital. General Otis's brigade pushed forward without
any encounter with the enemy, but General Hale's column, which
continued to take the right side of the railway, was fired upon
from the woods, the total casualties that day being five killed and
43 wounded. At 7 a.m. (March 31) the Americans opened the combined
attack on Malolos. General McArthur directed the operations from
the railway embankment, and half an hour's artillery fire dislodged
the enemy from their cover. The columns advanced cautiously towards
the town in anticipation of a fierce resistance and, it was hoped,
a fight to the finish. General Otis marched on direct: General Hale
executed a flanking movement to the east; General Wheaton's brigades
were held in reserve, and a halt of half an hour was made preparatory
to the final assault. The scouts then returned and reported that the
insurgents had abandoned their capital! It was a disappointment to
the Americans who had looked forward to inflicting a decisive and
crushing defeat on the enemy. The first troops to enter the town
were the 20th Kansas Regiment, under Colonel Funston. The natives,
in the wildest confusion, scampered off, after firing a few parting
shots at the approaching forces, and the Americans, with a total
loss of 15 killed and wounded, were in undisputed possession of the
insurgent capital. Aguinaldo had prudently evacuated it two days
before with his main army, going in the direction of Calumpit. Only
one battalion had been left behind to burn the town on the approach
of the Americans. Aguinaldo's headquarters, the parish church,
and a few hundred yards of railway were already destroyed when
the Americans occupied the place, still partly in flames. Some
few hundreds of Chinese were the only inhabitants remaining in
Malolos. The value of the food-stuffs captured in this place was
estimated at P1,500,000. Simultaneously, General Hall's brigade
operated five to seven miles north of Manila and drove the insurgents
out of Mariquina, San Mateo, and the environs of the Montalbán River
with a loss of 20 men wounded and Lieutenant Gregg killed. It was now
evident that Aguinaldo had no intention to come to close quarters and
bring matters to a crisis by pitched battles. His policy was apparently
to harry the Americans by keeping them constantly on the move against
guerilla parties, in the hope that a long and wearisome campaign would
end in the Americans abandoning the Islands in disgust, leaving the
Filipinos to their own desired independence. Aguinaldo had moved on
to Calumpit with his main army with the intention of establishing
his Government there. On the American side, active preparations were
made to dislodge him. Small gunboats were fitted out for operating
on the Rio Grande de Pampanga, and an armoured train was prepared for
use farther north. From Parañaque, on the bay shore south of Manila,
the insurgents fired on the monitor _Monadnock_, but a few shots from
this vessel silenced the shore battery. In several places, within 10
to 15 miles of the capital, armed groups of insurgents concentrated,
but Aguinaldo moved on towards Baliuag, in the province of Bulacan,
so as to be within easy reach of the hill district of Angat in case
of defeat.
A few days after the capture of Malolos, General Otis issued a
proclamation to the Filipinos, in the hope that by drawing off public
sympathy from the insurgent cause it would dwindle away. The terms
of this document were as follows, viz.:--
(1) The supremacy of the United States must and will be enforced
throughout every part of the Archipelago. Those who resist can
accomplish nothing except their own ruin.
(2) The most ample liberty of self-government will be granted
which is reconcilable with the maintenance of a wise, just,
stable, effective, and economical administration, and compatible
with the sovereign and international rights and obligations of
the United States.
(3) The civil rights of the Filipinos will be guaranteed and
protected, religious freedom will be assured, and all will have
equal standing before the law.
(4) Honour, justice, and friendship forbid the exploitation of
the people of the Islands. The purpose of the American Government
is the welfare and advancement of the Filipino people.
(5) The American Government guarantees an honest and effective
civil service, in which, to the fullest extent practicable,
natives shall be employed.
(6) The collection and application of taxes and revenues will be
put on a sound and honest economical basis. Public funds will be
raised justly and collected honestly, and will be applied only in
defraying the proper expenses of the establishment and maintenance
of the Philippine Government, and such general improvements as
public interests demand. Local funds collected for local purposes
shall not be diverted to other ends. With such a prudent and
honest fiscal administration it is believed that the needs of
the Government will, in a short time, become compatible with a
considerable reduction of taxation.
(7) The pure, speedy, and effective administration of justice,
whereby the evils of delay, corruption, and exploitation will be
effectually eradicated.
(8) The construction of roads, railways, and other means of
communication and transportation, and other public works of
manifest advantage to the people will be promoted.
(9) Domestic and foreign trade, commerce, agriculture, and other
industrial pursuits, and the general development of the country
and interest of the inhabitants will be the constant objects of
the solicitude and fostering care of the Government.
(10) Effective provision will be made for the establishment of
elementary schools, in which the children of the people shall be
educated, and appropriate facilities will also be provided for
their higher education.
(11) Reforms in all departments of the Government, all branches
of the public service, and all corporations closely touching the
common life of the people must be undertaken without delay, and
effected conformably with right and justice in such a way as to
satisfy the well-founded demands and the highest sentiments and
aspirations of the Philippine people.
The above proclamation, no doubt, embodies the programme of what
the American Government desired to carry out at the time of its
publication.
The Americans resumed the aggressive against the insurgents, and
an expedition of 1,509 men and two mountain-guns was fitted out
under the command of General Lawton to proceed up the Pasig River
into the Lake of Bay in order to capture Santa Cruz at the eastern
extremity. The expedition presented a curious sight; it comprised 15
native barges or "cascoes" towed by seven tugs. Some of the craft
ran aground at Napíndan, the entrance to the lake, and delayed the
little flotilla until daylight. The barges ahead had to wait for the
vessels lagging behind. Then a mist came over the shore, and there was
another halt. A couple of miles off an insurgent steamer was sighted,
but it passed on. Finally Santa Cruz was reached; 200 sharpshooters
were landed under cover of the launch guns, and fighting continued
all the afternoon until nightfall. Early in the morning the town was
attacked, the church situated in the centre was captured, and the
American loss was only six men wounded; the insurgents were driven
far away, leaving 68 dead on the field, and a large number of wounded,
whilst hundreds were taken prisoners.
On April 12, at the request of the Spanish General Rios, [210] the
gunboat _Yorktown_ was despatched to Baler, on the east coast of Luzon,
to endeavour to rescue a party of 80 Spanish soldiers, three officers,
and two priests who were holding out against 400 insurgents. These
natives, who were all armed with Maüser rifles, laid in ambush,
and surprised the landing-party under Lieutenant Gilmore. The whole
party was captured by the insurgents, who were afterwards ordered to
release them all. General Aguinaldo was always as humanely disposed
as the circumstances of war would permit, and, at the request of the
commissioners for the liberation of the Spanish prisoners, he gave
this little band of 83 heroes and two priests their liberty under
a decree so characteristic of Philippine imitative genius in its
pompous allusion to the Spanish glorious past that it is well worth
recording. [211]
General Lawton asserted that 100,000 men would be required to conquer
the Philippines, but they were never sent, because there was always
an influential group of optimists who expected an early collapse
of the insurgent movement. General Otis sent frequent cablegrams to
Washington expressing his belief that the war would soon come to an
end. However, in April, 1899, 14,000 regular troops were despatched
to the Islands to reinforce the Volunteer regiments. It was a wise
measure taken not too soon, for it was clear that a certain amount
of discontent had manifested itself among the Volunteers. Moreover,
the whole management of the Philippine problem was much hampered by
an anti-annexation movement in America which did not fail to have its
influence on the Volunteers, many of whom were anxious to return home
if they could. Senator Hoar and his partisans persistently opposed the
retention of the Islands, claiming that it was contrary to the spirit
of the American Constitution to impose a government upon a people
against its will. American sentiment was indeed becoming more and more
opposed to expansion of territorial possession beyond the continent,
in view of the unsatisfactory operations in the Philippines--a feeling
which was, however, greatly counterbalanced by a recognition of the
political necessity of finishing an unpleasant task already begun,
for the sake of national dignity.
About this time the Philippine envoy, Felipe Agoncillo, was in Paris
as president of a _junta_ of his compatriots. Some of the members
were of opinion that they ought to negotiate for peace directly with
the American Secretary of State, but Agoncillo so tenaciously opposed
anything short of sovereign Philippine independence that some of the
members withdrew and returned to the Islands. A year later I found
Agoncillo of exactly the same intransigent persuasion.
At the end of April the Americans suffered a severe reverse at Guingua
(Bulacan), where Major Bell, with 40 cavalrymen, came across a strong
outpost from which the enemy fired, killing one and wounding five
men. With great difficulty the dead and wounded were carried back under
fire, and it was found that the enemy occupied a big trench encircling
three sides of a paddy-field bordering on a wood. As the Americans
retreated, the insurgents crept up, aided by a mist, to within short
range and fired another volley. Major Bell sent for reinforcements,
and a battalion of infantry was soon on the scene, but their advance
was checked by the continuous firing from the trenches. Artillery
was on the way, but the insurgents were not disposed to charge
the Americans, who lay for two hours under cover of a rice-field
embankment in a broiling hot sun. One man died of sunstroke. Finally
a second battalion of infantry arrived under the command of Colonel
Stotsenberg, who was very popular with his men. He was received with
cheers, and immediately ordered a charge against the enemy in the
trenches; but whilst leading the attack he was shot in the breast,
and died immediately. Within short range of the trenches Lieutenant
Sisson fell, shot through the heart. By this time the artillery had
arrived, and shelled the trenches. The insurgents, however, held their
position well for a time, until the infantry was close up to them,
when, following their usual tactics, they ran off to another trench a
mile or so away. The total American losses that day were two officers
and four privates killed, and three officers and 40 men wounded.
Spanish prisoners released by the Filipinos declared that the
insurgents had 50,000 rifles and 200 pieces of artillery captured
from the Spaniards, ample ammunition manufactured at two large
factories up country, and occasional fresh supplies of war-material
shipped from China by Chinese, European, and American merchants. The
preparations made to dislodge Aguinaldo and his main army, entrenched
and sheltered by fortifications at Calumpit, were now completed,
and General McArthur's division steadily advanced. The flower of the
insurgent army was there, well armed and supplied with artillery
and shrapnel shell. Commanded by General Antonio Luna, they were
evidently prepared to make at Calumpit the bold stand which was
expected of them at Malolos. The transport difficulties were very
great, and as General McArthur approached, every foot of ground was
disputed by the enemy. Bridges had been broken down, and the guns had
to be hauled through jungle and woods under a scorching sun. Many
buffaloes succumbed to the fatigue, and hundreds of Chinamen were
employed to do their work. The Bagbag River was reached, but it had
to be crossed, and the passage cost the Americans six men killed and
28 wounded. The Bagbag River was well fortified, and the Americans
had to attack its defenders from an open space. There were trenches
at every approach; enormous pieces of rock had been dislodged and
hauled down towards the breastworks of the trenches to form cover. The
armoured train, pushed along the railway by Chinamen, then came into
action, and its quick-firing guns opened the assault on the enemy's
position. Six-pounders were also brought into play; the insurgents were
gradually receding; artillery was wheeled up to the river bank and a
regular bombardment of the bridge ensued. The trenches were shelled,
and the insurgents were firing their guns in the direction of the
armoured train, but they failed to get the range. Meantime, a company
of the Kansas Regiment made a bold charge across a paddy-field and
found shelter in a ditch, whence they kept up a constant fire to divert
the enemy's attention whilst Colonel Eunston, the commander of the
regiment, with a lieutenant and four men, crept along the girders of
the bridge. The enemy, however, got the range and bullets were flying
all around them, so they slid down the bridge-supports, dropped into
the river, and swam to the opposite shore. Scrambling up the bank,
revolvers in hand, they reached the trenches just as the insurgents
were hurriedly evacuating them. Indeed, the Filipinos' defence of their
trenches was extremely feeble during the whole battle. On the other
hand, for the first time, the insurgents ventured out into the open
against the Americans. General Antonio Luna, the Commander-in-Chief,
could be seen galloping furiously along the lines exhorting his men to
hold their ground, and he succeeded in deploying them into an extended
line of battle to receive the enemy's onslaught. The insurgents kept
up a desultory fire whilst the troops forded the river, and then they
were pursued and driven off to the outskirts of the town. The flames
rising from several buildings appeared to indicate an intention on the
part of the insurgents to abandon their stronghold. Simultaneously,
Generals Hale and Wheaton were coming forward with their columns,
each having had some hard fighting on the way. The junction of forces
was effected; a fierce fire was poured into the trenches; General Hale
and his men made a dash across a stream, up to their waists in water;
the Utah men followed with their batteries, cheering and dragging
their field-pieces with desperate energy to the opposite bank; the
enemy gave way, and the armoured train crossed the bridge. The total
American loss that day did not exceed nine in killed and wounded,
whilst the insurgent losses were at least 70. During the night the
engineers repaired the Bagbag bridge for the rest of the troops to
pass, and fighting was resumed at six o'clock in the morning. The
deserted trenches were occupied by the Americans to pick off any
insurgents who might venture out into the open. A general assault by
the combined columns was then made on the town, which was captured,
whilst the bulk of the insurgents fled in great confusion towards the
hills. The few who lingered in the trenches in the northern suburbs
of the town were shelled out of them by the American artillery placed
near the church, and the survivors decamped, hotly pursued for some
distance by cavalry. So great was the slaughter that the insurgents'
total losses are unknown. The trenches were choked with dead bodies,
and piles of them were found in many places. When nightfall came
and the Americans were resting in Calumpit after their two days'
hard fighting, the whole district was illuminated for miles around
by the flames from the burning villages and groups of huts, whilst
the snapping of the burning bamboos echoed through the stillness like
volleys of rifle-shots.
Aguinaldo and his Government had hastened north towards Tárlac, and
on April 28 he instructed General Antonio Luna to discuss terms of
peace. Ostensibly with this object the general sent Colonel Manuel
Argüelles with his aide-de-camp and an orderly to the American camp at
Apálit (Pampanga). These men were seen coming down the railway-track
carrying a white flag. An officer was sent out to meet them, and
after handing their credentials to him they were forthwith conducted
to General Wheaton's headquarters. General Wheaton sent them on
to General McArthur, the chief commander of the Northern Division,
and General McArthur commissioned Major Mallory to escort them to
General Otis in Manila. They explained that they were empowered to ask
for an armistice for a few days as it was proposed to summon their
Congress for May 1 to discuss the question of peace or war. General
Otis replied that he did not recognize the Philippine Republic, and
that there would be no cessation of hostilities until his only terms
were complied with, namely, unconditional surrender. The negotiations
were resumed the next day, and Argüelles seemed personally inclined
to meet the American view of the situation; but as his powers were
limited to asking for an armistice, he and his companions returned to
the insurgent camp with General Otis's negative answer. On his return
to the camp Colonel Argüelles was accused of being an "Americanista"
in favour of surrender, for which offence a court-martial passed
sentence upon him of expulsion from the insurgent army and 12 years'
imprisonment. Whatever Argüelles' personal conviction may have been
matters little, but in the light of subsequent events and considering
the impetuous, intransigent character of General Antonio Luna, it is
probable that Argüelles was really only sent as a spy.
On May 5 General McArthur's division advanced to Pampanga Province,
and Santo Tomás and San Fernando were taken without loss. A portion of
the latter place had been burnt by the retreating insurgents, and the
townspeople fled leaving their household goods behind them. Generals
Hale and Lawton were following up, and on the way Baliuag (Bulacan)
was occupied and immense stores of foodstuffs were seized from the
insurgents and private owners. The booty consisted of about 150,000
bushels of rice and over 250 tons of sugar. In other places on the
way large deposits of food fell into American hands. The men of the
Nebraska Regiment considered they had had sufficient hard work for the
present in long marching, continual fighting, and outpost duty. They
therefore petitioned General McArthur to relieve them temporarily
from duty to recuperate their strength. There was no doubting their
bravery, of which they had given ample proof; they had simply reached
the limit of physical endurance. The hospitals were already full of
soldiers suffering as much from sunstroke as from wounds received
in battle. Consequently some of the regular regiments who had been
doing guard duty in the capital were despatched to the front. In the
following July the Nebraska Volunteer Regiment was one of those sent
back to the United States.
On May 19 another party of insurgent officers presented themselves
to the military authorities alleging that they had fuller
powers than Argüelles possessed and were prepared to make peace
proposals. Everything was discussed over again; but as General Otis's
unalterable demand for unconditional surrender was already well known,
one can only conclude that the insurgent commissioners were also spies
sent to gauge the power and feeling of the Americans, for they promised
to return within three weeks and then disappeared indefinitely.
On May 22 more peace commissioners were sent by Aguinaldo. They were
received by the Schurman Commission of Inquest, who communicated to
them a scheme of government which they had had under consideration
in agreement with President McKinley. The proposed plan embodied
the appointment of a Gov.-General, who would nominate a Cabinet to
act with him. The President of the United States was to appoint the
judges. The Cabinet members and the judges might be all Americans, or
all Filipinos, or both. Moreover, there was to be an Advisory Council
elected by popular vote. This liberal scheme was, however, abandoned,
as its proposal seemed to have no effect in bringing the war to an
end, and the negotiations terminated with the Commissioners and the
insurgent delegates lunching together on board the U.S. battleship
_Oregon_, whilst the blood of both parties continued to flow on
the battlefield.
General Lawton's brigade was still operating in the Provinces of
Bulacan and north of Manila (now called Rizal). The fighting was so
severe and the exposure to sun so disastrous that about the beginning
of June he had to send back to Manila 500 wounded and heat-stricken
men. It was found impossible to follow up the ever-retreating
insurgents, who again escaped still farther north. Along the Manila
Bay shore detachments of insurgents passed from time to time, driving
women and children before them, so that the Americans would not care to
fire on them. Some, however, were picked off from the warships when the
insurgents omitted their precautionary measure. It was impossible to
"round up" the enemy and bring him into a combat to the finish. His
movements were so alert that he would fight, vanish in a trice,
conceal his arms and uniform, and mingle with the Americans with an
air of perfect innocence. With wonderful dexterity he would change from
soldier to civilian, lounging one day in the market-place and the next
day fall into the insurgent ranks. These tactics, which led to nothing
whatever in a purely military sense, were evidently adopted in the vain
hope of wearying the Americans into an abandonment of their enterprise.
In the middle of June General Lawton's brigade operated to the south
of Manila and in the Cavite province, where the natives gave battle
at the Zapote River, famous for a great Spanish defeat during the
rebellion. The insurgents were under cover the whole time, and their
assembled thousands could hardly be seen by the attacking columns. They
were also in great force and strongly entrenched near Las Piñas and at
Bacoor. [212] From the former place they worked one large and two small
guns with much effect, firing canister loaded with nails. One canister
shattered the legs of a private. American infantry, skirmishing along
the beach, came across a posse of insurgents who at once retreated,
pursued by the Americans until the latter found themselves surrounded
on three sides by hidden sharpshooters, who poured in a raking fire
upon them. The skirmishers withdrew, but were rallied by General
Lawton and other officers, who themselves picked off some of the
enemy with rifle-shots. Encouraged by this example, the skirmishers,
with one cry, suddenly rushed towards the insurgents, scattering them
in all directions, and safely reached the main body of the brigade
with their wounded comrades.
The only bridge across the Zapote River was strongly defended by
the insurgents, who had trenches forming two sides of an angle. By
noon their battery was silenced, and the Americans then attempted
to ford the river, whilst others went knee-deep in mire across the
paddy-mud flats. Then a deep stream was the only boundary between
the contending parties. The Filipinos were hardly visible, being
under shelter of thickets, whilst the Americans were wading through
mud under a broiling sun for over two hours to reach them, keeping
up a constant fusillade. The whole time there was an incessant din
from a thousand rifles and the roar of cannon from the gunboats which
bombarded the enemy's position near Las Piñas and Bacoor. The strain
on the Americans was tremendous when the insurgents made a flanking
movement and fired upon them as they were floundering in the mud. The
14th Infantry eventually swam across the Zapote River, and under cover
of artillery charged the insurgents, who retreated into the woods. The
Filipinos displayed a rare intelligence in the construction of their
defences near the Zapote River and its neighbourhood, and but for the
employment of artillery their dislodgement therefrom would have been
extremely difficult. After the battle was over General Lawton declared
that it was the toughest contest they had yet undertaken in this war.
At Perez Dasmariñas, in the east of Cavite Province, a battalion of
infantry narrowly escaped annihilation. News had been brought to the
American camp that the insurgents had evacuated that town, and that
the native mayor was disposed to make a formal surrender of it to the
Americans. The battalion forthwith went there to take possession, but
before reaching the place the enemy closed in on all sides, and a heavy
fire was mutually sustained for four hours. The Americans had only just
saved themselves from destruction by a desperate bayonet-charge when
they were rescued by General Wheaton, who arrived with reinforcements.
Three months of warfare had wrought dissension in the insurgent
camp. Organization was Aguinaldo's peculiar talent, without the
exercise of which the movement would have failed at the outset. But
the value of this gift was not fully appreciated by his people. A
certain section of the fighting masses had far greater admiration
for Antonio Luna's visible prowess than for the unseen astuteness
of Aguinaldo's manoeuvres. It was characteristic of the Filipinos to
split into factions, but the encouragement given to General Antonio
Luna's aspiration to supersede his supreme chief was unfortunate, for
Aguinaldo was not the man to tolerate a rival. He had rid himself of
Andrés Bonifacio (_vide_ p. 371) in 1896, and now another disturber
of that unity which is strength had to be disposed of. The point
of dispute between these two men was of public knowledge. It has
already been shown how fully cognizant Antonio Luna was of the
proposals made to the Americans for an armistice, for the express
purpose of taking the vote of the Revolutionary Congress, for peace
or war, on May 1. Aguinaldo was no longer a military dictator, but
President of the so-called Philippine Republic (_vide_ p. 486), by
whose will he was disposed loyally to abide. Antonio Luna's elastic
conscience urged him to duplicity; he pretended to submit to the will
of the majority, expressed through the Congress, with the reserved
intention of carrying on the war at all hazards, as military dictator,
if the vote were for peace. Congress met, and during the debate on
the momentous question--peace or war--the hitherto compact group of
intransigents weakened. No agreement could be arrived at in the first
session. There was, however, a strong tendency to accept American
sovereignty. Luna feared that Aguinaldo's acceptance of the vote
of the majority (if a division were taken) might deprive him of the
opportunity of rising to supreme eminence. Luna's violence at this
time was intolerable, up to the point of smacking deputy F.B. in the
face. His attempted coercion of the will of others brought about his
own downfall. His impetuosity called forth the expression, "He is
a fanatic who will lead us to a precipice." In his imagination, all
who did not conform to his dominant will were conspirators against
him. Hence, at Cavite (Aguinaldo's native province), he disarmed all
the troops of that locality, and substituted Ilocanos of his own
province, whilst he vented his ferocity in numerous executions of
Tagálogs. Had he lived he would probably have created a tribal feud
between Ilocanos and Tagálogs.
On June 3, 1899, accompanied by his aide-de-camp, Captain Roman, and
an escort, Luna entered the official residence of President Aguinaldo
at Cabanatúan (Nueva Ecija). The guard, composed of a company of
Cavite men from Canit (Aguinaldo's native town), under the command
of Captain Pedro Janolino, saluted him on his entry. As Luna and
Roman ascended the staircase to seek Aguinaldo a revolver-shot was
heard. Luna rushed down the stairs in a furious rage and insulted
Captain Janolino in the presence of his troops. This was too much
for Janolino, who drew a dagger and thrust it violently into Luna's
head. In the scuffle Luna was knocked down and shot several times. He
was able to reach the roadway, and, after shouting "Cowards!" fell
down dead. In the meantime, whilst Captain Roman was running towards
a house he was shot dead by a bullet in his breast. The Insurgent
Government passed a vote of regret at the occurrence, and the two
officers were buried with military honours. As subsequent events
proved, Aguinaldo had no personal wish to give up the struggle, or
to influence a peace vote, but to execute the will of the people,
as expressed through the revolutionary congressmen.
The situation was becoming so serious for the Americans that a call for
25,000 more volunteers was earnestly discussed at Washington. It was
thought that the levy should be made at once, believing that General
Otis really required them, but that he was reluctant to admit an
under-estimate of the enemy's strength. The insurgents, finding they
were not followed up (the rainy season was commencing), were beginning
to take the offensive with greater boldness, attacking the Americans
in the rear. The War Department, however, hesitated to make the levy
owing to the friction which existed between the volunteers and the
regulars, but the case was so urgent that at the end of June it was
decided to raise the total forces in the Philippines to 40,000 men.
On June 12, the anniversary of the proclamation at Cavite of
Philippine Independence, Aguinaldo, from his northern retreat, issued
a _Manifiesto_ to his countrymen reminding them of the importance
of that event. This document, abundant in grandiloquent phrases,
is too lengthy for full citation here, but the following paragraph
in it is interesting as a recognition that, after all, there was a
bright side to Spanish dominion:--
Filipinas! Beloved daughter of the ardent sun of the tropics,
commended by Providence to the care of noble Spain, be thou not
ungrateful; acknowledge her, salute her who warmed thee with the
breath of her own culture and civility. Thou hast longed for
independence, and thine emancipation from Spain has come; but
preserve in thine heart the remembrance of the more than three
centuries which thou hast lived with her usages, her language,
and her customs. It is true she sought to crush thine aspiration
for independence, just as a loving mother resists the lifelong
separation from the daughter of her bosom; it only proved the
excess of affection, the love Spain feels for thee. But thou,
Filipinas, flower of the ocean, delicate flower of the East, still
weak, scarce eight months weaned from thy mother's breast, hast
dared to brave a great and powerful nation such as is the United
States, with thy little army barely disciplined and shaped. Ah,
beloved brethren, all this is true; and still we say we will be
slaves to none, nor let ourselves be duped by gentle words.
Certainly Aguinaldo could not have been the author of the above
composition published in his name.
By the middle of July the censorship of Press cablegrams from Manila
had become so rigid that the public in America and Europe could get
very little reliable telegraphic news of what was going on in the
Islands. The American newspaper correspondents therefore signed a
"round robin" setting forth their complaints to General Otis, who took
little heed of it. It was well known that the hospitals were crowded
with American soldiers, a great many of whom were suffering solely from
their persistence in habits contracted at home which were incompatible
with good health in a tropical climate. Many volunteers, wearied of the
war, were urging to be sent back to the States, and there was a marked
lack of cordiality between the volunteer and the regular regiments. In
the field the former might well compare with the smartest and the
bravest men who ever carried arms; off active service there was a
difference between them and the disciplined regulars perceptible to
any civilian. The natives particularly resented the volunteers' habit
of entering their dwellings and tampering, in a free and easy manner,
with their goods and the modesty of their women. They were specially
disgusted with the coloured regiments, whose conduct was such that
the authorities saw the desirability of shipping them all back to the
United States as soon as other troops were available to replace them,
for their lawlessness was bringing discredit on the nation.
In July an expedition was sent up the Laguna de Bay, and the towns on
the south shore were successively captured as far as Calamba, which
was occupied on the 26th of the month. Early in the same month the
inter-island merchant steamer _Saturnus_, on its regular voyage to the
north-west coast of Luzon ports, put in at San Fernando de la Union to
discharge cargo for that place, which was held by the insurgents. The
vessel was flying the American flag. Part of the cargo had been
discharged and preparations were being made to receive freight on
board, when the insurgents seized the vessel, carried off the thousands
of pesos and other property on board, poured petroleum on the woodwork,
and hauled down the American flag. The American gunboat _Pampanga_,
patrolling this coast, seeing there was something irregular, hove to
and endeavoured to get a tow-line over the _Saturnus_, but was beaten
off by the insurgents' fire from shore. The insurgents then brought
field-pieces into action and shelled the _Saturnus_, setting her on
fire. The vessel became a wreck and sank near the beach. Subsequently
a gunboat was sent to San Fernando de la Union to shell the town.
When the wet season had fully set in, operations of importance were
necessarily suspended. Skirmishes and small encounters occurred in
many places where the contending parties chanced to meet, but no
further remarkable military event happened in this year of 1899 until
the north-east monsoon brought a cessation of the deluging rains.
Notwithstanding General Otis's oft-repeated intimation of
"unconditional surrender" as the sole terms of peace, in October
General Aguinaldo sent General Alejandrino from his new seat of
government in Tárlac to General Otis with fresh proposals, but
the letter was returned unopened. At that time Aguinaldo's army
was estimated at 12,000 men. The insurgents had taken many American
prisoners, some of whom were released a few days afterwards, and, in
October, Aguinaldo issued a decree voluntarily granting liberty to all
Americans held captive by his people. This resolution, proclaimed as
an act of grace, was really owing to the scarcity of food, and for the
same reason Aguinaldo simultaneously disbanded a portion of his army.
In the month of December General Lawton led his brigade to the district
of Montalbán and San Mateo, a few miles north of Manila, to attack the
insurgents. The agreed plan was to make a flanking movement against
the enemy on the San Mateo River and a frontal attack immediately the
enemy was engaged. The frontal attack was being personally directed
by the general, who stood on the high bank of the river. Captain
Breckinridge, the general's aide-de-camp, had just been hit in the
groin, and General Lawton went to speak to him before he was carried
away on a litter. Whilst so engaged, the general threw up his hands
and fell without uttering a word. He had been shot through the heart,
and died instantly. His body was carried to Manila for public burial,
and the insurgents were as jubilant as the Americans were grieved
over this sad occurrence. The date was fixed for the interment with
military pomp, and immense crowds came out to witness the imposing
procession. Some Filipinos, expecting the cortege would pass through
a certain street, deposited a bomb in the house of an old woman,
unknown to her, but fortunately for her and all concerned, it was
not on the route taken. In memory of the late lamented general the
present five-peso bank notes bear his vignette.
In 1900 the war of independence began to wane. In January,
General Joseph Wheeler left Manila to assume command of the late
General Lawton's brigade, and overran the Laguna de Bay south shore
towns. Viñan was taken on January 1, but as no garrison was left there,
the insurgents re-entered the town when the Americans passed on. The
armed natives were, in reality, playing a game of hide-and-seek,
with no tangible result to themselves further than feeding at the
expense of the townspeople. Aguinaldo was still roaming about central
Luzon, but, one by one, his generals either surrendered or were
captured. Among these was General Rizal, captured in January. In
this month a plot to blow up the foreign consuls was opportunely
frustrated. The Chinese General Paua, Aguinaldo's brother-in-law,
surrendered in March and found shopkeeping in Binondo a less risky
business than generalship. In the same month the Manila-Dagúpan
Railway was handed over to the company's management, after having
been used for war purposes. General Montenegro surrendered in April,
and a fortnight afterwards Don Pedro A. Paterno, late President of
the Insurgent Congress, was captured at Antomoc (Beuguet district);
Generals Garcia and Dumangtay were captured; five officers and two
companies of insurgents surrendered in May; and in the same month one
Gabriel Cayaban, of Pangasinán Province, was sentenced to five years'
hard labour and a fine of 2,000 pesos for conspiring with guerillas
to raise riot. It cannot be said that the insurgents in the field had
advanced one step towards the attainment of their object. Manila was
simultaneously full of conspirators cogitating over murderous plots
against the Americans, and a band of them was arrested in the month
of May. The insurgent movement was so far disorganized that it was
deemed opportune to entrust natives with police duties, and in June
a Philippine cavalry corps was created. Captain Lara, of the native
police, took Generals Pio del Pilar and Salvador Estrella prisoners,
but was himself assassinated on August 4. General Maximino Hizon [213]
was captured at Mexico (Pampanga), and on June 21 the Military Governor
published an amnesty proclamation, granting pardon and liberty to
all who should declare their allegiance to the United States within
ninety days. All who had surrendered and some who were captured
took the required oath, and others were coming in. Pio del Pilar was
among those who accepted the amnesty a week after its promulgation,
but he was again arrested, September 6, for conspiracy. The Amnesty
Proclamation was met by a counter-proclamation issued by Aguinaldo,
dated August 3, 1900, in which he urged a continuance of the war,
and offered rewards for arms. He promised to liberate all prisoners
of war who might fall into insurgent hands, on surrender of their
arms and ammunition. He would give them money to return to their
lines and for petty expenses _en route_. He would pay 80 pesos for
every American rifle brought in by a prisoner, and 20 pesos for any
rifle voluntarily brought to a Philippine officer, but the deserter
would not be allowed to enter the insurgent ranks.
On June 28 there was an attempted rising in Manila, and Don Pedro
A. Paterno was placed under closer guard. In July the insurgents were
active in the neighbourhood of Vigan (Ilocos). About 40 volunteer
infantry and 60 cavalry went out from Narvican to attack them, and
came across a strongly-entrenched position held by about 300 riflemen
and 1,000 men armed with bowie-knives. A sharp fight ensued, but the
Americans, overwhelmed by the mass, had to retreat to Narvican. The
insurgents lost about a hundred men, whilst the American loss was one
lieutenant and four men killed, nine wounded and four missing. About
the same time, the insurgents driven back from the Laguna de Bay
shore occupied Taal (Batangas), where, under the leadership of
Miguel Malvar, a small battle was fought in the streets on July 12
and the town was burnt; a troop of cavalry was added to the police
force this month, and there was no lack of Filipinos willing to
co-operate with Americans for a salary. The backbone of insurgency
having been broken, the dollar proved to be a mightier factor than
the sword in the process of pacification. Compared with former times,
the ex-insurgents found in the lucrative employments offered to them
by the Americans a veritable El Dorado, for never before had they
seen such a flow of cash. The country had been ravaged; the immense
stores collected by the revolutionists had been seized; non-combatant
partisans of the insurgent cause were wearied of paying heavy taxes
for so little result; treasure was hidden; fields lay fallow, and for
want of food Aguinaldo had had partially to disband his army. He told
me himself that on one occasion they were so hard pressed for food
that they had to live for three days on whatever they could find in
the mountains. There were but two courses open to the majority of the
ex-soldiers--brigandage or service under their new masters. Some chose
the former, with results which will be hereafter referred to; others,
more disposed towards civil life, were allured by the abundance of
silver pesos, which made a final conquest where shot and shell had
failed. Still, there were thousands incognizant of the olive-branch
extended to them, and military operations had to be continued even
within a day's journey from the capital. A request had to be made
for more cavalry to be sent to the Islands, and the proportion of
this branch of the service to infantry was gradually increased, for
"rounding up" insurgents who refused to give battle was exhausting
work for white foot-soldiers in the tropics. In the course of four
months nearly all the infantry in the small towns was replaced by
cavalry. In this same month (July) American cavalry successfully
secured the Laguna de Bay south shore towns which the insurgents had
re-taken on the departure of the infantry sent there in January. Many
well-to-do proprietors in these towns (some known to me for 20 years),
especially in Viñan, complained to me of what they considered an
injustice inflicted on them. The American troops came and drove out
the insurgents, or caused them to decamp on their approach; but, as
they left no garrisons, the insurgents re-entered and the townspeople
had to feed them under duress. Then, when the American forces returned
six months afterwards, to the great relief of the inhabitants, and
left garrisons, many of these townspeople, on a charge of having given
succour to the insurgents, were imprisoned with the only consolation
that, after all, a couple of months' incarceration by the Americans
was preferable to the death which awaited them at the hands of the
insurgents if they had refused them food. The same thing occurred in
other islands, notably in Sámar and in Cebú, where the people were
persecuted for giving aid to the armed natives on whose mercy their
lives depended. This measure was an unfortunate mistake, because it
alienated the good feeling of those who simply desired peace with the
ruling power, whether it were American or native. There were thousands
of persons--as there would be anywhere in the world--quite incapable
of taking up arms in defence of an absent party which gave them no
protection, yet naturally anxious to save their lives by payment if
need be. [214]
On July 19 a proclamation was issued forbidding the possession
of firearms without licence. On August 7 the curfew ordinance was
extended to 11 p.m., and again, in the following month, to midnight. In
September there was another serious outbreak up the Laguna de Bay,
where two or three hundred insurgents, led by a French half-caste,
General Cailles, [215] attacked Los Baños, and about the same time
the insurgents north of Manila cut the railroad between Malolos and
Guiguinto. Cailles was driven out of Los Baños, but hundreds more
insurgents joined him, and a furious battle was fought at Siniloan,
on September 17, between 800 insurgents and a company of the 15th
Infantry, who drove the enemy into the mountains.
In November Aguinaldo, who was camping in the province of Nueva Ecija,
issued another of his numerous exhortations, in consequence of which
there was renewed activity amongst the roaming bands of adventurers
all over the provinces north of the capital. The insurgent chief
advocated an aggressive war, and in the same month it was decided to
send more American troops to Manila.
Many of the riff-raff had been inadvertently enrolled in the native
police force, and received heavy sentences for theft, blackmail, and
violent abuse of their functions. Indeed it took nearly a couple of
years to weed out the disreputable members of this body. The total
army forces in the Islands amounted to about 70,000 men, and at the
end of 1900 it was decided to send back the volunteer corps to America
early in the following year, for, at this period, General Aguinaldo had
become a wanderer with a following which could no longer be called an
army, and an early collapse of the revolutionary party in the field
was an anticipated event.
From September 1, 1900, the legislative power of the military
government was transferred to a civil government, Governor W. H. Taft
being the President of the Philippine Commission, whilst Maj.-General
McArthur continued in his capacity of Commander-in-Chief to carry
on the war against the insurgents, which culminated in the capture
of General Emilio Aguinaldo on March 23, 1901. This important event
accelerated the close of the War of Independence. On January 14 General
Emilio Aguinaldo had his headquarters at Palánan (Isabela), on the
bank of a river which empties itself into Palánan Bay, situated about
six miles distant from the town, on the east coast of Luzon. Being in
want of reinforcements, he sent a member of his staff with messages to
that effect to several of his subordinate generals. The fellow turned
traitor, and carried the despatches to an American lieutenant, who sent
him on to Colonel Frederick Funston at San Isidro (Nueva Ecija). The
despatches disclosed the fact that General Emilio Aguinaldo requested
his cousin, General Baldomero Aguinaldo, to send him, as soon as
possible, 400 armed men. With General McArthur's approval, Colonel
Funston proceeded to carry out a plan which he had conceived for the
capture of General Emilio Aguinaldo. An expedition was made up of four
Tagálog deserters from Aguinaldo's army, 78 Macabebe scouts (_vide_
p. 446, footnote), and four American officers, besides Colonel Funston
himself. Twenty of the scouts were dressed in insurgent uniforms,
and the remaining natives in common working-clothes. Ten of them
carried Spanish rifles, ten others had Krag-Jörgensen rifles, which
they were to feign to have captured from American troops, and the
five Americans were disguised as private soldiers. The party was then
carried round the north and east coasts of Luzon, and put ashore in the
neighbourhood of Baler by the gunboat _Vicksburg_, which approached the
coast without lights, and then waited off Palánan Bay. The expedition
was nominally commanded by an insurgent deserter, Hilario Placido,
[216] whilst three other deserters posed as officers, the Americans
playing the _role_ of prisoners captured by the party. Before setting
out for Casigúran, some 20 miles away, a messenger was sent on to
the native headman of that town to tell him that reinforcements for
Aguinaldo were on their way, and would require food and lodging, which
were forthwith furnished by the headman to these 87 individuals. Some
months previously some papers had been captured bearing the signature
and seal of the insurgent general Lacuna, and this enabled the party
to send on a letter in advance to Emilio Aguinaldo, ostensibly in the
name of Lacuna, announcing the arrival of the reinforcements furnished
in response to his request of January 14. This letter was accompanied
by another one from the pseudo-chief of the expedition, stating that
on the way they had captured five American soldiers and ten Krag
rifles. A request was also made for food, which he explained had run
short. Emilio Aguinaldo, therefore, sent Negritos to meet them on the
way with a supply of rice. In the morning of March 23 they were near
Palánan. The Macabebe scouts were sent in advance of the _soi-disant_
five American prisoners, and when they entered the town Aguinaldo's
bodyguard of 50 men was drawn up in parade to receive them. The
native pseudo-officers marched into the camp, and were welcomed by
Aguinaldo; but they shortly afterwards took temporary leave of him,
and coming outside ordered their Macabebe troops to form up. Just at
the moment the five supposed prisoners were conducted towards the camp
the Macabebes poured three murderous volleys into Aguinaldo's troops,
two of whom were killed and 18 wounded. On the other side only one
Macabebe was slightly wounded. The Americans witnessed the effect of
the first volley, and, together with the natives posing as officers,
rushed into Aguinaldo's headquarters. Aguinaldo, Colonel Villa, and
one civilian were taken prisoners, whilst other insurgent officers
jumped from the window into the river and escaped. The expedition,
after resting a day and a half at the camp, escorted their prisoners
to Palánan Bay, where they were all taken on board the gunboat
_Vicksburg_, which reached Manila on March 27.
The closing scene in Emilio Aguinaldo's military career was a
remarkable performance of consummate skill, but unworthy of record
in the annals of military glory.
The War of Independence, which lasted until the next year, was a
triumph of science over personal valour about equally balanced. It
was a necessary sacrifice of the few for the good of the many. No
permanent peace could have been ever hoped for so long as the Islanders
entertained the belief that they could any day eject the invaders
by force.
The American citizens naturally rejoiced over the bare fact, briefly
cabled without ghastly details, that the Philippine generalissimo had
fallen prisoner, because it portended the peace which all desired. In
deference to public opinion, the President promoted Colonel Funston
of the volunteers to the rank of Brig.-General in the regular army.
Emilio Aguinaldo was first taken before General McArthur and then
escorted to prison in _Calle de Anda_, in the walled city. On April 1,
1901, he took the oath of allegiance in the following form, viz.:--
I, Emilio Aguinaldo, hereby renounce all allegiance to any and
all so-called revolutionary governments in the Philippine Islands
and recognize and accept the supreme authority of the United
States of America therein; I do solemnly swear that I will bear
true faith and allegiance to that Government; that I will at all
times conduct myself as a faithful and law-abiding citizen of
the said Islands, and will not, either directly or indirectly,
hold correspondence with or give intelligence to an enemy of the
United States, nor will I abet, harbour or protect such enemy;
that I impose upon myself these voluntary obligations without
any mental reservations or purpose of evasion, so help me God.
After signing this declaration he was a free man. For a while he
resided at Malacañan, on the north bank of the Pasig River, where one
night a pirogue full of assassins came to seek the life of the man who
had failed. But his lucky star followed him, and he removed to Paco and
again to Ermita (suburbs of Manila) and finally to his native town of
Cauit (Cavite), where I was his guest. He was living there in modest
retirement with his mother and his two good-looking young nieces, who
served us at table. The house is large and comparatively imposing as
a provincial residence, being formed of two good substantial houses
connected by a bridge-passage. The whole is enclosed by a low brick
wall, topped by iron railings painted flaming red. In front there is a
garden and a spacious compound at the back. In the large drawing-room
there is a ceiling fresco representing a Filipina descending a flight
of steps from a column to which the chains, now severed, held her
captive. On the steps lies the Spanish flag with a broken staff,
and in her hand she holds on high the Philippine flag of freedom.
In conversation with him he stated that he and his companions returned
to the Islands in May, 1898, with many assurances that America was
simply going to aid them to gain their independence. He added that
when he landed at Cavite he had no arms, and the Americans allowed
him to take them from the Spanish arsenal. Then they turned him out,
and he moved his headquarters to Bacoor, where his troops numbered
between 30,000 and 35,000 men. He said he could easily have taken
Manila then, but that he was begged not to do so as the Americans
were waiting for more troops and they wished to make the victory a
joint one. He confessed he had bought experience very dearly. But he
profited by that experience when, at Cavite, the Belgian Consul and
Prince Löwenstein came four times to make proposals to him in favour
of Germany. The first time, he said, he received them and demanded
their credentials as authorized agents for Germany, but, as they
could not produce any, he declined to have any further intercourse
with them. Referring to the first period of the rebellion, Aguinaldo
admitted that the prospect of ejecting the Spaniards from the Islands
was very doubtful.
Immediately Aguinaldo had fallen captive, all kinds of extravagant and
erroneous versions were current as to how it had happened. Thousands
insisted that he must have voluntarily surrendered, for how could he
have been caught when he had the _anting-anting_? (_vide_ p. 237). As
the ball of conjecture went on rolling, some added to this that
his voluntary surrender must have been for a money consideration,
and there were still others who furnished a further inducement--his
fear of revenge from the late Antonio Luna's party!
Although Aguinaldo gave no proof of being a brilliant warrior,
as an organizer he had no rival capable of keeping 30,000 or more
Filipinos united by sentiment for any one purpose. He trusted no
comrade implicitly, and for a long time his officers had to leave
their side-arms in an antechamber before entering his apartment. He
had, moreover, the adroitness to extirpate that rivalry which alone
destroys all united effort. But the world makes no allowance for the
general who fails. To-day he is left entirely alone, pitied by some,
shunned by a few, and almost forgotten by the large majority. He is
indeed worthy of respect for his humanity in the conduct of the war,
and of some pity in his present peculiar position. Many of his late
subordinates now occupy good and high-salaried posts. Members of the
Government of which he was President have espoused American doctrine
and enjoy high social positions and fat emoluments. Aguinaldo's
scholarship is too meagre for an elevated position, and his dignity
and self-respect too great for an inferior one.
CHAPTER XXV
The Philippine Republic in the Central and Southern Islands
So interwoven were the circumstances of General Aguinaldo's Government
in Luzon Island with the events of the period between the naval battle
of Cavite and the ratification of the Treaty of Paris, that they form
an integral and inseparable whole in historical continuity. In the
other Islands, however, which followed the revolutionary movement,
with more or less adherence to the supreme leadership of Aguinaldo, the
local incidents severally constitute little histories in themselves,
each such island having practically set up its own government with
only the barest thread of administrative intercommunication.
The smaller islands, adjacent to Luzon, cannot be justly included in
this category, because their local rule, which naturally succeeded the
withdrawal of Spanish administration, was nothing more than a divided
domination of self-constituted chiefs whose freebooting exploits,
in one instance, had to be suppressed at the sacrifice of bloodshed,
and, in another, to succumb to the apathy of the people.
In _Yloilo_, on December 23, 1898, General Diego de los Rios, in the
presence of his staff, the naval commanders and the foreign consuls,
formally surrendered the town to the native mayor, prior to his
evacuation of Panay Island on the following day. On December 27
an American military force (finally about 3,000 strong) arrived in
the roadstead in transports under the command of General Miller in
co-operation with two American warships, afterwards supplemented by
two others. The Spanish troops having departed, the Filipinos who had
assumed control of public affairs made their formal entry into Yloilo
to the strains of music and the waving of banners and constituted
a government whose effective jurisdiction does not appear to have
extended beyond the town and a day's march therefrom. On January 17
an election was held, Raymundo Melliza, [217] an excellent man, being
chosen president for the term of two years. Business was resumed;
sugar was being brought from Negros Island, and ships were laden with
produce. During the civil administration, which lasted for seven weeks,
the absorbing topic was the demand made by General Miller for the
surrender of the town. General Miller's force had been despatched to
Yloilo waters, after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, simply to make
a demonstration in view of possible anarchy resulting from the Spanish
evacuation. The ratification of that Treaty by a two-thirds Senate
majority was not an accomplished fact until February 6 following. There
was no certainty that the Senate would confirm the acquisition of
the Islands, and in the interval it was not politic to pass from a
formal demand for the surrender of Yloilo to open hostilities for
its possession. These matters of political exigency were undoubtedly
beyond the comprehension of the Ylongos. They attributed to fear the
fact that a large fighting-force remained inactive within sight of the
town, whereas General Miller was merely awaiting instructions from
the capital which the Manila authorities, in turn, were delaying,
pending the decision in Washington. Intervening circumstances,
however, precipitated military action. On the night of February 4
hostilities had broken out between Aguinaldo's troops and the American
forces. Insurgent emissaries had brought Aguinaldo's messages to
the Ylongos to hold the town against the invaders, and on February 7
General Miller received orders from Maj.-General Otis to take Yloilo
by force if necessary. General Miller thereupon renewed his demand for
the surrender of the place, coupled this time with a declaration that
he would bombard it if his demand were refused. Later on he notified
the consular body that the bombardment would commence on the 12th of
the month. During the seven weeks of native government, petty thefts
were frequent; an armed insurgent would enter a store and carry off
the article selected by him without paying for it; but there was no
riotous open violence committed against the townspeople or foreign
traders. The squabbles between the armed natives and their leaders,
however, were several times on the point of producing bloodshed.
According to ex-insurgent General Pablo Araneta, the insurgent army,
at the time, in Panay Island was as follows, viz. [218]:--
Under the leadership of Stationed at Tagálogs Visayos
Fulion Yloilo 250 150
Ananias Diócno Yloilo 400 --
Pablo Araneta Yloilo 250 --
Martin Delgado Yloilo -- 150
Pablo Araneta Molo -- 100
Silvestre Silvio Antique 150 --
Detachment of Diócno's
forces Cápiz 200 --
Total all armed with guns 1,250 400
The commander-in-chief of the whole army of 1,650 men was Martin
Delgado. The Tagálog contingent was under the leadership of Ananias
Diócno, a native of Taal, whose severity in his Cápiz and Yloilo
campaigns has left a lasting remembrance. The headquarters of the
Visayos was in the parish-house (_convento_), whilst the Tagálogs were
located in the Fine Arts Institute. Their stipulated remuneration was
4 pesos a month and food, but as they had received only 1 peso per
month on account, and moreover claimed a rise in pay to 5 pesos, the
Visayos, on February 3, assembled on the central _plaza_ of the town
and menaced their general officers, who were quartered together in a
corner house over a barber's shop. They yelled out to their leaders
that if they did not give them their pay they would kill them all,
sack the town, and then burn it. Thereupon the generals hastened
round the town to procure funds, and appeased the Visayos with a
distribution of 1,800 pesos. The Tagálogs then broke out in much
the same way, and were likewise restrained by a payment on account
of arrears due. But thenceforth the insurgent troops became quite
uncontrollable and insolent to their officers. The fact that white
officers should have solicited their permission to come ashore unarmed
could only be interpreted by the Oriental, soldier or civilian, in a
way highly detrimental to the white man's prestige. The Americans'
good and honest intentions were only equalled by their nescience
of the Malay character. The officers came ashore; the townsfolk
marvelled, and the fighting-men, convinced of their own invincibility,
disdainfully left them unmolested. After the insurgent generals had
doled out their pay, the men went round to the shops and braggingly
avowed that it was lucky for the shopkeepers that they had got money,
otherwise they would have looted their goods. The Chinese shut up
their shops from the beginning of the troubles, leaving only a hole
in the closed door to do a little business, as they were in constant
fear for the safety of their lives and their stocks. A great many
families packed up their belongings and went over to Negros Island in
small schooners. The little passenger-steamers plying between Yloilo
and Negros were running as usual, crowded to the brim, and flying the
Philippine flag without interruption from the Americans. Amongst the
better classes opinions on the situation were much divided. The best
Philippine and Spanish families expressed their astonishment that
the Americans made no attempt to take the town immediately after the
Spanish evacuation. There were foreign merchants anxious to delay
the American investment because, meanwhile, they were doing a brisk
trade, and there were others longing to see the town in the hands
of any civilized and responsible Power. Delegates from one party
or the other, including the native civil government, went off in
boats almost daily to parley with General Miller in the roadstead,
each with a different line of real or sophistic argument. The best
native families, the foreigners of all classes--those who desired a
speedy entry of the Americans and those who sought to delay it--were
agreed as to the needlessness and the mistaken policy of announcing
a bombardment. Yloilo is a straggling, open town. The well-to-do
people asked, "Why bombard?" There were no fortifications or anything
to destroy but their house property. Plans were voluntarily offered
showing how and at which points a midnight landing of 400 or 500 troops
could be secretly effected for a sunrise surprise which would have
cleared the town in an hour of every armed insurgent. The officers
ashore declared they were ready; and as to the men, they were simply
longing for the fray, but the word of command rested with General
Miller.
In the evening of February 10 the native civil government held an
extraordinary session in the Town Hall to discuss the course to be
adopted in view of the announced bombardment. The public, Filipinos
and foreigners, were invited to this meeting to take part in the debate
if they wished, Raymundo Melliza, Victorino Mapa, Martin Delgado, and
Pablo Araneta, being amongst those who were present. It was proposed to
burn the town. Melliza vehemently protested against such a barbarous
act, and asked why they should destroy their own property? What
could they gain by pillage and flames? [219] But a certain V----
and his party clamoured for the destruction of the place, and being
supported by an influential lawyer (native of another province) and
by one of the insurgent generals, Melliza exclaimed, "If you insist
on plunder and devastation, I shall retire altogether," whereupon
a tremendous hubbub ensued, in the midst of which Melliza withdrew
and went over to Guimarás Island. But there were touches of humour
in the speeches, especially when a fire-eating demagogue gravely
proposed to surround an American warship with canoes and seize her;
and again when Quintin Salas declared that the Americans would have
to pass over his corpse before the town surrendered! Incendiaries
and thieves were in overwhelming majority at the meeting; naturally
(to the common people in these Islands) an invitation to despoil,
lay waste and slay, bolstered up by apparent authority, found a ready
response, especially among the Tagálog mercenaries who had no local
attachment here. The instigators of this barbarity sought no share
of the spoils; they had no property interests in Yloilo, but they
were jealous of those who had. The animosity of Jaro and Molo against
Yloilo had existed for years, the formers' townspeople being envious
of the prosperous development of Yloilo (once a mere fishing-village),
which obscured the significance of the episcopal city of Jaro and
detracted from the social importance of the rich Chinese half-caste
residential town of Molo. [220] Chiefly from these towns came the
advocates of anarchy, whose hearts swelled with fiendish delight at
the prospect of witnessing the utter ruin and humiliation of their
rivals in municipal prestige. Yloilo, from that moment, was abandoned
to the armed rabble, who raided the small shops for petroleum to throw
on to the woodwork of the houses prior to the coming onslaught. The
bombardment having been announced for the 12th, they reckoned on a
full day for burning and sacking the town. But early in the morning
of the 11th the steam-launch _Pitt_, whilst reconnoitring the harbour,
was fired upon; the launch replied and withdrew. Natives were observed
to be busy digging a trench and hastening to and from the _cotta_
at the harbour entrance; there was every indication of their warlike
intentions. Therefore suddenly, at 9 o'clock that morning, without
further notification, the Americans opened fire. The natives in the
_cotta_ fled along the quayway towards the centre of the town under
a shower of bullets hurled from the quick-firing guns. The attack
on Yloilo was hardly a bombardment proper; shells were intentionally
thrown over the houses as a warning and burst in suburban open spaces,
but comparatively few buildings were damaged by the missiles. In
the meantime, from early morn, the native soldiery, followed by a
riff-raff mob, rushed hither and thither, throwing firebrands on to the
petroleum-washed houses, looting stores, and cutting down whomsoever
checked them in their wild career. The Chinese barricaded themselves,
but the flames devoured their well-stocked bazaars; panic-stricken
townsfolk ran helter-skelter, escaping from the yelling bands of
bloodthirsty looters. Europeans, revolver in hand, guarded their
properties against the murderous rabble; an acquaintance of mine was
hastening to the bank to deposit P3,000 when he was met by the leader
S----, who demanded his money or his life; one foreign business house
was defended by 15 armed Europeans, whilst others threw out handfuls
of pesos to stay the work of the _pétroleur_. The German Vice-Consul,
an old friend of mine, went mad at the sight of his total loss;
a Swiss merchant, my friend for over 20 years, had his fine corner
premises burnt down to the stone walls, and is now in comparative
poverty. Even Spanish half-castes were menaced and contemptuously
called _Cachilas_ [221]; and the women escaped for their lives on
board the schooners in the harbour. Half the town was blazing, and
the despairing cries of some, the yells of exultant joy of others,
mingled with the booming of the invaders' cannon.
Two British warships lying in the roadstead sent boats ashore to
receive British subjects, and landed a party of marines, who made
gallant efforts to save foreign property. A few British subjects were,
however, unable to get away from the town on account of the premature
attack of the Americans, which took place on the 11th instead of
February 12, as previously announced.
The American assault on the town, which lasted until 1 o'clock in
the afternoon, was immediately followed up by the landing of about
1,000 volunteers, and General Miller found that the prognostications
of the townspeople were perfectly just, for the insurgents fled in
all directions. There was not a fighting-man left in the town. Some
of them continued their hurried flight as far as Santa Barbara and
Janiuay. It was evident that a sudden night-landing, without a word
about bombardment, would have been just as effective, and would
have prevented much misery and loss of life and property. Indeed,
the arrival of the American volunteers under these distressing
circumstances produced a fresh commotion in Yloilo. Without any
warrant private premises were entered, and property saved from the
natives' grasp vanished before the eyes of the owners. Finally order
was restored through the energetic intervention of American officials,
who stationed sentinels here and there to protect what still remained
of the townspeople's goods. In due course indemnity claims were
forwarded to the military authorities, who rejected them all.
The insurgents still lingered outside the town on the road to Jaro, and
General Miller marched his troops, in battle array, against them. A
couple of miles out of the town, in the neighbourhood of La Paz,
the entrenched enemy was routed after a slight skirmish. The booming
of cannon was heard in Yloilo for some hours as the American troops
continued their march to Jaro, only molested by a few occasional
shots from the enemy in ambush. The rebel chief Fulion and another,
Quintin Salas, held out for a short while, gradually beating a retreat
before the advancing column. The Tagálogs, once under the command of
the semi-civilized Diócno, disappeared in all directions, and finally
escaped from the province in small parties in canoes or as best they
could. The handful of braves who still thought fit to resist decided
to make a stand at Santa Bárbara, but on the arrival of the American
troops they dispersed like chaff before the wind. General Miller then
relinquished the pursuit and returned to Yloilo to await reinforcements
for a campaign through the Island. In the meantime military government
was established in Yloilo, the town was policed, trade resumed its
normal aspect, the insurgents in the Island gradually increased,
but the Philippine Republic in Panay was no more. It was clear to
all the most sober-minded and best-educated Ylongos that Aguinaldo's
government was a failure in Panay at least. The hope of agreement on
any policy was remote from its very initiation. Visayos of position,
with property and interests at stake, were convinced that absolute
independence without any control or protection from some established
Power was premature and doomed to disaster. Visayan jealousy of Tagálog
predominance had also its influence, but the ruling factor was the
Tagálog troops' dictatorial air and brutal conduct, which destroyed
the theory of fraternal unity. Self-government at this stage would
have certainly led to civil war.
Reinforcements arrived from Manila and the Americans entered
upon the pacification of the Island, which needed two years for
its accomplishment. The full record of the Panay campaign would
be a monotonous recital of scores of petty encounters of analogous
character. Pablo Araneta, in co-operation with a Spanish deserter named
Mariano Perez, met the Americans several times, and gave better proof
of his generalship in retreat than in advance. He operated only in the
province of Yloilo, and at Sambang, near Pavía, his party was severely
defeated and the "general" fled. Quintin Salas, over whose dead body,
he himself declared, the Americans would have to pass before Yloilo
surrendered, appeared and disappeared, from time to time, around
Dumangas. There was an encounter at Potian with Jolandoni which ended
badly for his party. The native priests not only sympathized with
the insurgents, but took an active part in their operations. Father
Santiago Pamplona, afterwards ecclesiastical-governor of the Visayas
(Aglipayan), held a command under Martin Delgado. Father Agustin Piña,
the parish priest of Molo and the active adviser in the operations
around Pavía--Jaro district, was caught by the Americans and died
of "water-cure." [222] The firebrand Pascual Macbanua was killed
at Pototan; and finally came the most decisive engagement at Monte
Singit, between Janiuay and Lambunao. The insurgent generalissimo,
Martin Delgado, took the field in person; but after a bold stand, with
a slight loss on the American side, the insurgents were completely
routed and their leader fled. Pablo Araneta, tired of generalship
without glory, surrendered to the Americans on December 31, 1899. The
war still continued for another year, Martin Delgado being one of
the last to declare his defeat. Early in December, 1900, overtures
for peace were made to General Miller, the delegates on the insurgent
side being Pablo Araneta, Jovito Yusay, and Father Silvestre Apura,
whilst Captain Noble represented the Americans. Martin Delgado and his
co-leaders soon surrendered. There was no question of conditions but
that of convincing the natives of the futility of further resistance
and the benefits to them of peace under American rule. With this end
in view, delegates went in commission to the several districts. Pablo
Araneta, Father Silvestre Apura, Father Práxedes Magálon and Nicolás
Roses visited the district of Concepcion (East Panay) in January 1901
and obtained the submission of the people there. Peace was at length
agreed upon; but the Filipinos were not disposed silently to draw
the veil over the past without glamour and pomp, even in the hour
of defeat. Therefore, on February 2, 1901, in agreement between the
parties, the remnant of the little Panay army made a formal surrender,
marching under triumphal arches into the episcopal city of Jaro
to stack their arms, between lines of American troops drawn up on
either side of their passage, to the strains of peaceful melody,
whilst the banners of the Stars and Stripes floated victoriously
in the sultry air. Jaro was crowded with visitors to witness this
interesting ceremonial. The booths did a bustling trade; the whole
city was _en féte,_ and the vanquished heroes, far from evincing
humiliation, mingled with the mob and seemed as merry as though the
occasion were the marriage-feast of the headman's daughter.
But to complete the picture of peace some finishing-strokes were yet
needful. Antique Province was still in arms, and a native commission
composed of Pablo Araneta, Father Silvestre Apura, Father Práxedes
Magálon, Victorino Mapa, Cornelio Melliza, and Martin Delgado proceeded
there, and succeeded in concluding peace for the Americans at the
end of February, 1901.
The Visayan chief who defied the American invader was no stout
patriot who leaves his plough to fight for cherished liberty, and
cheerfully returns to it when the struggle ends. The leaders of the
little Panay army and their civilian colleagues had to be compensated
for their acceptance of American rule. Aguinaldo was captured during
the month following the Peace of Panay; the war was coming to an end,
and Governor W. H. Taft made his provincial tour to inaugurate civil
government in the pacified Islands. Martin T. Delgado, the very man who
had inflicted such calamities upon the Yloilo people, was appointed,
on April 11, to be their first provincial Civil Governor at a salary of
$3,000 gold per annum, and held that office until March, 1904. Jovito
Yusay was given the provincial government secretaryship with a yearly
stipend of $1,800 gold; Pablo Araneta was rewarded with the post of
President of the Board of Health at an annual salary of $1,500 gold,
and Victorino Mapa was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court with an
annual emolument of $7,000 gold. In March, 1904, Raymundo Melliza,
ex-president of the native civil government, already referred to as
the advocate of social order, succeeded Delgado in the civil government
of the Yloilo province by popular vote.
Yloilo, formerly the second port of the Philippines, is situated on
the right bank of the creek. From the creek point to the square are
sheds used for sugar-storing, with, here and there, a commercial or
government office between. The most modern thoroughfares are traced
with regularity, and there are many good houses. In the square is the
church, which at a distance might be mistaken for a sugar-store, the
ruins of the Town Hall, the convent, and a few small, fairly well-built
houses of stone and wood, whilst all one side was once covered by a
fine new block of buildings of brick, stone and wood, with iron roofs.
The _Calle Real_ or High Street is a winding road, which leads through
the town into the country. The houses are indescribable--they are of
all styles. Without any pretence at architectural adornment, some are
high, others low; some stand back with several feet of pavement before
them, others come forward and oblige one to walk in the road. Here
and there is a gap, then a row of dingy hovels. This is the retail
trading-quarter and the centre for the Chinese. Going from the square
the creek runs along at the back of the right-hand-side houses;
turning off by the left-hand-side thoroughfares, which cannot be
called streets, there is a number of roughly-built houses and a few
good ones dispersed in all directions, with vacant, neglected plots
between. At the extreme end of the _Calle Real_ is the Government
House, built of wood and stone, of good style and in a fair condition,
with quite the appearance of an official residence. Before it is a
semicircular garden, and in front of this there is a round fenced-in
plot, in the middle of which stands a flag-staff. Just past the
Government House there is a bridge crossing the Jaro River, which
empties itself into the creek of Yloilo, and this creek is connected
with that of Otong. [223]
Yloilo lies low, and is always hot. Quite one-third of the shipping
and wholesale business quarter stands on land reclaimed from the
swamp by filling up with earth and rubble. The opposite side of
the creek, facing the shipping-quarter, is a low marshy waste,
occasionally converted into a swamp at certain tides. The creek
forms the harbour of Yloilo, which is just as Nature made it, except
that there is a roughly-constructed quayway on the left-hand shore
on entering. Only vessels of light draft can enter; large vessels
anchor in the roadstead, which is the channel between Yloilo harbour
and Guimarás Island.
The general aspect of Yloilo and its environs is most depressing. In
Spanish times no public conveyances were to be seen plying for hire
in the streets, and there is still no public place of amusement. The
Municipality was first established by Royal Order dated June 7, 1889.
Evidences of the havoc of 1899 are still visible at every turn in
Yloilo in the shape of old stone walls, charred remains, battered
houses, vacant spaces, etc. On the other hand, there are many
innovations since American administration superseded the native
civil government. The _plaza_, till then a dreary open space, is
now a pleasant shady promenade; electric lighting, an ice-factory,
four hotels, one American, one English, and three Philippine clubs,
large public schools, an improved quayway, a commodious Custom-house,
a great increase of harbour traffic, a superabundance of lawyers'
and pawnbrokers' sign-boards, and public vehicles plying for hire are
among the novelties which strike one who knew Yloilo in days gone
by. The Press is poorly represented by three daily and one weekly
newspapers. Taken as a whole Yloilo still remains one of the most
charmless spots in the Archipelago.
The people of _Negros Island_ were in the free enjoyment of local
independence since November 6, 1898, the day on which the Spanish
Governor, D. Isidro Castro y Cinceros, together with all his
official colleagues, capitulated to the revolutionists under the
leadership of Aniceto Lacson, Leandro Lacson, Juan Araneta, Nicolás
Gales, Simon Lizares, Julio Diaz, and José Montilla. Simultaneously
with the prosecution of the Panay Island campaign General Miller
opened negotiations for the submission of Negros Island to
American sovereignty. At that time the government of the Island
was being peacefully administered to the satisfaction of the Negros
revolutionists, at least, under the constitution proclaimed by them,
and presided over by their ex-commander-in-chief, Aniceto Lacson. [224]
General Miller therefore commissioned two Filipinos, Esteban de la
Rama and Pedro Regalado, [225] to proceed to Negros and negotiate
terms of surrender to the Americans. For the moment nothing further
was demanded than a recognition of American supremacy, and it was
not proposed to subvert their local organization or depose their
president. Aniceto Lacson accepted these terms, and General Miller
formally appointed him Governor of the Island in March, 1899. It
is evident, therefore, that no union existed between the local
government of Negros and Aguinaldo's Republic in Luzon. In fact,
when the Tagálog fighting-men, who were everywhere defeated in Panay,
made their escape to Negros and raised the cry of insurrection against
the Americans, Lacson was constrained to appeal to General Miller to
send over troops to quell the movement. Thereupon Colonel Smith was
deputed to take troops over to Negros to pursue the common enemy,
whilst, in perfect accord with the native governor Lacson, he acted
as military governor of the Island. The great cordillera which runs
through the centre of the Island from north to south forms a sort
of natural barrier between the people of Occidental and Oriental
Negros. There are trails, but there are no transversal highroads
from one coast to the other, and the inhabitants on each side live
as separated in their interests, and, to a certain degree, in their
habits, as though they were living in different islands. The people
on the eastern side have always strongly opposed anything approaching
governmental cohesion with the other side. Moreover, for many years
past, the south-eastern district of Negros Island has been affected by
sporadic apparitions of riotous religious monomaniacs called _Santones_
(_vide_ p. 189). These conditions, therefore, favoured the nefarious
work of the cunning Tagálog and Panay refugees, who found plenty
of plastic material in the Negros inhabitants for the fruitful
dissemination of the wildest and most fantastic notions anent the
horrors awaiting them in the new Anglo-Saxon domination. They found no
sympathy with the native government of Occidental Negros, which was as
much their enemy as the American troops sent to pursue them, but they
entertained the hope that by raising riot in Negros they would draw off
troops from Panay, and so favour the movement in that Island. Armed
groups rose everywhere against the Americans and the established
government. In the south-east the notorious Papa Isio appeared as a
_Santon_, preached idolatry, and drew to his standard a large band of
ruffians as skilled as himself in villainous devices. Insurgency, in
the true sense of the word, did not exist in Negros; opposition to the
American domination was merely a pretext to harass, plunder, and extort
funds from the planters and property-owners. The disaffected people
increased so largely in numbers that Colonel Smith was obliged to call
for reinforcements, and the disturbances only came to an end when it
was known that the Panay people had formally laid down their arms in
February, 1901. Shortly afterwards Governor W. H. Taft visited Negros
Island; the quasi-autonomous government of that region was modified
in conformity with the general plan of provincial civil governments,
and on August 9, 1901, Leandro Locsin (Ylongo by birth) succeeded to
the civil governorship, with a salary of $2,500 gold, by popular vote.
Notwithstanding the severities imposed on the Cebuános during the
last eight months of Spanish rule, the Spaniards were able to evacuate
_Cebú Island_ without menace or untoward event. For several months the
Governor, General Montero, had held in prison, between life and death,
a number of Filipinos of the best families, amongst whom was Julio
Llorente, who afterwards became President of Cebú and subsequently
a magistrate of the Supreme Court of Manila. General Montero made
a compact with a young Philippine lawyer, Sergio Osmeña (afterwards
acting-Governor of Cebú) that in exchange for two Spaniards held as
hostages in the interior he would release Llorente. Osmeña procured the
liberty of the Spaniards, but it was only on the eve of his departure
that Montero permitted the prison doors to be opened.
On December 26, 1898, a chartered merchant steamer called at Cebú
to transport the retiring Spaniards to Zamboanga, the place of
concentration designated by General Rios. The farewell was sadly brief,
and almost in silence the Governor handed over the government property
to a most worthy and loyal Cebúano, Pablo Mejía, who was my esteemed
friend for many years. The Governor even offered Mejía about 40 rifles;
but Mejía, a lover of order, wrongly believing that a long period
of tranquillity was about to set in, declined to accept them. And
without any manifestation of regret on the part of the governed,
the last vestige of Spanish authority vanished from the city which,
333 years before, was the capital of the Philippine Islands.
On the day following the departure of the Spaniards the Cebuános
established a provincial government in agreement with the _Katipunan_
party of Luzon, General Aguinaldo's direct representative being
Luis Flores, the chief leader of the armed Cebuános, to whom Pablo
Mejía handed over all that he had received from the ex-governor
Montero. From its establishment up to the last day of its existence,
this government used the seal and stamps of the Philippine Republic,
and was constituted as follows, viz.:--
_Provincial Council_
President and Commander-in-Chief Luis Flores.
Vice-President Julio Llorente.
Commissioner of Police Gen. Arcadio Maxílom.
Treasurer-General Pablo Mejía.
Minister of Justice Miguel Logarta.
Secretary to the Council Leoncio Alburo.
_Military Department_
Chief-of-Staff Gen. Juan Clímaco.
Military Administrator Arsenio Clímaco.
(Half-caste Chinese
and cousins.)
_Municipal Council (Junta Popular)_
Mayor Julio Llorente.
Councillors Several citizens elected
by popular vote.
The above constitution was in conformity with a decree of General
Aguinaldo dated June 18, 1898, and countersigned by Apolinario
Mabini. Local representatives of the provincial government were
appointed throughout the Island for the collection of taxes and the
maintenance of order, and the system worked fairly smoothly until
the arrival of the Americans in Cebú City, February 21, 1899. On that
date the American gunboat _Petrel_ and a large steam-launch suddenly
appeared in Cebú harbour. The United States Vice-Consul seems to have
been the only person who had received prior advice of their intended
arrival. The commander of the _Petrel_ sent a message ashore saying
that he desired an interview with the government representatives
and that he demanded the surrender of the city, and gave 14 hours
to the people to consider his demands; but, as a matter of fact,
the negotiations lasted about 24 hours, during which time a council
of Filipinos was hurriedly called to decide upon the course the
provincial government should adopt. Very divergent and extreme views
were expressed; Pablo Mejía, supported by Julio Llorente and Father
Julià, advocated an acceptance of the inevitable under protest,
whilst General Gabino Sepúlveda declared that he would spill his
last drop of blood before the Americans should take possession of
the city. But, in the end, Sepúlveda reserved his blood for a better
occasion, and eventually accepted employment under the Americans as
prosecuting attorney in Bojol Island. Pablo Mejía's advice was acted
upon, and in the name of the Cebuános, Luis Flores, the President of
the Council, signed a protest [226] which was handed to the commander
of the _Petrel_ by Pablo Mejía and Julio Llorente in the presence
of the United States Vice-Consul. The commander of the _Petrel_
forthwith landed 40 marines, who marched to the _Cotta de San Pedro_
(the fortress) and hoisted the American flag there in the presence of
armed Filipinos who looked on in silence. The marines then returned to
their vessel, which remained inactive anchored off the _cotta_, pending
the arrival of reinforcements which were sent to Cebú under the command
of Colonel Hamer. The provincial government was permitted to continue
its functions and use its official seal, and during five months there
was no manifest anti-American movement. During this period the American
commander of the troops adopted tactics similar to those employed by
General E. S. Otis in Manila against Aguinaldo prior to the outbreak
in February, 1899. Little by little the Americans required the armed
Filipinos to retire farther and farther away from the capital. This
practical isolation disgusted the several chiefs, who therefore agreed
to open the campaign against the invaders. Every act of the provincial
councillors was closely watched and discussed by the Cebuános, amongst
whom an intransigent faction secretly charged Mejía and Llorente with
being lukewarm in their protection of Philippine interests and unduly
favourable to American dominion. Their death was decreed, and Mejía was
assassinated as he was passing to his house from that of a neighbour
a few yards off. Luis Flores had already resigned public office,
and Llorente was, at this time, his successor in the presidency of
the Council. Fortunately for him, whilst the murderers were plotting
against his life he was called to Manila by General E. S. Otis,
two weeks after Mejía's death, to become a magistrate in the Supreme
Court. Segundo Singson (afterwards chief judge of the Court of First
Instance) then assumed the presidency of the provincial council.
On July 24, 1899, Juan Clímaco and Arcadio Maxílom, chafing at the
diminution of their influence in public affairs, suddenly disappeared
into the interior and met at Pardo, where the military revolutionary
centre was established. Aguinaldo's emissary, Pantaleon E. del
Rosario, Melquiades Lasala, a Cebuáno of Bogó (known as Dading),
Andrés Jayme, Lorega, and an Ilocano named Mateo Luga who had served
in the Spanish army, led contingents under the supreme command of the
insurgent General Arcadio Maxilom. In the interior they established
a fairly well-organized military government. The Island was divided
into districts; there was little interference with personal liberty;
taxes for the maintenance of the struggle were collected in the form of
contribution according to the means of the donor; agriculture was not
altogether abandoned, and for over two years the insurgents held out
against American rule. The brain of the movement was centred in Juan
Clímaco, whilst Mateo Luga exhibited the best fighting qualities. In
the meantime American troops were drafted to the coast towns of
Tubúran, Bogó, Cármen, etc. There were several severe engagements with
slaughter on both sides, notably at Monte Súdlon and Compostela. Five
white men joined the insurgent leader Luga, one being an English
mercenary trooper, two sailors, and two soldiers; the last two were
given up at the close of hostilities; one of them was pardoned, and
the other was executed in the _cotta_ for rape committed at Mandaue.
The co-existence of an American military administration in Cebú City
conducting a war throughout the Island, and a Philippine provincial
government with nominal administrative powers over the same region,
but in strong sympathy with the insurgent cause, was no longer
compatible. Moreover, outside the city the provincial government was
unable to enforce its decrees amongst the people, who recognized
solely the martial-law of the insurgents to whom they had to pay
taxes. The Americans therefore abolished the provincial council,
which was not grieved at its dissolution, because it was already
accused by the people of being pro-American. Philippine views of the
situation were expressed in a newspaper, _El Nuevo Dia_, founded by a
lawyer, Rafael Palma, and edited conjointly by Jayme Veyra (afterwards
a candidate for the Leyte Island governorship) and an intelligent
young lawyer, Sergio Osmeña, already mentioned at p. 521. This organ,
the type and style of which favourably compared with any journal
ever produced in these Islands, passed through many vicissitudes;
it was alternately suppressed and revived, whilst its editors were
threatened with imprisonment in the _cotta_ and deportation to
Guam. Meanwhile the Americans made strenuous efforts to secure the
co-operation of the Filipinos in municipal administration, but the
people refused to vote. Leading citizens, cited to appear before
the American authorities, persistently declined to take any part in
a dual _régime_. The electors were then ordered, under penalties,
to attend the polling, but out of the hundreds who responded to the
call only about 60 could be coerced into voting. Finally a packed
municipal council was formed, but one of its members, a man hitherto
highly respected by all, was assassinated, and his colleagues went
in fear of their lives.
The war in Panay Island having terminated on February 2, 1901,
by the general surrender at Jaro (_vide_ p. 518), General Hughes
went to Sámar Island, where he failed to restore peace, and thence
he proceeded to Cebú in the month of August at the head of 2,000
troops. A vigorous policy of devastation was adopted. Towns, villages
and crops were laid waste; Pardo, the insurgent military centre,
was totally destroyed; peaceful natives who had compulsorily paid
tribute to the insurgents at whose mercy they were obliged to live,
were treated as enemies; their homes and means of livelihood were
demolished, and little distinction was made between the warrior and
the victim of the war. Desolation stared the people in the face,
and within a few weeks the native provincial governor proposed
that terms of peace should be discussed. The insurgent chief Lorega
surrendered on October 22; Mateo Luga and Arcadio Maxílom submitted
five days afterwards and at the end of the month a general cessation
of hostilities followed. A neutral zone was agreed upon, extending
from Mandaue to Sógod, and there the three peace commissioners on
behalf of the Americans, namely Miguel Logarta, Pedro Rodriguez,
and Arsenio Clímaco met the insurgent chiefs Juan Clímaco and Arcadio
Maxilom. As a result, peace was signed, and the document includes the
following significant words, viz.: "putting the Philippine people in
a condition to prove their aptitude for self-government as the basis
of a future independent life." The signatories of this document on the
part of the Filipinos were Pantaleon E. del Rosario, Melquiades Lasala
and Andrés Jayme. After the peace, Mateo Luga and P. E. del Rosario
accepted employment under the Americans, the former as Inspector of
Constabulary and the latter as Sheriff of Cebú. A few months later,
the Americans, acting on information received, proceeded to Tubúran
on the government launch _Philadelphia_, arrested Arcadio Maxílom and
his two brothers, and seized the arms which they had secreted on their
property. On the launch, one of the Maxíloms unsuccessfully attempted
to murder the Americans and was immediately executed, whilst Arcadio
and his other brother jumped overboard; but Arcadio being unable to
swim, was picked up, brought to trial at Cebú, and acquitted. Thus
ended the career of General Arcadio Maxílom, whom in 1904 I found
living in retirement, almost a hermit's life, broken in spirit and
body and worried by numerous lawsuits pending against him.
On April 17,1901, Governor W. H. Taft went to Cebú accompanied by a
Filipino, H. Pardo de Tavera, whose views were diametrically opposed
to those of the Cebuáno majority. Governor Taft established civil
government there, although the law of _habeas corpus_ had to be
suspended because the war was still raging throughout the Island
outside the capital. The provincial government as established
by Governor Taft comprises a provincial board composed of three
members, namely the Philippine Provincial Governor, the American
Supervisor, and the American Treasurer: hence the Americans are in
permanent majority and practically rule the Island. The executive
of this body is the provincial governor and his staff. The first
provincial governor appointed by Governor Taft was Julio Llorente,
who resigned the magistracy in Manila and returned to Cebú to take
up his new office until the elections took place in January, 1902,
when, by popular vote, Juan Clímaco, the ex-insurgent chief, became
provincial governor, and on the expiration of his term in January,
1904, he was re-elected for another two years.
There is no noteworthy change in the aspect of Cebú since the American
occupation. It is a regularly-built city, with hundreds of good houses,
many relatively imposing public buildings, monuments, churches, and
interesting edifices. It is a cathedral city and bishop's see, full of
historical remininscences, and has still a very pleasant appearance,
notwithstanding its partial destruction and the many remaining
ruins caused by the bombardment by the Spanish warship _Don Juan de
Austria_ in April 1838, (_vide_ p. 403). Of special interest are the
Cathedral, the Church of _Santo Nino_, or the "Holy Child of Cebú"
(_vide_ p. 183), the Chapels of the Paul Fathers and of the Jesuits,
and the _Cotta de San Pedro_ (fortress). Also, just outside the city
proper is the Church of _San Nicolás_. Up to about the year 1876 the
Jesuits had a fine church of their own, but the friars, jealous of
its having become the most popular place of worship, caused it to be
destroyed. Until a few years ago the quarter known as the, _Parian_
was the flourishing centre of the half-caste traders. There was also a
busy street of Chinese general shops and native ready-made clothiers in
the _Lutao_ district, a thoroughfare which ran along the seashore from
the south of the city proper towards San Nicolás; it was completely
destroyed by the bombardment of 1898, and many of the shopkeepers have
erected new premises in the principal shopping street, called _Calle de
la Infanta_. Again, in 1905, a disastrous fire in the business quarter
of the city caused damage to the estimated extent of $500,000 gold.
There is a little colony of foreign merchants in Cebú, which formerly
ranked as the third port of the Archipelago, but now stands second in
importance to Manila (_vide_ Trade Statistics, Chap. xxxi.). Several
vice-consulates are established here, and in Spanish times it was
the residence of the military governor of Visayas as well as of the
governor of the Island and his staff of officials. In 1886 a Supreme
Court was inaugurated in Cebú. This city, which was the capital of
the Colony from 1565 to 1571, had a municipality up to the time of
Gov.-General Pedro de Arándia (1754-59). It was then abolished because
there was only one Spaniard capable of being a city councillor. One
alderman who had served--Juan Sebastian de Espina--could neither
read nor write, and the mayor himself had been deprived of office
for having tried to extort money from a Chinaman by putting his head
in the stocks. By Royal Order dated June 7, 1889, and put into force
by the Gov.-General's Decree of January 31, 1890, the municipality
was re-established. The president was the governor of the Island,
supported by an _Alcalde_ and 13 officials. For the government of
the Island under the Spanish _regime, vide_ Chap. xiii.
The municipality at present existing is that established by the
Taft Commission. The Press, in the days of the Spaniards, was poorly
represented by a little news-sheet, styled the _Boletin de Cebú_. There
are now two periodicals of little or no interest.
There are two large cemeteries at Guadalupe and Mabolo. In 1887 a
shooting-butts was established at the end of the Guadalupe road,
and the annual pony-races take place in January. On the Mabolo road
there is a Leper Hospital, and the ruins of a partly well-built jail
which was never completed.
Cebú is a port of entry open to foreign trade, with a Custom-house
established since the year 1863. The channel for vessels is marked by
buoys, and there are two lighthouses at the north and two at the south
entrance to the port. The environs are pretty, with Magtan Island
(on which Maghallanes was killed) in front and a range of hills in
the background. There are excellent roads for riding and driving a
few miles out of the city. The climate is very healthy for Europeans;
the low ranges of mountains running north to south of the Island are
sparsely wooded, some being quite bare of trees, and the atmosphere is
comparatively dry. The cactus is very common all over the Island, and
miles of it are seen growing in the hedges. About an hour and a half's
drive from Cebú City there is the little town of Naga, the environs
of which are extremely pretty. From the top of Makdoc Mountain,
at the back of the town, there is a splendid view of the Pandan Valley.
The Cebuános are the most sociable of the Visaya population, whilst
the women are the best-looking of all the Filipinas of pure Oriental
descent.
Of all places in the Philippines Cebú will please the conchologist. An
old native named Legaspi once had a splendid shell collection, which he
freely exhibited to foreigners. At one time he had a _Gloria Maris_,
which he sold for $150, and some Russian naval officers are said
to have offered him $5,000 for a part of his collection. At certain
seasons of the year the _Euplectella speciosa_, Gray, or Venus baskets,
locally known as _Regaderas_, can be obtained in quantities; they are
found in the Cebú waters. The _Eup. spec_, is the skeleton secretion of
an insect of the Porifera division. The basket is a series of graceful
fretted spirals. Also fine _Piña_ stuffs can be purchased here.
The population of Cebú City was 9,629 in 1888; 10,972 in 1896; and
18,330 in 1903. The inhabitants of the whole Island numbered 417,543
in 1876; 518,032 in 1888; 595,726 in 1896; and 653,727 in 1903.
In March, 1899, an American armed force was detailed from Cebú City
to _Bojol Island_ to demand the surrender of the native provincial
government established there since the Spanish evacuation. Interpreters
from Cebú were sent ashore, and after hearing their explanation of the
Americans demands the native president in council resolved to yield
peacefully. A volunteer regiment was then sent ashore, positions were
occupied, and all went smoothly on the surface until the Islanders'
powers of endurance were exhausted after 22 months of alleged harsh
treatment imposed upon them by the troops. In January, 1901, the cry
of rebellion was raised by one Pedro Sanson, whose band of Bojolanos,
augmented by levies from Leyte, Sámar, and Panay Islands numbered
about 2,000. Expeditions were sent out against them, and the lukewarm
sympathy of the Islanders was turned to general indignation against the
Americans by the alleged wanton destruction of a whole town by fire, by
order of a captain of volunteers. Practically the whole Island became
covertly anti-American. Having finished his campaign in Cebú Island in
October, 1901, General Hughes carried his troops over to Bojol Island,
where measures of repression were adopted similar to those which had
been so effective in reducing the Cebuános to submission. A large
number of small towns and villages within the range of military
operations were entirely destroyed. The once pretty little town
of Lauang was left a complete ruin, and many landmarks of a former
progressive civilization have disappeared for ever. Nevertheless, the
insurgents refused to yield until a decree was issued to the effect
that if the leaders did not surrender by December 27 the invaders
would burn down the town of Tagbiláran. In this town, formerly the
seat of the native provincial government, Pedro Sanson and most of his
officers had all their property and worldly possessions; and in view
of the beggary which awaited them if they held out any longer, they
accepted terms of peace from Pantaleon E. del Rosario, who went up to
the mountains and acted as negotiator between General Hughes and the
insurgent chiefs who finally surrendered. The Filipino, Aniceto Clarin,
appointed provincial governor on April 20, 1901, continued in office;
Pedro Sanson quietly resumed his occupation of dealer in hemp, etc.,
and thenceforth peace and poverty reigned in the Island.
In _Cottabato_ (Mindanao Is.), the attempt to establish a local native
government ended in tragic failure. In January, 1899, a Spanish
gunboat silently entered the port without the customary whistling
and firing of salute. It brought a despatch to the Governor from the
nominal acting-Gov.-General Rios, who, coming from Yloilo, called at
Zamboanga before proceeding to Manila, to receive on board a number of
Spanish refugees. One of the crew of the gunboat also brought a private
communication from the Jesuit Superior in Zamboanga to the Jesuit
missionary Father Suarez. The official despatch notified the Governor
that the Treaty of Paris had been signed, and consequently he was to
evacuate Cottabato immediately. The private communication told the
same tale to the missionary, with an inquiry from the Jesuit Superior
as to whether he could continue his mission after the withdrawal of
the Spanish Governor, and whether it would be of any advantage to do
so. The Governor informed the missionary of his intended departure,
and the missionary replied negatively to his superior in Zamboanga. The
Governor then called Roman Vilo, his confidential christian native
assistant, and told him that he and all who had been loyal to the
Spanish Government and faithful in their service could take passage
to Zamboanga. Vilo, however, for himself and his family, declined
the offer on the ground that all his interests were in and about
Cottabato, where he possessed real estate. The Governor then had the
Moro-Chinese half-caste Datto Piang called, and in the presence of
Vilo the former was appointed chief of the Moro people and the latter
governor of the christian population. After making a short speech,
exhorting the two chiefs, in benevolent phrases, to live in peace
and act mutually for the common good, the Governor, accompanied by
the Jesuit missionaries and others who were desirous of leaving the
place, went to Zamboanga on the gunboat.
When, after the lapse of some weeks, Datto Piang felt sure that
the Spaniards would never be again in authority at Cottabato, he
begged Vilo to let him have twenty rifles to defend himself against a
rival. The christian governor agreed to this, and week by week Datto
Piang's demands grew until, at length, all the rifles in the possession
of the Christians passed to the Moros. But there still remained some
cannons, and Datto Piang, having represented the necessity of making
war on another chief up the Cottabato River, Vilo was persuaded to
lend them to him. Piang had them placed in _vintas_ (war-junks) and
Vilo, with several friends, went down to the river-side to witness
the departure of the supposed armed expedition. Suddenly Piang, his
son-in-law Datto Ali and this man's brother, Datto Djimbangan, at the
head of a large party of armed Moros, fell upon and slaughtered the
Christians. Vilo's head was cut off and the savage Mahometans made a
raid on the town, looting all but the shops of the Chinese who were in
league, or accord, with their half-countryman Piang. The Christians who
were unable to escape were either massacred or carried off as slaves
into the interior, with the loot. Datto Djimbangan caused the Christian
women to be stripped naked and marched through the streets, whilst he
and his companions made their selections for themselves, leaving the
remainder for their followers. Amongst the captives were a father and
two sons. In October, 1899, the Americans sent a gunboat to Cottabato,
and the wife of this captive, mother of his two boys, represented her
plight to the commander, who forthwith sent for Piang and ordered him
immediately to send a message to the individual holding the captives
to release them and hand them over to the messenger, who would conduct
them back to Cottabato. Piang, without a moment's hesitation, offered
to comply, and sent a _vinta_ up the river with the required order,
but at the same time he secretly sent another emissary overland with
contrary instructions. The land messenger, as was expected, arrived
first, and when the _vinta_ party reached the place of captivity,
Piang's people expressed their regret that they could not oblige the
party because they had just cut off the captives' heads. In 1904 a
member of the victims' family was a teacher in the Jesuits' Catholic
School in Zamboanga. Datto Piang, who owes his position and influence
over the Moros to the protection of the late great Datto Utto (_vide_
p. 143) is the father-in-law of the terrible Datto Ali whose continual
depredations and defiance made Cottabato the centre of that unabated
conflict for the Americans described in Chapter xxix.
In the belief that the Zamboangueños were loyally disposed towards
Spain, the Spaniards, after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, chose
_Zamboanga_ (Mindanao Is.) as their point of concentration of all the
Spanish troops and civil servants in the southern islands. At that time
General Jaramillo was Gov.-General of Mindanao Island and commander of
the forces in Zamboanga; but on the arrival there, December 27, 1898,
of the ex-governor of Cebu, General Montero, with his co-refugees,
General Jaramillo transferred his command to him and left for Manila
with General Rios, who had come from Yloilo to Zamboanga to receive
refugee passengers for the capital. Before his departure Jaramillo
had led the Zamboangueño Christians to believe that the war with
America was, at every turn, a triumphant success for Spanish arms;
fictitious printed telegrams were circulated announcing Spanish
victories everywhere, and one of the most extravagant reported that
General Weyler had landed on American soil at Key West with an army of
80,000 Spanish troops. The motive of this harmless ruse was to bolster
up Spanish prestige and thereby avoid bloodshed. During several months
no trading or mail-steamer came, and the Zamboangueños were practically
cut off from the rest of the world. Military preparations were made
for the feigned purpose of resisting a possible attack on the place
by the Americans, who were described to the people as cannibals and
ferocious monsters more terrible than the dreaded Moros. Naturally
the real object of the military preparations was the Spaniards'
justifiable endeavour to be ready to defend themselves against open
rebellion when the true situation should ooze out. Nor was their
misrepresentation of the Americans mere spiteful calumny; the Spaniards
were in great jeopardy, and they instinctively wished to destroy any
feeling of welcome which the natives might have for the new-comers
for fear it might operate against themselves at the supreme moment of
danger. Indeed, each party--native and Spanish--was seeking to outwit
the other; hence, when the Zamboangueños were promised a supply of arms
for the ostensible purpose of resisting invasion, they pretended to
co-operate heartily with the Spaniards' defensive measures, with the
secret design of dispossessing the Spaniards of their arms in order to
use them against them. The Zamboangueños therefore became so persistent
in their demand upon Montero to fulfil his predecessor's promise
that at last he had frankly to confess that peace had been signed
between Spain and America, whereby the Islands were surrendered to the
United States, and that very shortly the Spaniards would evacuate the
Archipelago. But the conflicting versions of the situation, published
severally by Jaramillo and Montero, sorely puzzled the natives. The
Spaniards were still in undisturbed possession of Zamboanga for over
four months after Montero's arrival, notwithstanding the fact that
the American warship _Boston_ called at the port and left the same
day and that an officer came ashore without the least objection
or consternation on the part of the Spaniards. The orange-and-red
flag still floated over the Fortress del Pilar, and, so far as the
Zamboangueños could ascertain, it looked as if the Spaniards were
going to remain. They therefore clamoured more loudly than ever for
the distribution of arms, which this time Montero positively refused,
for the Spaniards had never for a moment been deceived as to the real
intentions of the Zamboangueños. On the other hand, by this time,
their inoffensive delusion of the people had lost its virtue, and
natives and Spaniards thenceforth became open enemies. After the
visit of the _Boston_ the fighting population, no longer able to
conceal their disappointment, threw off the mask, quitted the town,
cut off the water-supply which came from the mountains, in collusion
with the mutinied crews seized the firearms on board the Spanish
gunboats lying in the harbour, and prepared for war against their
old masters. The Spaniards immediately compelled the non-combatant
townspeople and the Chinese to throw up earthworks for mounting
artillery and dig trenches for defence against the rebels. The gunboat
_Alava_ co-operated by firing shells into the rebel camp situated
just outside the town. The rebels made two unsuccessful assaults,
and in the second attack General Montero was mortally wounded by a
rifle-shot. On May 23 the S.S. _Leon XIII._ arrived; the Spaniards
silently embarked for Manila with their dying general, who succumbed
during the voyage, and Zamboanga, one-fourth of which the defenders
had destroyed by fire, was occupied by the rebels. During the siege
the Filipinos, true to their instincts, had split up into two rival
factions headed by Vicente Alvarez and Isidoro Midel respectively,
and in the interval between the first and second assault on the town
these party chiefs had fought out their own quarrel, Midel claiming to
have been the victor. Nevertheless, the popular favourite was Vicente
Alvarez, known as the _Tamagun Datto_ (high chief), who became the
chosen president of the Zamboanga revolutionary government established
immediately after the Spanish evacuation. Party spirit ran high;
life was held in little esteem; a lifeless body found on the highway
startled no one; assassination was an occurrence of small moment;
cattle-shooting was practised for amusement, and the five-and-a-half
months' essay of christian Philippine autonomy was so signalized by
jealous self-interest, bitter rivalry, rapacity, and bloodshed as to
make one doubt whether the christian Zamboangueño is one whit superior
to his Mahometan neighbour in moral character.
The arrival of an American expedition in the waters of Zamboanga
on November 15, 1899, produced a sanguinary crisis in these faction
feuds. Vicente Alvarez at once took measures to oppose the invaders'
landing, whilst his rival, Isidoro Midel, resolved to side with
the Americans. _Divide et impera._ The want of unity amongst the
natives themselves was a great help to the Americans' plans. By this
time there appeared a third aspirant to local fame in the person of
Melanio Sanson, a native marine engineer, until recently in the Spanish
service, who pretended to co-operate with Alvarez, styling himself
colonel of artillery in charge of the guns abandoned by his former
masters. Each of these three individuals sought to rid himself of his
two rivals. On the night of November 15 Isidoro Midel ended Melanio
Sanson's rivalry for ever, and the Americans took peaceful possession
of the town the next day. Subsequently Midel arranged a transfer
to the Americans of the artillery which had, during the conflict,
been under Sanson's control. Vicente Alvarez immediately fled to
Mercedes, and thence to Basilan Island, where, aided by Datto Pedro
Cuevas, he organized a brigand band, crossed over to Mindanao Island
again, and made a raid on Oriquieta. Chased from place to place by
American troops, he was finally captured and sent to Bilibid prison
in Manila, but was subsequently pardoned on his taking the oath of
allegiance, and sent back to Zamboanga, where he earns his living
peacefully. Meanwhile, Isidoro Midel had been further rewarded for his
services to the Americans with the office of municipal president, which
he held for about 16 months in defiance of public opinion. The feeling
which prompted public opposition to Midel's appointment was at least
as much anti-American as it was dislike for the nominee. In March,
1901, municipal elections were held, and Mariano Arquiza succeeded,
by popular vote, to the presidency, which he held for two years. Some
weeks before Arquiza vacated office two American miners were murdered
by the natives a few miles up the province. The murderers, when caught,
sought to justify their deed by alleging that a municipal councillor
named Eduardo Alvarez (no relation to the Vicente Alvarez already
mentioned) had persuaded them that the miners were secretly engaged in
poisoning the local wells. The whole municipal council was therefore
cited to appear before the American Governor, who severely reprimanded
Alvarez, whereupon this man withdrew from the audience-chamber, and
his fellow-councillors volunteered such information against him that
the Governor instantly issued a warrant for his apprehension. But the
native police who went to his house to execute the warrant let him
escape on horseback to the mountains, where he organized a band of
outlaws and lived for about four months by robbery and violence. Under
these circumstances the American Governor summarily dismissed Mariano
Arquiza from the municipal presidency in the spring of 1903, and, much
to the public chagrin, re-appointed Midel to the vacancy. The offer of
$1,000 for the capture of Eduardo Alvarez spurred Midel into further
activity, and under his direction the bandit was discovered hiding
in a canoe in a swamp. On the approach of his pursuers the outlaw
threw up his hands in sign of surrender, which was responded to by
a volley of gunshots, for it was Alvarez's corpse which was wanted
in Zamboanga. Isidoro Midel is an interesting character, apparently
about forty-eight years of age. Brought up as a Roman Catholic, he
assured me that he was a Protestant, with the strongest sympathy,
however, for the Aglipayan movement (_vide_ Chap. xxx.).
Another interesting man, closely associated with recent events in
Zamboanga, is the Mahometan Spanish-Moro half-caste Datto Mandi, the
_Rajahmudah_ or heir-apparent to the _Manguiguin_ or Sultan of Mindanao
(_vide_ p. 131). Born about the year 1860, he and his tribe of Sámals
lived on friendly terms with the Spaniards, who in 1887 sent him and
a number of his people to the Philippine Exhibition held in Madrid in
that year. His exploits in aid of the Spaniards in Cebú are recorded at
page 406. He speaks Spanish fluently, and can just write his name. He
is very affable and hospitable to visitors. The whole family professes
the Mahometan religion. He has a beautiful daughter Gafas (which
in Moro language signifies "cotton," and in Spanish "spectacles"),
who attended the American School. His young son Facundo also goes to
the American School, and his other son Pelayo went to the Catholic
School in Zamboanga before he was sent to Manila. I was much struck
with the intelligence of this handsome boy Pelayo. In the stirring
events which immediately followed the Spanish evacuation, Datto Mandi
remained neutral, his old antagonism to Alvarez being counterpoised by
the conviction that a Zamboanga republic must end in a fiasco. He at
once accepted the new situation under American dominion, and is headman
of the Sámal tribal ward of Magay, a suburb of Zamboanga. He told me
in 1904 that he held under his control 9,600 persons, from 1,700 of
whom he collected capitation tax for the American authorities. At
the instance of the Americans, Datto Mandi issued a proclamation
to his tribe, dated April 19, 1900, abolishing their traditional
custom of slavery. His position is not at all an easy one, and it
needs much tact to maintain an even balance of goodwill between his
Sámal subordinates and his American superiors. But Datto Mandi had a
grievance which rankled in his breast. In the year 1868 the Spanish
Government conceded to a christian native family named Fuentebella
some 600 acres of land at Buluan, about 40 miles up the Zamboanga
coast, which in time they converted into a prosperous plantation well
stocked with cattle. During the anarchy which succeeded the Spanish
evacuation, a band of about 600 Moros raided the property, murdered
seven of the christian residents, and stole all they could possibly
carry away from the plantation and well-furnished estate-house. When
Datto Mandi heard of it he went there in person and rescued the
women held in captivity and brought them to Zamboanga, where they
lived in perfect security under his protection until the American
advent. Then, in return for his kindness, these women accused the
_Datto_ of having been the instigator of the crime, or, at least,
a participator in the proceeds thereof, in the hope that, through
the Americans, they would be able to exact an indemnity. The _Datto_
was mulcted in the sum of 5,000 pesos, although he declared to me that
neither before nor after the crime was he in any way concerned in it;
and this was the honest belief of many American officials in Zamboanga.
In January, 1905, Datto Mandi's daughter was married at a little town
a few miles from Yligan (north Mindanao). Several American officers
were present on the occasion, accompanied by a Spanish half-caste
who acted as their interpreter. The assembled guests were having
a merry time when suddenly the festivities were interrupted by the
intrusion of a _juramentado_ Moro fanatic, who sprang forward with
his _campilán_ and at one blow almost severed the interpreter's head
from his body. Then he turned his attention to the other natives,
mortally wounded two, and cut gashes in several others before he fell
dead from the revolver-shots fired by the American officers. After
the dead and wounded were carried away and the pools of blood were
mopped up, the wedding ceremony was proceeded with and the hymeneal
festival was resumed without further untoward incident.
Zamboanga is a clean, pleasant town, and what was left of it
after the Spanish evacution is well built, with many substantial
houses and public offices, a church administered by the Jesuits,
one large and one small jetty, a pretty esplanade facing the sea,
and other open spaces. A canal running through the town adds to
its picturesqueness. At the eastern extremity is the old fortress,
called the _Fuerza del Pilar_, a fine historical monument reminding
one of the Spaniards' many vicissitudes in this region, alluded to
in the preceding pages. Many of the natives concerned, or alleged to
have been concerned, in the Cavite Rising of 1872 (_vide_ p. 106)
were confined in this fortress. They overcame their jailors and
obtained possession of the guns and ammunition. The Spaniards were
consequently in great straits, for possibly their existence depended
on which side the townspeople took. The Zamboangueños, however, helped
the Spaniards against the revolted convicts, who were finally subdued;
and as a reward for this proof of loyalty Zamboanga received the title
of _Muy leal y valiente Villa_ (very loyal and heroic town). Many years
ago a Moro attack was made on Zamboanga, and the Christian natives
joined with the Spaniards in repelling it. It would have gone rather
badly with them if they had not done so, for a Philippine Christian
was just as good fish for the Moro net as a Spaniard. However, their
co-operation was gratefully acknowledged by declaring the Zamboangueños
to be Spaniards of the first class.
I have never been able to discern clearly what material advantage
this brought them, although I have discussed the question on the
spot. The disadvantage of this pompous distinction to the town arose
from the ridiculous popular notion that whereas Spaniards in Spain
are all cavaliers, they too, as Spaniards of the first water, ought to
regard work as a degradation. Hence they are a remarkably indolent and
effete community, and on landing from a ship there is seldom a porter
to be seen to carry one's luggage. Their speech is a dialect called
_Chabucano_--a mixture of very corrupt Spanish and native tongues.
The environment of Zamboanga is very beautiful, with islands to the
south and mountain scenery on the land sides. The climate is healthy,
and with the frequent delightful breezes wafted across the Celebes
Sea is not at all oppressive for a tropical region, and is cooler
than Manila, which is 425 miles north.
The people of _Sámar Island_ for a long time tenaciously opposed
the American occupation, under several leaders, notably Vicente
Lucban and his right-hand man, Guevara; but neither here, nor in
_Marinduque Island_ can it be said that native civil government was
established. In the latter Island the insurgent chief was the titular
Colonel Abad, who overran the villages with about 150 followers
armed with rifles. In 1901 Abad surrendered, and hostilities, with
real political aim, definitely ended in these Islands thirteen months
after the capture of Aguinaldo in Luzon. Although in Sámar Island the
war was, as elsewhere, a succession of petty encounters, there were
incidents in its prosecution which attracted much public attention
from time to time. At the town of Balangiga, on September 28, 1901,
the local headman and the native parish priest conspired with about
450 armed natives to attack the American camp. The garrison stationed
there was Company "C," 9th Infantry. The headman had represented to
the Americans that he was busy with an important capture of about 90
brigands, and on this pretext some 45 cut-throats were brought into
the town and lodged in the church. Three officers of the garrison were
quartered in the parish-house, and whilst the rank-and-file were at
breakfast in a bamboo building, some distance away from their quarters
where they had left their weapons, another 45 supposed brigands were
led through the town to the church, but naturally the soldiers took
little notice of this expected event. The town is surrounded on one
side by the open valley and on three sides by almost perpendicular
mountains, with defiles between them leading to the interior of the
Island. As soon as the last batch of supposed brigands was brought
in, the church bells were rung as a signal for a mob of natives,
armed with bowie-knives, to creep silently through the defiles on two
sides. The troopers were just then suddenly alarmed by the noise of a
conflict in the parish-house. The 90 so-called brigands having been
passed through from the church into this house, fired at the three
officers and then killed them with their bowie-knives. Simultaneously
the soldiers' quarters were attacked. Whilst the troops made a rush
forward to secure their weapons they were intercepted by an armed
crowd, through which a small party of Americans finally cut their
way and beat off the howling mob, which had already slaughtered many
soldiers, set fire to the quarters, and possessed themselves of over
50 rifles and several thousand rounds of ammunition. A large number
of hostile natives, including the headman, were killed; 28 Americans
effected their escape, but the loss amounted to three officers and
about 70 men killed and several more men wounded. General Hughes, in
command of the Visayas District, was operating in Cebú Island at the
time of this disaster. Public excitement was intense when the news
of this serious reverse was published. The general who was sent to
Sámar to pursue the insurgents, or bandits, is alleged to have issued,
in a moment of uncontrollable wrath, an order to "slay all over ten
years and make Sámar a howling wilderness." Consequently a great
cry of public protest was raised, and the general and his executive
officer in the affair were cited before a court-martial in April,
1902; but the court having found that the general was justified in
the measures he took, both officers were acquitted. Since the capture
of Lucban (April 27, 1902), lawless agitation has been persistently
rife all over the Island of Sámar; but this is the work of brigands
(_vide_ p. 551) and has no political signification.
CHAPTER XXVI
The Spanish Prisoners
Extreme interest was naturally taken by all Europeans in the miserable
fate of the thousands of Spanish soldiers and civilians who had fallen
into the rebels hands up to the capitulation of Manila. [227] Held
captive in groups at different places in the Island of Luzon, many of
them passed a wretched existence, with bad food, scant clothing, and
deprived of every pleasure in life beyond the hope of one day seeing
their native land. Many of them died, either from natural causes or
the effect of their privations (some of starvation in Tayabas), or
as a result of brutal treatment. A minority of them received as good
treatment as possible under the circumstances. The fate of the majority
depended chiefly upon the temperament of the native commander of the
district. There were semi-savage native chiefs, and there were others,
like Aguinaldo himself, with humane instincts. Amongst the former,
for instance, there was Major Francisco Braganza, who, on February
28, 1900, in Camarines Sur, ordered one hundred and three Spanish
soldiers to be tied up to trees and cut and stabbed to death with
bowie-knifes and their bodies stripped and left without burial. He
was tried by court-martial and sentenced to be hanged, September 26,
1901, and the sentence was carried out at Nueva Cáceres (Camarines
Sur) on November 15 following. Many prisoners managed to escape, no
doubt with the aid or connivance of natives, until Aguinaldo issued a
decree, dated Malolos, November 5, 1898, imposing a penalty of twenty
years' imprisonment on whomsoever should give such aid. Aguinaldo
told me he was personally inclined to liberate these prisoners, or,
at least, those civilians accustomed to an easy office life who,
if they went free, would have had no inclination whatever to fight,
but would have done their best to embark for Spain. The few who might
have broken their _parole_ would have been easily caught again "for
the last time in their lives," and the women and children were an
obstacle to military operations. Indeed, from time to time, Aguinaldo
did liberate small groups of civilians, amongst whom were some of
my old friends whom I afterwards met in Spain. Aguinaldo's Prime
Minister, Apolinario Mabini (_vide_ p. 546), was, however, strongly
in favour of retaining the Spaniards as hostages until the Spanish
Government should officially recognize the Philippine Republic. It
will be clearly seen from the negotiations entered into between the
respective parties that this recognition was the condition which
the rebels most pertinaciously insisted upon, whilst the Spaniards'
offers of millions of dollars were always met by much larger demands,
which practically implied a refusal to treat on a money basis. The
facts in the negotiations certainly support Aguinaldo's statement
to me that the rebels never sought money, but political advantage,
by the retention of the prisoners.
The intense excitement in Spain over the prisoners' doom called into
existence meetings, liberation societies, frequent discussions in
and out of Parliament, and continual protests against the apparent
Ministerial lethargy. In reality, the Spanish Government, fearful of
a rupture with America, could take no official action in the matter,
further than appeal, indirectly, to the generosity of the captors, and
remind America of her undertaking under Article 6 of the treaty. In
January, 1899, the Colonial Minister cabled to several people in
Manila, begging them to use their influence--but they themselves
were already in the rebel camp. No form of compensation in money or
armament for the captives' liberty could be officially made without
involving Spain in a _casus belli_ with America. Recognition of a
Philippine Republic would have been in direct opposition to the spirit
of the treaty of peace. In September, 1898, the Superiors of the
regular clergy in Manila appealed to Rome; the Vatican communicated
with President McKinley, and the President sent an inquiry to
Maj.-General E. S. Otis concerning the captive friars. General
Otis, after investigation, reported that these prisoners were fairly
well treated. In the following month, whilst the Treaty of Paris was
under discussion, the Spanish Government appealed to the United States
Government to aid them in the rescue of the prisoners, and orders to do
so were transmitted to General Otis. The Filipinos and the Americans
were ostensibly on good terms at that period, and General Otis
suggested to Aguinaldo that the friars and civilian Spaniards should be
set free. On the subject of this request, Aguinaldo replied to General
Otis by letter dated Malolos, November 3, 1898, as follows, viz:--"The
Philippine people wish to retain the Spanish civil functionaries in
order to obtain the liberty of the Filipinos who are banished and
under arrest, and the friars in order to obtain from the Vatican a
recognition of the rights of the Philippine secular clergy.... It is
not hatred or vengeance which inspires the Filipinos to retain the
Spanish civil and religious functionaries, but political expediency,
and the tranquillity of the Philippine people demands this measure."
At this date there were hundreds of Philippine prisoners held by
the Spanish Government in different places, some of them under
worse conditions than the Spanish prisoners. For instance, 218 were
deported to the fever-stricken colony of Fernando Po, and only 94 of
them came out alive. The treaty of peace was still being discussed,
and on its conclusion, Article 6 stipulated a release of "all persons
detained or imprisoned for political offences in connection with
the insurrections in Cuba and the Philippines," and that the United
States would "undertake to obtain the release of all Spanish prisoners
in the hands of the insurgents"; but there was no proviso that the
release of the Philippine prisoners should depend on that of the
Spanish prisoners, and after the treaty was signed, Spain showed no
particular haste immediately to carry out her undertaking to return
the Philippine prisoners to their islands.
When General Diego de los Rios evacuated the Visayas Islands and
brought his Spanish troops to Manila, _en route_ for Spain, January,
1899, he himself remained in Manila as a Spanish Government Agent
to obtain the release of the prisoners. For the special purpose, by
courtesy of the American authorities, he held a kind of semi-official
position; but he did not care to risk his person within
the rebel lines. A Spanish merchant, Don Antonio Fuset, president of
the Spanish Club, undertook the negotiations, and succeeded in inducing
Apolinario Mabini to issue a decree signed by Aguinaldo and himself,
dated January 22, 1899, giving liberty to all invalid civilians
and soldiers. Simultaneously the Spanish Press in Manila was abusing
Aguinaldo and his officers, calling them monkeys and using epithets
which brought down their vengeance on the captives themselves.
The outbreak of the War of Independence (February 4, 1899)
precluded direct American intervention in favour of the Spanish
prisoners. General Rios, whose importance was being overshadowed by
Señor Fuset's productive activity, cabled to Madrid that he would
attend to the matter himself. But the didactic tone of his letters
to Aguinaldo was not conducive to a happy result, and having frankly
confessed his failure, the general made an appeal to the consuls and
foreign merchants to exercise conjointly their influence. A letter
of appeal from them was therefore drawn up and confided for delivery
in the insurgent camp to my late friend Baron Du Marais. [228] This
chivalrous gentleman, well known as the personification of integrity
and honour, had resided many years in the Islands and spoke Tagálog
fluently. On reaching the insurgent camp he was imprisoned on the
charge of being a spy, but was shortly afterwards released, and on
his way back to the capital he was waylaid by the natives, who foully
murdered him. Señor Fuset then resumed his labours, and, as a result
of his appeal to the generosity of his countrymen, he was able to
set out for Boac and Batangas in the little steamer _Castellano_ to
carry supplies to the prisoners detained in those localities. On his
journey he distributed to them 500 cotton suits, 290 pairs of shoes,
100 pairs of _alpargatas_ (a sort of hempen shoe or sandal made in
Spain), 14,375 packets of cigarettes, and P1,287. Several subsequent
expeditions carried supplies to the prisoners, the total amount of
material aid furnished to them, in goods and money, being estimated
at P60,000.
After five months of fruitless effort General Diego de los Rios
left Manila for Spain on June 3, 1899, and was succeeded by General
Nicolás Jaramillo as the negotiator representing Spain. Moreover,
it was desirable to recall General Rios, whose cablegrams commenting
on the Americans' military operations were making him a _persona non
grata_ in official circles.
With the requisite passes procured from Aguinaldo, two Spanish envoys,
Señores Toral and Rio, and the Filipino Enrique Marcaida set out for
the insurgent seat of government, which was then at Tárlac. On their
arrival there (June 23) Aguinaldo appointed three commissioners to
meet them. At the first meeting the Filipinos agreed to liberate
all except the friars, because these might raise trouble. At the
next meeting they offered liberty to all on the following terms,
impossible of acceptance by the Spanish commissioners, viz.:--
(1) Spain is to recognize the Independence of the Philippines and
repudiate the cession of the Islands to America.
(2) After the recognition and repudiation stipulated in Clause 1, the
Philippine Republic will liberate all the prisoners, without exception,
and will pay their expenses back to Spain. If Spain cannot possibly
accede to the conditions of Clause 1, the Philippine Republic will
accept, in lieu thereof, arms, munitions and provisions, or their
money equivalent.
(3) The Spanish Government is to exchange the receipts given for
money subscribed to the Philippine loan for the certificates of that
loan. [229]
The Filipinos declined to say what sum they would consider an
equivalent, as per Clause 2, and invited the Spaniards to make an
offer. The Spaniards then proposed P1,000,000.
On June 29, at the third conference, the Filipinos refused to accept
less than P6,000,000. This demand stupefied the Spaniards, who said
they would return to consult General Jaramillo; but they were reluctant
to leave the matter unsettled, and a last conference was held the next
day, when the Spaniards raised their offer to P2,000,000. The Filipinos
then reduced their demand to P3,000,000, which the Spaniards objected
to; but they were successful in obtaining the liberty of the Baler
garrison and 22 invalids, with all of whom they returned to Manila
(_vide_ Baler garrison, p. 494).
On July 5 a decree was issued from Tárlac, signed by Emilio Aguinaldo
and countersigned by his minister, Pedro A. Paterno, to the effect that
all invalid prisoners would be at liberty to embark at certain ports
designated, if vessels were sent for them flying only the Spanish
flag and a white one bearing the Red Cross. Difficulties, however,
arose with the American authorities which impeded the execution of
this plan. General Jaramillo was preparing to send his commissioners
again to Tárlac when he received a cablegram from Madrid telling him
to suspend further overtures to the insurgents because international
complications were threatened. It appears that America objected to
the proposal to pay to the insurgents a large sum of money.
On August 9 General Jaramillo wished to send the Spanish warship
_General Alava_, or a Spanish merchant vessel with the Red Cross
flag, to San Fernando de la Union with provisions for the prisoners,
but General E. S. Otis objected to the proposed proceeding on the
ground that it would compromise the dignity of America. But General
Jaramillo still persisted in his project, and after a lapse of three
days he again addressed a note on the subject to General E. S. Otis,
from whom he received another negative reply. On September 5 General
Jaramillo informed General Otis that the prisoners were concentrated in
the ports named in the insurgents' decree, and solicited permission to
send a vessel flying the Red Cross flag to receive them. Three days
afterwards General Otis replied that a recognition of Aguinaldo's
pretension to designate certain ports for the Spaniards' embarkation
would be not only humiliating but ridiculous. Furthermore, he was
expecting reinforcements shortly, with which peace would be assured
and all the ports re-opened, and then America would co-operate for
the liberty of the prisoners. General Jaramillo replied to this
communication by addressing to General Otis a lengthy philosophical
epistle on the principles involved in the question, but as General
Otis did not care to continue the correspondence, General Jaramillo
sought to bring pressure on him by notifying him that the s.s. _P. de
Satrústegui_ would be detained 48 hours in order to learn his decision
as to whether that vessel could call for the prisoners. As General
Otis did not reply within the prescribed period General Jaramillo
went to see him personally and ineffectually opened his heart to him
in very energetic terms, which General Otis complacently tolerated
but persisted in his negative resolution, and the interview ended
with the suggestion that General Jaramillo should obtain Aguinaldo's
consent for a vessel carrying the American flag to enter the ports
and bring away the prisoners.
About this time an incident occurred which, but for the graciousness
of General Otis, might have operated very adversely to the interests
of those concerned. In September, 1899, a Spanish lady arrived in
Manila saying that she was the representative of a Society of Barcelona
Ladies formed to negotiate the liberation of the prisoners. She brought
with her a petition addressed to Aguinaldo, said to bear about 3,000
signatures. But unfortunately the document contained so many offensive
allusions to the Americans that General Jaramillo declined to be
associated with it in any way. No obstacle was placed in the way of
the lady if she wished to present her petition privately to Aguinaldo;
but, apparently out of spite, she had a large number of copies printed
and published broadcast in Manila. General Jaramillo felt it his duty
to apologize to General Otis and repudiate all connexion with this
offensive proceeding, which General Otis very affably excused as an
eccentricity not worthy of serious notice.
On September 29 the Spanish commissioners, Toral and Rio, again started
for the insurgent capital, Tárlac. The proposal for vessels to enter
the ports under the American flag was rejected by Aguinaldo's advisers,
Pedro A. Paterno and Felipe Buencamino, and negotiations were resumed
on the money indemnity basis. The Aguinaldo party had already had sore
experience of the worth of an agreement made with Spanish officials,
and during the discussion they raised the question of the validity of
their powers and the guarantee for their proposed undertakings. The
real difficulty was that America might object to Spain officially
making any compact whatsoever which must necessarily involve a
recognition of the Philippine Republic; and even as it was, the
renewed suggestion of a payment of millions of dollars was a secret
negotiation. The Spanish commissioners started by proposing that
Aguinaldo should give up 80 per cent. of the prisoners on certain
conditions _to be agreed upon thereafter_, and retain the 20 per
cent. as guarantee for the fulfilment of these hypothetical terms;
moreover, even the 20 per cent. were to be concentrated at a place to
be _mutually agreed upon,_ etc. The artfulness of the commissioners'
scheme was too apparent for Paterno and Buencamino to accept it. The
commissioners then presented the Insurgent Government with a voluminous
philosophical dissertation on the subject, whilst the Filipinos sought
brief facts and tangible conditions. The Filipinos then offered to
address a note to the Spanish Consul in Manila to the effect that
the prisoners who were infirm would be delivered at certain ports
as already stated, and that he could send ships for them on certain
terms. Still the commissioners lingered in Tárlac, and on October 23
the Filipinos made the following proposals, which were practically
an intimation to close the debate.
1. Recognition of the Philippine Republic as soon as the difficulties
with America should be overcome.
2. The payment of seven millions of pesos.
These conditions having been rejected by the commissioners, Aguinaldo's
advisers drew up a document stating the reasons why the negotiations
had fallen through, with special reference to the insufficiency of
the commissioners' powers and the inadmissibility of their attitude
in desiring to treat with Aguinaldo individually instead of with
his Government, for which reasons the Philippine Republic formally
declared its resolution definitely to cease all negotiations with the
Spanish commissioners, preferring to deal directly with the Spanish
Government. Not satisfied with this formal intimation the commissioners
asked that the conditions of the liberation already granted since
January to the invalid prisoners should be modified, and that they
should be handed over to them--the very persons already declared to
be insufficiently authorized. In response to this importunity the
requisite passports were immediately sent to the commissioners to
enable them to quit the Philippine Republic's seat of government and
territory forthwith.
Apart from the moral aspect of the case, and regarded only in
the light of a business transaction, it does not appear that the
Filipinos were ever offered a solid guarantee for the fulfilment of
any of the proposed conditions. But the insuperable difficulty was
Spain's inability to comply with the Filipinos' essential condition
of recognition of the Philippine Republic.
Finally, in the prosecution of the War of Independence, the American
troops drove the insurgents so hard, capturing town after town, that
they were constrained to abandon the custody of the Spanish survivors,
who flocked in groups to the American posts, and eventually embarked
for their native land. On May 20, 1900, the Spanish Commission received
a letter from the insurgent General Trias stating that orders had
been issued to liberate all the prisoners.
In due course the Spanish warships sunk at the Battle of Cavite were
raised by the Americans, and the dead bodies of Spain's defenders on
that memorable day were handed over to a Spanish Commission. The same
organization also took charge of the bodies recovered from Baler (east
coast of Luzon), and after a _Requiem_ mass was said at the Cathedral
these mortal remains were conducted with appropriate solemnity on
board the s.s. _Isla de Panay_, which left Manila for Barcelona on
February 14, 1904.
CHAPTER XXVII
End of the War of Independence and After
In the month of May, 1901, the prisons were overflowing with captured
insurgents, and the military authorities found an ostensible reason
for liberating a number of them. A General Order was issued that to
"signalize the recent surrender of General Manuel Tinio [230] and
other prominent leaders," one thousand prisoners of war would be
released on taking the oath of allegiance. The flame of organized
insurrection was almost extinguished, but there still remained some
dangerous embers. Bands of armed natives wandered through the provinces
under the name of insurgents, and on July 31, 1901, one of Aguinaldo's
subordinate generals, named Miguel Malvar, a native of Santo Tomás
(Batangas) issued a manifesto from the "Slopes of the Maquiling"
(Laguna Province), announcing that he had assumed the position of
Supreme Chief. Before the war he had little to lose, but fishing
in troubled waters and gulling the people with _anting-anting_ and
the "signs in the clouds" proved to be a profitable occupation to
many. An expedition was sent against him, and he was utterly routed
in an engagement which took place near his native town. After Miguel
Malvar surrendered (April 16, 1902) and Vicente Lucban was captured
in Sámar (April 27, 1902), the war (officially termed "insurrection")
actually terminated, and was formally declared ended on the publication
of President Roosevelt's Peace Proclamation and Amnesty grant, dated
July 4, 1902. A sedition law was passed under which every disturber
of the public peace would be thenceforth arraigned, and all acts of
violence, pillage, etc., would come under the common laws affecting
those crimes. In short, insurgency ceased to be a valid plea; if it
existed in fact, officially it had become a dead letter. Those who
still lingered in the penumbra between belligerence and brigandage
were thenceforth treated as common outlaws whose acts bore no political
significance whatever. The notorious "General" San Miguel, for a long
time the terror of Rizal Province, was given no quarter, but shot on
the field at Corral-na-bató in March, 1903. One of the famous bandits,
claiming to be an insurgent, was Faustino Guillermo, who made laws,
levied tribute, issued army commissions, divided the country up into
military departments, and defied the Government until his stratagem
to induce the constabulary to desert brought about his own capture in
the Bosoboso Mountain (Mórong) in June, 1903. A mass of papers seized
revealed his pretension to be a patriotic saviour of his people, but
it is difficult indeed to follow the reasoning of a man who starts on
that line by sacking his own countrymen's villages. Another interesting
individual was Artemio Ricarte, formerly a primary schoolmaster. In
1899 he led a column under Aguinaldo, and was subsequently his
general specially commissioned to raise revolt inside the capital;
but the attempt failed, and many arrests followed. During the war he
was captured by the Americans, to whom he refused to take the oath
of allegiance and was deported to Guam. In Washington it was decided
to release the political prisoners on that island, and Ricarte and
Mabini were brought back to Manila. As Ricarte still refused to take
the oath, he was banished, and went to Hong-Kong in February, 1903. In
the following December he returned to Manila disguised as a seaman,
and stole ashore in the crowd of stevedore labourers. Assuming the
ludicrous title of the "Viper," he established what he called the
"triumvirate" government in the provinces, and declared war on the
Americans. His operations in this direction were mostly limited to
sending crackbrained letters to the Civil Governor in Manila from his
"camp in the sky," but his perturbation of the rural districts had to
be suppressed. At length, after a long search, he was taken prisoner
at the cockpit in Marivéles in May, 1904. He and his confederates were
brought to trial on the two counts of carrying arms without licence
and sedition, the revelations of the "triumvirate," which were comical
in the extreme, affording much amusement to the reading public. The
judgement of the court on Ricarte was six years' imprisonment and a
fine of $6,000.
Apolinario Mabini, Ricarte's companion in exile, was one of the most
conspicuous figures in the War of Independence. Of poor parentage,
he was born at Tanaúan (Batangas) in May, 1864, and having finished
his studies in Manila he took up the law as a profession, living in
obscurity until the Rebellion, during which he became the recognized
leader of the Irreconcilables and Prime Minister in the Malolos
Government. In the political sphere he was the soul of the insurgent
movement, the ruling power behind the presidency of Aguinaldo. It
was he who drafted the Constitution of the Philippine Republic, dated
January 21, 1899 (_vide_ p. 486). Taken prisoner by the Americans in
December, 1899, he was imprisoned on his refusal to subscribe to the
oath of allegiance. On August 1, 1900, he was granted leave to appear
before the Philippine Commission, presided over by Mr. W. H. Taft. He
desired to show that, according to his lights, he was not stubbornly
holding out against reason. As Mabini was not permitted to discuss
abstract matters, and Mr. Taft reiterated the intention to establish
American sovereignty in the Islands, their views were at variance,
and Mabini was deported to Guam, but allowed the privilege of taking
his son there as his companion in exile. On his return to Manila in
February, 1903, he reluctantly took the required oath and was permitted
to remain in the capital. Suffering from paralysis for years previous,
his mental energy, as a chronic invalid, was amazing. Three months
after his return to the metropolis he was seized with cholera, to
which he succumbed on May 13, 1903, at the early age of thirty-nine, to
the great regret of his countrymen and of his many European admirers.
The Irreconcilables, even at the present day, persist in qualifying
as legitimate warfare that condition of provincial perturbation
which the Americans and the Federal Party hold to be outlawry
and brigandage. Hence the most desperate leaders and their bands
of cut-throats are, in the Irreconcilables' phraseology, merely
insurgents still protesting against American dominion. As late
as February, 1902, an attempt was made to revive the war in Leyte
Island. At that date a certain Florentino Peñaranda, styling himself
the Insurrectionary Political-Military Chief, issued a proclamation
in his island addressed "in particular to those who are serving under
the Americans." This document, the preamble of which is indited in
lofty language, carrying the reader mentally all round North and
South America, Abyssinia and Europe, terminates with a concession of
pardon to all who repent their delinquency in serving the Americans,
and an invitation to Filipinos and foreigners to join his standard. It
had little immediate effect, but it may have given an impulse to the
brigandage which was subsequently carried on so ferociously under a
notorious, wary ruffian named Tumayo. Thousands, too long accustomed
to a lawless, emotional existence to settle down to prosaic civil
life, went to swell the ranks of brigands, but it would exceed the
limits of this work to refer to the over 15,000 expeditions made
to suppress them. Brigandage (_vide_ p. 235) has been rife in the
Islands for a century and a half, and will probably continue to exist
until a network of railways in each large island makes it almost
impossible. But brigandage in Spanish times was very mild compared
with what it is now. Such a thing as a common highwayman was almost
unknown. The brigands of that period--the _Tulisánes_ of the north
and the _Pulajánes_ of the south--went in parties who took days to
concoct a plan for attacking a country residence, or a homestead, for
robbery and murder. The assault was almost invariably made at night,
and the marauders lived in the mountains, avoiding the highroads and
the well-known tracks. The traveller might then go about the Islands
for years without ever seeing a brigand; now that they have increased
so enormously since the war, there is not business enough for them
in the old way, and they infest the highways and villages. One effect
of the revolution has been to diminish greatly the awe with which the
native regarded the European before they had crossed swords in regular
warfare. Again, since 1898, the fact that here and there a white man
made common cause with outlaws has had a detrimental effect on the
white man's prestige, and the new caste of bandits which has come
into existence is far more audacious than its predecessor. Formerly
the outlaws had only bowie-knives and a few fowling-pieces; now they
have an ample supply of rifles. Hence, since the American advent,
the single traveller and his servant journey at great risk in the
so-called civilized provinces, especially if the traveller has
Anglo-Saxon features. Parties of three or four, well armed, are
fairly safe. Fierce fights with outlaws are of common occurrence;
a full record of brigand depredations would fill a volume, and one
can only here refer to a few remarkable cases.
Early in 1904 a Spanish planter of many years' standing, named
Amechazurra, and his brother-in-law, Joaquin Guaso, were kidnapped
and held for ransom. When the sum was carried to the brigands'
haunt, Guaso was found with his wrists broken and severely tortured
with bowie-knife cuts and lance-thrusts. Having no power to use his
hands, his black beard was full of white maggots. In this state he
was delivered to his rescuers and died the next day. Since the close
of the war up to the present day the provinces of Batangas and Cavite,
less than a day's journey from the capital, have not ceased to be in a
deplorable condition of lawlessness. The principal leaders, Montalón
and Felizardo, [231] were formerly officers under the command of the
insurgent General Manuel Trias, who surrendered to the Americans
and afterwards accepted office as Civil Governor of the Province
of Cavite. In this capacity he made many unsuccessful attempts to
capture his former colleagues, but owing to his failure to restore
tranquillity to the province he resigned his governorship in 1903. The
Montalón and Felizardo bands, well armed, constantly overran the two
adjoining provinces to murder the people, pillage their homes, and
set fire to the villages. They bore an inveterate hatred towards all
who accepted American dominion, and specially detested their former
chief Trias, who, since his return from the St. Louis Exhibition,
has shown a very pro-American tendency. The history of their crimes
covers a period of five years. Felizardo was remarkable for his
audacity, his fine horsemanship, and his expert marksmanship. During
an attack on Parañaque, mounted on a beautiful pony stolen from the
race-track of Pasay, he rode swiftly past a constabulary sentinel,
who shot at him and missed him, whilst Felizardo, from his seat in the
saddle, shot the sentinel dead. The evening before the day Governor
Taft intended to sail for the United States, on his retirement from
the governorship, Montalón hanged two constabulary men at a place
within sight of Manila. In December, 1904, all this district was
so infested with cut-throats that Manuel Trias, although no longer
an official, offered to organize and lead a party of 300 volunteers
against them. On January 24, 1905, the same bandits, Felizardo and
Montalón, at the head of about 300 of their class, including two
American negroes, raided Trias's native town of San Francisco de
Malabón, murdered an American surgeon and one constabulary private,
and seriously wounded three more. They looted the municipal treasury
of 2,000 pesos and 25 carbines, and carried off Trias's wife and two
children, presumably to hold them for ransom. The chief object of
the attack was to murder Trias, their arch-enemy, but he was away
from home at the time. On his return he set out in pursuit of the
band at the head of the native constabulary. The outlaws had about
160 small firearms, and during the chase several fierce fights took
place. Being hunted from place to place incessantly, they eventually
released Trias's wife and children so as to facilitate their own
escape. Constabulary was insufficient to cope with the marauders,
and regular troops had to be sent to these provinces. In February,
1905, a posse of 25 Moro fighting-men was brought up from Siassi
(Tápul group) to hunt down the brigands. Launches patrolled the
Bay of Manila with constabulary on board to intercept the passage
of brigands from one province to another, for lawlessness was, more
or less, constantly rife in several of the Luzon provinces and half
a dozen other islands for years after the end of the war. From 1902
onwards, half the provinces of Albay, Bulacan, Bataán, Cavite, Ilocos
Sur, and the islands of Camaguín, Sámar, Leyte, Negros, Cebú, etc.,
have been infested, at different times, with brigands, or latter-day
insurgents, as the different parties choose to call them. The regular
troops, the constabulary, and other armed forces combined were unable
to exterminate brigandage. The system of "concentration" circuits,
which had given such adverse results during the Rebellion (_vide_
p. 392), was revived in the provinces of Batangas and Cavite, obliging
the waverers between submission and recalcitration to accept a defined
legal or illegal status. Consequently many of the common people went to
swell the roving bands of outlaws, whilst those who had a greater love
for home, or property at stake, remained within the prescribed limits,
in discontented, sullen compliance with the inevitable. The system
interrupted the people's usual occupations, retarded agriculture,
and produced general dissatisfaction. The Insular Government then
had recourse to an extreme measure which practically implied the
imposition of compulsory military service on every male American,
foreign, or native inhabitant between the ages of eighteen to fifty
years, with the exception of certain professions specified in the
Philippine Commission Act No. 1309, dated March 22, 1905. Under this
law the native mayor of a town can compel any able-bodied American
(not exempted under the Act) to give five days a month service in
hunting down brigands, under a maximum penalty of P100 fine and three
months' imprisonment. And, subject to the same penalty for refusal,
any proprietor or tenant (white, coloured, or native) residing in any
municipality, or ward, must report, within 24 hours, to the municipal
authority, the name, residence, and description of _any_ person (not
being a resident) to whom he gave assistance or lodging. In no colony
where the value of the white man's prestige is appreciated would such
a law have been promulgated.
The proceedings of the constabulary in the disturbed provinces
having been publicly impugned in a long series of articles and
reports published in the Manila newspaper _El Renacimiento,_ the
editors of that public organ were brought to trial on a charge of
libel in July, 1905. The substance of the published allegations
was that peaceable citizens were molested in their homes and were
coerced into performing constabulary and military duties by becoming
unwilling brigand-hunters. Among other witnesses who appeared at the
trial was Emilio Aguinaldo, who testified that he had been forced to
leave his home and present himself to a constabulary officer, who,
he affirmed, bullied and insulted him because he refused to leave his
daily occupations and risk his life in brigand-hunting. In view of
the peculiar position of Aguinaldo as a fallen foe, perhaps it would
have been better not to have disturbed him in his peaceful life as
a law-abiding citizen, lest the world should misconstrue the intention.
Confined to Pangasinán and La Union provinces, there is an organization
known as the "Guards of Honour." Its recruits are very numerous,
their chief vocation being cattle-stealing and filching other people's
goods without unnecessary violence. It is feared they may extend their
operations to other branches of perversity. The society is said to
be a continuation of the _Guardia de Honor_ created by the Spaniards
and stimulated by the friars in Pangasinán as a check on the rebels
during the events of 1896-98. At the American advent they continued
to operate independently against the insurgents, whom they harassed
very considerably during the flight northwards from Tárlac. It was
to escape the vengeance of this party that Aguinaldo's Secretary of
State (according to his verbal statement to me) allowed himself to
fall prisoner to the Americans.
The _Pulajanes_ of Sámar seem to be as much in possession of that
Island as the Americans themselves, and its history, from the
revolution up to date, is a lugubrious repetition of bloodshed,
pillage, and incendiarism. The deeds of the notorious Vicente Lucban
were condoned under the Amnesty of 1902, but the marauding organization
is maintained and revived by brigands of the first water. Every
move of the government troops is known to the _pulajanes_. The spy,
stationed at a pass, after shouting the news of the enemy's approach
to the next spy, darts into the jungle, and so on all along the line,
in most orderly fashion, until the main column is advised. In July,
1904, they slaughtered half the inhabitants of the little coast village
of Taviran, mutilated their corpses, and then set out for the town of
Santa Elena, which was burnt to the ground. In December of that year
over a thousand _pulajanes_ besieged the town of Taft (formerly Tubig),
held by a detachment of native scouts, whilst another party, hidden
in the mountains, fell like an avalanche upon a squad of 43 scouts,
led by an American lieutenant, on their way to the town of Dolores,
and in ten minutes killed the officer and 37 of his men. After this
mournful victory the brigands went to reinforce their comrades at
Taft, swelling their forces _en route_, so that the besiegers of Taft
amounted to a total of about 2,000 men. About the same time some 400
_pulajanes_ were met by a few hundred so-called native volunteers, who,
instead of fighting, joined forces and attacked a scout detachment
whilst crossing a river. Twenty of the scouts were cut to pieces and
mutilated, whilst thirteen more died of their wounds.
Communication in the Island is extremely difficult; the maintenance of
telegraph-lines is impossible through a hostile country, and messages
sent by natives are often intercepted, or, as sometimes happens,
the messengers, to save their lives, naturally make common cause
with the bandits whom they meet on the way. The hemp-growers and
coast-trading population, who have no sympathy with the brigands,
are indeed obliged, for their own security, to give them passive
support. Hundreds in the coast villages who are too poor to give, have
to flee into hiding and live like animals in dread of constabulary
and _pulajanes_ alike. Between "insurgency" and "brigandage," in this
Island, there was never a very wide difference, and when General Allen,
the Chief of the Constabulary, took the field in person in December,
1904, he had reason to believe that the notorious ex-insurgent Colonel
Guevara was the moving spirit in the lawlessness. Guevara, who had
been disappointed at not securing the civil governorship of the
Island, was suddenly seized and confined at Catbalogan jail to await
his trial. The Sámar _pulajanes_ are organized like regular troops,
with their generals and officers, but they are deluded by a sort of
mystic religious teaching under the guidance of a native pope. In
January, 1905, the town of Balangiga (_vide_ p. 536), so sadly famous
in the history of Sámar on account of the massacre of American troops
during the war, became a _pulaján_ recruiting station. A raid upon the
place resulted in the capture of twenty chiefs, gorgeously uniformed,
with gaudy _anting-anting _amulets on their breasts to protect them
from American bullets. At this time the regimental Camp Connell, at
Calbáyoc, was so depleted of troops that less than a hundred men were
left to defend it. Situated on a pretty site, the camp consists of two
lines of wooden buildings running along the shore for about a mile. At
one extremity is the hospital and at the other the quartermaster's
dépôt. It has no defences whatever, and as I rode along the central
avenue of beautiful palms, after meeting the ladies at a ball, I
pictured to myself the chapter of horror which a determined attack
might one day add to the doleful annals of dark Sámar.
Matters became so serious that in March, 1905, the divisional
commander, General Corbin, joined General Allen in the operations
in this Island. Full of tragedy is the record of this region, and
amongst its numerous heroes was a Captain Hendryx. In 1902, whilst
out with a detachment of constabulary, he was attacked, defeated, and
reported killed. He was seen to drop and roll into a gully. But four
days later there wandered back to the camp a man half dead with hunger
and covered with festering wounds, some so infected that, but for the
application of tobacco, gangrene would have set in. It was Captain
Hendryx. Delirious for a while, he finally recovered and resumed his
duties. A couple of years afterwards he was shipwrecked going round
the coast on the _Masbate_. For days he and the ship-master alone
battled with the stormy waves, a howling wind ahead, and a murderous
rabble on the coast waiting for their blood. On the verge of death
they reached a desolate spot whence the poor captain saved his body
from destruction, but with prostrate nerves, rendering him quite unfit
for further service. And the carnage in the Sámar jungles, which has
caused many a sorrow in the homeland, continues to the present day
with unabated ferocity. By nature a lovely island, picturesque in
the extreme, there is a gloom in its loveliness. The friendly native
has fled for his life; the patches of lowland once planted with sweet
potatoes or rows of hemp-trees, are merging into jungle for want of
the tiller's hand. The voice of an unseen man gives one a shudder,
lest it be that of a fanatic lurking in the _cogon_ grass to seek his
fellow's blood. Near the coast, half-burnt bamboos show where villages
once stood; bleached human bones mark the sites of human conflict,
whilst decay and mournful silence impress one with the desolation of
this fertile land. The narrow navigable channel separating Sámar from
Leyte Island is one of the most delightful bits of tropical scenery.
The Constabulary Service Reports for 1903 and 1904 show that in
the former period there were 357 engagements between brigand bands
and the constabulary (exclusive of the army operations), and in the
latter period 235 similar engagements. More than 5,000 expeditions
were undertaken against the outlaws in each year; 1,185 outlaws
were killed in 1903, and 431 in 1904, 2,722 were wounded or captured
in 1903, and 1,503 in 1904; 3,446 arms of all sorts were seized in
1903, and 994 in 1904. The constabulary losses in killed, wounded,
died of wounds and disease, and deserted were 223 in 1904. In Cavite
Province alone, with a population of 134,779, there were, in 1903,
over 400 expeditions, resulting in 20 brigands killed, 23 wounded,
and 253 captured. At this date brigandage is one of the greatest
deterrents to the prosperous development of the Islands.
The Adjutant-General's Report issued in Washington in December, 1901,
gives some interesting figures relating to the Army, for the War of
Independence period, i.e., from February 4, 1899, to June 30, 1901. The
total number of troops sent to the Islands was as follows, viz.:--
Officers. Men.
Regular Army 1,342 60,933
Volunteers 2,135 47,867
3,477 108,800
Some were returning from, whilst others were going to the Islands;
the largest number in the Islands at any one time (year 1900) was
about 70,000 men.
The total casualties in the above period were as follows, viz.:--
Officers. Men. Total.
Dead (all causes) 115 3,384 3,499
Wounded 170 2,609 2,779
285 5,993 6,278
In the same period the following arms were taken from the insurgents
(captured and surrendered):--
Revolvers 868
Rifles 15,693
Cannon 122
Bowie-knives 3,516
The _Insurgent Navy,_ consisting of four small steamers purchased in
Singapore and a few steam-launches, dwindled away to nothing. The
"Admiral," who lived on shore at Gagalangin (near Manila), escaped
to Hong-Kong, but returned to Manila, surrendered, and took the oath
of allegiance on March 3, 1905.
_Sedition_, in its more virulent and active forms, having been
frustrated by the authorities since the conclusion of the war, the
Irreconcilables conceived the idea of inflaming the passions of the
people through the medium of the native drama. How the seditious
dramatists could have ever hoped to succeed in the capital itself,
in public theatres, before the eyes of the Americans, is one of those
mysteries which the closest student of native philosophy must fail
to solve.
The most notable of these plays were _Hindi aco patay_ ("I am not
dead"), _Ualang sugat_ ("There is no wound"), _Dabas ng pilac_ ("Power
of Silver"), and _Cahapon, Ngayon at Bucas_ ("Yesterday, to-day, and
to-morrow"). In each case there was an extra last scene not on the
programme. Secret police and American spectators besieged the stage,
and after a free fight, a cracking of heads, and a riotous scuffle
the curtain dropped (if there were anything left of it) on a general
panic of the innocent and the arrest of the guilty. The latter were
brought to trial, and their careers cut short by process of law.
The simple plot of _Hindi aco patay_ is as follows, viz.:--_Maímbot_
(personifying America) is establishing dominion over the Islands,
assisted by his son _Macamcám_ (American Government), and _Katuíran_
(Reason, Right, and Justice) is called upon to condemn the conduct
of a renegade Filipino who has accepted America's dominion, and
thereby become an outcast among his own people and even his own
family. There is to be a wedding, but, before it takes place, a
funeral cortége passes the house of _Karangalan_ (the bride) with
the body of _Tangulan_ (the fighting patriot). _Maímbot_ (America)
exclaims, "Go, bury that man, that Karangalan and her mother may see
him no more." _Tangulan_, however, rising from his coffin, tells them,
"They must not be married, for I am not dead." And as he cries _Hindi
aco patay,_ "I am not dead," a radiant sun appears, rising above
the mountain peaks, simultaneously with the red flag of Philippine
liberty. Then _Katuíran_ (Reason, Right, and Justice) declares that
"Independence has returned," and goes on to explain that the new
insurrection having discouraged America in her attempt to enslave the
people, she will await a better opportunity. The flag of Philippine
Independence is then waved to salute the sun which has shone upon
the Filipinos to regenerate them and cast away their bondage.
The theme of _Cahapon, ngayon at Bucas_ is somewhat similar--a protest
against American rule, a threat to rise and expel it, a call to arms,
and a final triumph of the Revolution. About the same time (May,
1903) a seditious play entitled _Cadena de Oro_ ("The golden chain")
was produced in Batangas, and its author was prosecuted. It must,
however, be pointed out that there are also many excellent plays
written in Tagalog, with liberty to produce them, one of the best
native dramatists being Don Pedro A. Paterno.
There will probably be for a long time to come a certain amount of
disaffection and a class of wire-pullers, men of property, chiefly
half-castes, constantly in the background, urging the masses forward
to their own destruction. Lucrative employments have satisfied the
ambition of so many educated Filipinos who must find a living, that
the same principle--a creation of material interest--might perhaps be
advantageously extended to the uneducated classes. All the malcontents
cannot become State dependents, but they might easily be helped to
acquire an interest in the soil. The native who has his patch of
settled land with _unassailable title_ would be loth to risk his all
for the chimerical advantages of insurrection. The native boor who
has worked land for years on sufferance, without title, exposed to
eviction by a more cunning individual clever enough to follow the
tortuous path which leads to land settlement with absolute title,
falls an easy prey to the instigator of rebellion. These illiterate
people need more than a liberal land law--they need to be taken in
hand like children and placed upon the parcelled-out State lands
with indisputable titles thereto. And if American enterprise were
fostered and encouraged in the neighbourhood of their holdings,
good example might root them to the soil and convert the _boloman_
into the industrious husbandman.
The poorest native who cannot sow for himself must necessarily
feed on what his neighbour reaps, and hunger compels him to become
a wandering criminal. It is not difficult partially to account for
the greater number in this condition to-day as compared with Spanish
times. In those days there was what the natives termed _cayinin_. It
was a temporary clearance of a patch of State land on which the
native would raise a crop one, two, or more seasons. Having no legal
right to the soil he tilled, and consequently no attachment to it,
he would move on to other virgin land and repeat the operation. In
making the clearance the squatter had no respect for State property,
and the damage which he did in indiscriminate destruction of valuable
timber by fire was not inconsiderable. The law did not countenance the
_cayinin_, but serious measures were seldom taken to prevent it. The
local or municipal headmen refrained from interference because, having
no interest whatever in public lands, they did not care, as landowners,
to go out of their way to create a bad feeling against themselves
which might one day have fatal consequences. Although no one would
for a moment suggest a revival of the system, there is the undeniable
fact that in Spanish times thousands of natives lived for years in this
way, and if they had been summarily evicted, or prosecuted by a forest
bureau, necessity would have driven them into brigandage. High wages,
government service, and public works are no remedy; on the contrary,
if the people are thereby attracted to the towns, what will become of
the true source of Philippine wealth, which is agriculture? Even in
industrial England the cry of "Back to the soil" has been lately raised
by an eminent Englishman known by name to every educated American.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Modern Manila
Commanding the entrance to Manila Bay there is the Island of
Corregidor, situated 27 miles south-west of the city, towards which
the traveller glances in vain, expecting to descry something of a
modern fortress, bristling with artillery of the latest type which,
if there, might hold the only channels leading to the capital against
a hostile fleet. The anchorage for steamers is still half a mile to a
mile and a half away from the Pasig River, but the new artificial port,
commenced by the Spaniards, is being actively brought to completion
by the Americans, so that the day may come when the ocean traveller
will be able to walk from the steamer down a gangway to a quay and
land on the south, or Walled City, side of the capital.
In the city and beautiful suburbs of Manila many changes and some
improvements have been effected since 1898. After cleansing the
city to a certain extent, embellishment was commenced, and lastly,
works of general public utility were undertaken. Public spaces were
laid out as lawns with walks around them; the old botanical-gardens
enclosure was removed and the site converted into a delightful
promenade; the Luneta Esplanade,--the joy of the Manila élite who
seek the sea-breezes on foot or driving--was reformed, the field of
Bagumbayan, which recalls so many sad historical reminiscences since
1872, was drained; breaches were made in the city walls to facilitate
the entry of American vehicles; new thoroughfares were opened; an iron
bridge, commenced by the Spaniards, was completed; a new Town Hall, a
splendidly-equipped Government Laboratory, a Government Civil Hospital,
and a Government Printing Office were built; an immense ice-factory
was erected on the south side of the river to meet the American
demand for that luxury [232]; also a large refrigerated-meat store,
chiefly for army supply, was constructed, meat, poultry, vegetables,
and other foodstuffs having to be imported on account of the dearth
of beef and tilth cattle due to rinderpest. Fresh meat for private
consumption (i.e., exclusive of army and navy) is imported into
Manila to the value of about $700,000 gold per annum. Reforms of more
urgent public necessity were then introduced. Existing market-places
were improved, new ones were opened in Tondo and the Walled City;
an excellent slaughter-house was established; the Bridge of Spain
was widened; a splendidly-equipped fire-engine and brigade service,
with 150 fire-alarm boxes about the city and suburbs, was organized
and is doing admirable work; roads in the distant suburbs were put in
good condition, and the reform which all Manila was looking forward
to, namely, the repair of the roads and pavements in the _Escolta_,
the _Rosario_, and other principal thoroughfares in the heart of the
business quarter of Binondo, was postponed for six years. Up to the
middle of 1904 they were in a deplorable condition. The sensation,
whilst in a gig, of rattling over the uneven stone blocks was as if
the whole vehicle might at any moment be shattered into a hundred
fragments. The improvement has come at last, and these streets are
now almost of a billiard-table smoothness. The General Post Office
has been removed from the congested thoroughfare of the _Escolta_
to a more commodious site. Electric tramcars, in supersession of
horse-traction, run through the city and suburbs since April 10,
1905. Electric lighting, initiated in Spanish times, is now in
general use, and electric fans--a poor substitute for the punkah--work
horizontally from the ceilings of many shops, offices, hotels, and
private houses. In the residential environs of the city many acres
of ground have been covered with new houses; the once respectable
quarter of Sampaloc [233] has lost its good name since it became
the favourite haunt of Asiatic and white prostitutes who were not
tolerated in Spanish times. On the other hand, the suburbs of Ermita
and Malate, which are practically a continuation of Manila along
the seashore from the Luneta Esplanade, are becoming more and more
the fashionable residential centre. About Sampaloc there is a little
colony of Japanese shopkeepers, and another group of Japanese fishermen
inhabits Tondo. The Japanese have their Consulate in Manila since the
American advent, their suburban Buddhist temple was inaugurated in
San Roque on April 22, 1905, and in the same year there was a small
Japanese banking-house in the suburb of Santa Cruz.
The Bilíbid Jail has been reformed almost beyond recognition
as the old Spanish prison. A great wall runs through the centre,
dividing the long-term from the short-term prisoners. In the centre
is the sentry-box, and from this and all along the top of the wall
every movement of the prisoners can be watched by the soldier on
guard. Nevertheless, a batch of convicts occasionally breaks jail,
and those who are not shot down escape. Gangs of them are drafted
off for road-making in the provinces, where, on rare occasions,
a few have been able to escape and rejoin the brigands. In March,
1905, a squad of 42 convicts working in Albay Province made a dash
for freedom, and 40 of them got away.
With the liberty accorded them under the new dominion the Filipinos
have their freemason lodges and numerous _casinos_. [234] There are
American clubs for all classes of society--the "Army and Navy," the
"University," the "United States," a dozen other smaller social
meeting-houses, and societies with quaint denominations such as
"Knights of Pythias," "Haymakers," "Red Cloud Tribe," "Knights of
the Golden Eagle," etc. Other nationalities have their clubs too; the
_Cercle Français_ is now located in _Calle Alcalá_; the English Club,
which was formerly at Nagtájan on the river-bank, has been removed
to Ermita on the seashore, and under the new _régime_ the Chinese
have their club-house, opened in 1904, in _Calle Dasmariñas_, where
a reception was given to the Gov.-General and the élite of Manila
society. The entertainment was very sumptuous, the chief attractions
being the fantastic decorations, the gorgeous "joss house" to a dead
hero, and the chapel in honour of the Virgin del Pilar.
Several new theatres have been opened, the leading one being the
_National_, now called the "Grand Opera House"; comedy is played at
the _Paz_; the _Zorrilla_ (of former times) is fairly well-built,
but its acoustic properties are extremely defective, and the other
playhouses are, more properly speaking, large booths, such as the
_Libertad_, the _Taft_, the _Variedades_, and the _Rizal_. In the
last two very amusing Tagálog plays are performed in dialect. There
is one large music-hall, and a number of cinematograph shows combined
with variety entertainments.
There are numerous second- and third-rate hotels in the city and
suburbs. The old "Fonda Lala," which existed for many years in the
_Plaza del Conde_, Binondo, as the leading hotel in Spanish days,
is now converted into a large bazaar, called the "Siglo XX.," and
its successor, the "Hotel de Oriente," was purchased by the Insular
Government for use as public offices. The old days of comfortable
hackney-carriages in hundreds about the Manila streets, at 50 cents
Mex. an hour, are gone for ever. One may now search hours for one,
and, if found, have to pay four or five times the old tariff. Besides
the fact that everything costs more, the scarcity is due to _Surra_
(_vide_ p. 336), which has enormously reduced the pony stock. There
are occasionally sales of American horses, and it is now one of the
novelties to see them driven in carriages, and American ladies riding
straddle-legged on tall hacks. In Spanish days no European gentleman
or lady could be seen in a _carromata_ [235] (gig) about Manila; now
this vehicle is in general use for both sexes of all classes. Bicycles
were known in the Islands ten years ago, but soon fell into disuse
on account of the bad roads; however, this means of locomotion is
fast reviving.
The Press is represented by a large number of American, Spanish and
dialect newspapers. These last were not permitted in Spanish times.
Innumerable laundries, barbers' shops, Indian and Japanese bazaars,
shoe-black stalls, tailors' shops, book-shops, restaurants, small
hotels, sweetmeat stalls, newspaper kiosks, American drinking-bars,
etc., have much altered the appearance of the city. The Filipino,
who formerly drank nothing but water, now quaffs his iced keg-beer
or cocktail with great gusto, but civilization has not yet made him a
drunkard. American drinking-shops, or "saloons," as they call them, are
all over the place, except in certain streets in Binondo, where they
have been prohibited, as a public nuisance, since April 1, 1901. It
was ascertained at the time of the American occupation that there were
2,206 native shops in Manila where drinks were sold, yet no native
was ever seen drunk. This number was compulsorily reduced to 400 for
a native population of about 190,000, whilst the number of "saloons"
on February 1, 1900, was 224 for about 5,000 Americans (exclusive of
soldiers, who presumably would not be about the drinking-bars whilst
the war was on). But "saloon" licences are a large source of revenue
to the municipality, the cost being from $1,200 gold downwards per
annum. A "saloon," however, cannot now be established in defiance
of the general wishes of the neighbours. There is a law (similar
in spirit to the proposed Option Law in England) compelling the
intending "saloon" keeper to advertise in several papers for several
days his intention to open such a place, so that the public may have
an opportunity of opposing that intention if they desire to do so.
The American advent has abolished the peaceful solitude of the
Walled City where, in Spanish days, dwelt the friar in secluded
sanctity--where dignitaries and officials were separated by a river
from the bubbling world of money-makers. An avalanche of drinking-bars,
toilet-saloons, restaurants, livery stables, and other catering
concerns has invaded the ancient abodes of men who made Philippine
history. The very names of the city streets remind one of so many
episodes in the Islands' progress towards civilization that to-day
one is led to pause in pensive silence before the escutcheon above the
door of what was once a noble residence, to read below a wall-placard,
"Horses and buggies for hire. The best turn-out in the city. Telephone
No. ----." This levelling spirit is gradually converting the historic
Walled City into a busy retail trading-centre. For a long time the
question of demolishing the city walls has been debated. Surely those
who advocate the destruction of this fine historical monument cannot
be of that class of Americans whose delight is to travel thousands
of miles, at great expense, only to glance at antiquities not more
interesting, in the possession of others, and who would fain transport
Shakespeare's house bodily to American soil. The moat surrounding the
Walled City is already being filled up, but posterity will be grateful
for the preservation of those ancient bulwarks--landmarks of a decadent
but once glorious civilization. Most of the Spanish feast-days have
been abolished, including the St. Andrew's day (_vide_ Li-ma-hong,
p. 50), and the following have been officially substituted, viz.:--
New Year's Day January 1
Washington's birthday February 22
Holy Thursday -- --
Good Friday -- --
Decoration Day May 31
Independence Day July 4
Occupation Day August 13
Thanksgiving Day November 24
Christmas Day December 25
Rizal Day December 30
Manila was formerly the capital of the province of that name, as
well as the Philippine metropolis. Since the American occupation the
city and suburbs form a kind of federal zone; what was once Manila
Province is now known as Rizal Province, and with it is incorporated
that territory formerly designated Mórong District, the capital town
of this newly-created province being Pasig.
The Municipal Board of Manila is composed of five persons, namely
a Philippine mayor and one Philippine and three American members,
who are practically all nominees of the Insular Government. The
emolument of the mayor and of each member is $4,500. The Board,
assisted by a staff of 20 persons, native and American, has the
control of the ten following departments, viz.:--Police, Fire, Law,
Police Courts, Justice of the Peace Courts, Public Works, Assessments
and Collections, Deeds Register, City Schools, and Sheriff's Office
connected with the government of the federal zone of Manila.
Manila is the seat of the Insular Government, which comprises (1) the
Philippine Commission (Legislative), composed of eight members, of whom
five (including the president) are Americans and three are Filipinos;
(2) the Civil Commission (Executive), the president of which holds the
dual office of President of the Philippine Commission and Gov.-General,
whilst the four secretaries of Interior, Finance and Justice, Public
Instruction, and Commerce and Police are those same Americans who
hold office as members of the Philippine Commission. The Philippine
Commission is empowered to pass statutes, subject to ratification
by Congress, the enacting clause being, _By authority of the United
States, be it enacted by the Philippine Commission_. The Insular
Government communicates with the Washington Government through the
Department of the Secretary of State for War.
Up to the end of 1904 the chief authority in these Islands was styled
the "Civil Governor." Thenceforth, by special Act of Congress, the
title was changed to that of "Governor-General."
The Emoluments of the Members of the Insular Government, the Chiefs of
Departments, and the principal officers are as follows, viz. [236]:--
$ gold
President of the Philippine and Civil Commissions 20,000
Four American Members of the Philippine Commission,
_ex-officio_ Members of the Civil Commission each 15,500
Three Philippine Members of the Philippine Commission each 5,000
_Departments_
Architecture Bureau Chief 4,000
Archives, Patents, Copyright and
Trade Marks Chief 3,000
Agriculture Bureau Chief 4,000
Audit Office Auditor 7,000
Bilibid Prison Warden 3,000
[237] Civil Service Board Chief Examiner 4,000
Court of First Instance, Manila each Judge 5,500
Court of First Instance, provincial Judge $4,500 to 5,000
Court of Land Registration Judge 5,000
Court of Customs Appeal Judge 4,500
Civil Hospital Chief Physician 3,000
Civil Sanatorium (Benguet) Chief Physician 2,400
Constabulary Executive Officer 5,500
Coast Guard and Transport Office Chief (Navy pay) --
Cold Storage and Ice-Plant Superintendent 3,600
Customs and Immigration Collector of Customs 7,000
Engineering Department Consulting Engineer 5,000
Ethnological Survey Chief 3,500
Education Department Gen. Superintendent 6,000
Forestry Bureau Chief 3,000
Laboratories (Gov.) Superintendent 6,000
Manila Port Works Chief (Army pay) --
Mining Bureau Chief 3,000
Non-Christian Tribes Bureau -- --
_Official Gazette, The_ Editor 1,800
Purchasing Agent -- 4,500
Public Lands Office Chief 3,200
Public Health Commissioner 3,500
Public Printing Office Public Printer 4,000
Post Office Director 6,000
Public Lands Chief 3,200
Supreme Court Chief Justice [238] 7,500
Supreme Court each associate Judge 7,000
Treasury Office Treasurer 7,000
Weather Bureau Director 2,500
The total cost of the Civil Service for the year 1903 amounted to
8,014,098.77 pesos (_vide_ "Official Gazette," Vol. II., No. 8,
dated February 4, 1904), equal to $4,007,049.38 gold.
At the time of the American occupation (1898) the Government was
necessarily military, the first governor being Maj.-General Elwell
S. Otis up to May 5, 1900, when he returned to America and was
immediately succeeded by Maj.-General Arthur McArthur. On January 20,
1899, during General Otis's governorship, a Commission of Inquest
was appointed under the presidency of Dr. Jacob Gould Schurman
known as the Schurman Commission, which arrived in Manila on May 2
to investigate the state of affairs in the Islands. The Commission
was instructed to "endeavour, without interference with the military
authorities of the United States now in control in the Philippines,
to ascertain what amelioration in the condition of the inhabitants
and what improvements in public order may be practicable." The other
members of the Commission were Rear-Admiral George Dewey, Charles
Denby, Maj.-General Elwell S. Otis, and Dean C. Worcester. Admiral
Dewey, however, was soon relieved of his obligation to remain on
the Commission, and sailed from Manila on May 19 on the _Olympia_
for New York, _via_ Europe. The commissioners' inquiries into
everything concerning the Islands, during their few months' sojourn,
are embodied in a published report, dated December 20, 1900. [239]
The War of Independence was being waged during the whole time, and
military government, with full administrative powers, continued,
as heretofore, until September 1, 1900. In the meantime the
Washington Government resolved that military rule in the Islands
should be superseded by civil government. The pacified provinces,
and those in conditions considered fit for civil administration,
were to be so established, and pending the conclusion of the war and
the subsidence of brigandage, the remainder of the Archipelago was
to be administered as military districts. With this end in view,
on March 16, 1900, Judge William H. Taft [240] was commissioned
to the Islands and sailed from San Francisco (Cal.) with his four
colleagues, on April 15, for Manila, where he arrived on June 3. In
the three months' interval, pending the assumption of legislative
power, the Taft Commission was solely occupied in investigating
conditions. To each commissioner certain subjects were assigned; for
example, Mr. Taft took up the Civil Service, Public Lands, and the
Friar questions. Each commissioner held a kind of Court of Inquiry,
before which voluntary evidence was taken. This testimony, later on,
appeared in print, and its perusal shows how difficult indeed it must
have been for the Commission to have distinguished the true from
the false, the valuable from the trivial. It was the beginning of
the end of military rule in the Islands. "The days of the Empire,"
as the military still designate that period, were numbered, and yet
not without regret by several native communities, as evidenced by the
fact that they sent petitions to the authorities in Manila against
the change to civil government. Many law-abiding natives explained to
me that the feature in military rule which particularly pleased them
was its prompt action--such a contrast to the only civil government
of which they had had any experience. About two years later, in 1903,
Lieut.-Gen. Miles, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Army, made a tour in
the Islands and drew up a report on the conduct of military operations,
charging military officers with the grossest cruelty to the natives. A
Senate Commission of Inquest was appointed, but it was quite impossible
to prove anything conclusively on unimpeachable evidence; the general
retired from his command without the blessing of his comrades, and
the matter was abated.
The Philippine Commission commenced its functions as the legislative
body, with limitary executive powers in addition, on September 1,
1900, the military governor continuing as the Chief Executive until
July 4, 1901. Up to that date the civil executive authority in the
organized provinces was vested in the military governor. From that
date Maj.-General Adna R. Chaffee relieved Maj.-General McArthur in the
sole capacity of commander-in-chief of the military division, the full
executive civil power having been transferred to the Civil Commission,
and thenceforth the Insular Government became constituted as it is at
present. Governor Taft pursued his investigations until February, 1901,
when he started on a provincial tour, heard opinions, and tendered
the hand of peace. Municipalities united at certain centres to meet
him; the rich vied with each other to regale him royally; the crowd
flocked in from all parts to greet him; the women smiled in their
gala dresses; the men were obsequiousness itself; delicate viands
were placed before him, and, like every other intelligent traveller
in these Islands, he was charmed by that distinguishing trait of the
Luzon Islanders--that hospitality which has no parity elsewhere,
and for which words cannot be found adequately to describe it to
the reader. As Governor Taft himself said truly, "When a Filipino
who has a house says it is yours, he turns out his family and puts
you in." [241] Governor Taft's reception was only that which had
been accorded to many a personage before his day, travelling in a
style befitting his rank. He returned to Manila, captivated by the
fascinating side of Philippine character: the reverse side he could
never know by personal experience, and the natives secured in him a
champion of their cause--"Philippines for the Filipinos." The main
object of his official progress was to collect information for new
legislation anent the municipalities. Civil government was rapidly
established in all the provinces which were peaceful and otherwise
suitable for it. The War of Independence was drawing to a close
(April, 1902), and meanwhile Governor Taft made tours to Negros,
Cebú, and other islands to explain and inaugurate the new _régime_
based on President McKinley's Instructions to the Taft Commission,
dated April 7, 1900. Governor Taft's administration was signalized
by his complacency towards the natives, his frequent utterances
favourable to their aspirations, and his discouragement of those
Americans who sought to make quick fortunes and be gone. But there
were other Americans than these, and his favourite theme, "Philippines
for the Filipinos," aroused unconcealed dissatisfaction among the
many immigrants, especially the ex-volunteers, who not unnaturally
considered they had won a right to exploit, within reasonable bounds,
the "new possession" gained by conquest. Adverse critics contended that
he unduly protected the Filipino to the prejudice of the white man's
interest. Frank and unfettered encouragement of American enterprise
would surely have helped the professed policy of the State, which
was to lead the Filipinos to habits of industry; and how could this
have been more easily accomplished than by individual example? On
the other hand, the Filipinos, in conformity, regarded him as their
patron: many were unconsciously drawn to submission by the suavity
of his rule, whilst his courtesy towards the vanquished served as
the keynote to his countrymen to moderate their antipathy for the
native and remove the social barriers to a better understanding. And,
in effect, his example did serve to promote a _rapprochement_ between
the conquerors and the conquered.
Appointed to the Secretaryship of War, ex-Governor Taft left the
Philippines in January, 1904, to take up his new office, and was
succeeded in the presidency of the Philippine and Civil Commissions
by Mr. Luke E. Wright. [242] On his way back to the United States
ex-Governor Taft was entertained by the Emperor of Japan, and on his
arrival in his native city of Cincinnati (Ohio) he made a remarkable
speech on the subject of the Philippines, the published reports of
which contain the following significant passage:--"The Filipinos
elected the provincial governor and we appointed the treasurer. We
went there to teach the Filipinos honesty, and we appointed American
treasurers on the theory that the Americans could not steal. Never,
never have I suffered the humiliation that came to me when seventeen
of our disbursing officers, treasurers, were found defaulters! They
are now in Bilíbid prison serving out their twenty-five years."
Since then the Manila Press has recorded many cases of breach of
public trust by those who were sent to teach the Islanders how to
rule themselves (_vide_ p. 493). The financial loss arising from
malfeasance on the part of any civil servant is made good to the
Treasury by a Guarantee Society, which gives a bond in each case,
whilst it takes years to recover the consequent loss of prestige
to the State. The obvious remedy for this state of things would
be the establishment in America of a Colonial Civil Service into
which only youths would be admitted for training in the several
departments. Progressive emolument, with the prospect of a long,
permanent career and a pension at the end of it would be inducements
to efficiency and moral stability.
The Philippine Civil Service is open to all United States citizens
and Filipinos between the ages of 18 and 40 years in accordance with
Philippine Commission Act No. 5, known as the "Civil Service Act,"
passed September 19, 1900. The service is divided into "classified"
and "unclassified." The former division is strictly subject to the
provisions of the above Act; the latter indicates the positions which
may be filled by appointment without subjection to the provisions of
the said Act. The Act declares its purpose to be "the establishment
and maintenance of an efficient and honest civil service in the
Philippine Islands." American soldiers who have less than six months
to serve can apply for permission to be examined for the civil
service. The Act does not include examination for civil positions
in the Military Division of the Islands, but the Civil Service Board
is empowered to hold such examinations to fill vacancies as they may
occur in the nine military departments which employ civilians. General
examinations, some in English only, others in Spanish only, or both,
are held every Monday, and special examinations which include those
for scientific, professional, and technical positions are taken on
specified dates. The commencing salaries of the positions offered range
from $1,200 downwards. Medical attendance is furnished gratis, and
the minimum working time is six and a half hours per day, except from
April 1 until June 15--the hottest weather--when the minimum working
day is five hours. American women are employed in the Post Office.
The Civil Commission is located in the Walled City in the building
which was formerly the Town Hall, a new Town Hall having been built
outside the walls. Occasionally, when public interest is much aroused
on the subject of a proposed measure, the Commission announces
that a public conference will be held for the expression of opinion
thereon. A few persons state their views before the Commissioners,
who rebut them _séance tenante_, and the measure, as proposed,
usually becomes law, unless outside agitation and popular clamour
induce the Commissioners to modify it. At times the proceedings have
been enlivened by sparkling humour. A worthy and patriotic Filipino
once gravely prefaced his speech thus:--"I rise to speak, inspired
by Divine Right"--but he had to wait until the roars of laughter
had subsided. When the "Sedition Act" was being discussed, a less
worthy auditor declared assassination of the Chief of a State to be
merely a political offence. He expected to go to prison and pose as
a martyr-patriot, but the Commission very rightly damped his ambition
by declaring him to be a fool irresponsible for his acts.
Philippine Commission Acts are passed with great rapidity, amended
and re-amended, sometimes several times, to the bewilderment of the
public. Out of 862 Acts passed up to the end of 1903, 686 of them
were amended (some five times) and on 782 no public discussion was
allowed. The "Internal Revenue Law of 1904" had not been in force nine
months when it was amended (March, 1905) by another law. By Philippine
Commission Acts Nos. 127 and 128 the limits of the Surigao and Misámis
provinces were defined and afterwards upset by Act No. 787. The policy
of the Americans anent the Philippines was continually shifting during
the first five years of their occupation, and only since ex-Governor
Taft became Secretary of War does it seem to have assumed a somewhat
more stable character.
The Archipelago is divided into 41 provinces (exclusive of the Moro
Province, _vide_ p. 577), all under civil rule, in accordance with
Congress Act of July 1, 1902, and War Office Order of July 4, 1902,
whereby the remainder of military government ceased. In June, 1904,
nearly all the above 41 provinces had native governors with salaries
ranging from $3,000 gold downwards. In most of these provinces the
native governor and two American officials of about equal rank, such as
the Treasurer and the Supervisor, form a Provincial Council, but the
member who disagrees with the vote of the other two can appeal to the
Gov.-General. After the War of Independence several insurgent chiefs
were appointed to provincial governments; for instance, Cailles in La
Laguna, Trias in Cavite, Clímaco in Cebú, etc. For obvious reasons the
system is advantageous. Juan Cailles, Governor of La Laguna, is the
son of a Frenchman who married a native in one of the French colonies
and then settled in these Islands. For some time Juan Cailles was
registered at the French Consulate as a French citizen. As commander of
the insurgents of La Laguna and Tayabas during the War of Independence,
he maintained strict discipline in his troops, and energetically drew
the line between legitimate warfare and common freebooting.
The provincial governor may be either elected or appointed by the
Civil Commission. If he be a Filipino, he is usually elected by vote
of the vice-presidents (ex-mayors) and municipal councillors of the
province. The mayor of a municipality is styled "Presidente." Every
male over twenty-three years of age who pays taxes amounting to 30
pesos, or who possesses 500 pesos' value of goods is eligible for
election by vote of the townspeople. He holds office for two years,
but can be re-elected for a consecutive term. The municipalities are
of four classes according to their importance, the mayor's salary
being as follows, viz.: First class, 1,200 pesos; second class, 1,000
pesos; third class, 800 pesos; and fourth class, 600 pesos. Provincial
justices of the peace are paid by litigants' fees only. For municipal
improvements, or other urgent necessity, the Insular Government,
from time to time, grants loans to municipalities, repayable with
interest. In some cases two or more towns have been wisely merged
into one municipality: for instance, Cauit, Salinas, and Novaleta
(Cavite) go together; Baliuag, Bustos, and San Rafael (Bulacan) form
one; Barasoain and Malolos (Bulacan) are united; as are also Taal
and Lemery (Batangas). By Philippine Commission Act No. 719 the 51
municipalities of Yloilo Province were reduced to 17.
Malolos is the new capital of Bulacan Province, and the two former
provinces of Camarines Norte and Camarines Sur are now one, under the
name of Ambos Camarines. In the dependent wards of towns (_barrios_)
the municipal police are practically the only official representatives;
the post of lieutenant (_teniente de barrio_) is gratis and onerous,
and few care to take it.
The _Guardia Civil_ or Rural Guard of Spanish times has been
superseded by the _Philippine Constabulary_ under the supreme and
independent command of a cavalry captain (U.S.A.) holding local rank
of Brig.-General. In the private opinion of many regular army officers,
this force ought to be under the control of the Division Commander. The
officers are American, European, and Philippine. The privates are
Filipinos, and the whole force is about 7,000 strong. The function
of this body is to maintain order in rural districts. For some time
there were cases of batches of the rank-and-file passing over to the
brigands whom they were sent to disperse or capture. However, this
disturbing element has been gradually eliminated, and the Philippine
Constabulary has since performed very useful service. Nevertheless,
many educated natives desire its improvement or suppression, on
account of the alleged abuse of functions to the prejudice of peaceful
inhabitants (_vide_ p. 550).
Co-operating with municipal police and the Philippine Constabulary
there is an organized Secret Police Service. It is a heterogeneous
band of many nationalities, including Asiatics, which, as an
_executive_ force to investigate crimes known to have been committed,
renders good service; as an _initiative_ force, with power, with or
without authority, to molest peaceful citizens in quest of imaginary
misdemeanours, in order to justify the necessity of its employment,
it is an unwelcome institution to all, especially the lower-middle
and common classes, amongst whom it can operate with greater impunity.
Not unfrequently when a European nation acquires a new tropical
possession, the imaginative mind discovers therein unbounded wealth
which the eye cannot see, hidden stores of gold procurable only by
manual labour, and fortune-making possibilities awaiting whosoever
has the courage to reveal them. The propagation of these fallacious
notions always allures to the new territory a crowd of ne'er-do-wells,
amongst the _bonâ fide_ workers, who ultimately become loafers preying
upon the generosity of the toilers. This class was not wanting in
the Philippines; some had followed the army; others who had finished
their term of voluntary military service elected to remain in the
visionary El Dorado. Some surreptitiously opened drinking-shanties;
others exploited feminine frailty or eked out an existence by
beggarly imposition, and it was stated by a provincial governor that,
to his knowledge, at one time, there were 80 of this class in his
province. [243] The number of undesirables was so great that it became
necessary for the Insular Government to pass a Vagrant Act, under
which the loafer could be arrested and disposed of. The Act declares
vagrancy to be a misdemeanour, and provides penalties therefor; but
it has always been interpreted in a generous spirit of pity for the
delinquent, to whom the option of a free passage home or imprisonment
was given, generally resulting in his quitting the Islands. This
measure, which brought honour to its devisers and relief to society,
was, in a few instances, abused by those who feigned to be vagrants
in order to secure the passage home, but these were judiciously dealt
with by a regulation imposing upon them a short period of previous
training in stone-breaking to fit them for active life in the homeland.
The following General Order was issued by the Division Commander in
January, 1905, viz.:--
It is reported by the Civil Governor that in several places in
Luzon there have gathered numbers of dishonourably discharged men
from the army who are a hindrance to progress and good order. The
Division Commander desires that in future no dishonourably
discharged soldiers be allowed to remain in the Islands, where
their presence is very undesirable. It is therefore directed that,
in acting on cases where the sentence is dishonourable discharge
without confinement, the dishonourable discharge be made to take
effect after arrival in San Francisco, where the men so discharged
should be sent by first transport.
The Philippine Archipelago is a military division under the supreme
command of a Maj.-General. The commanders, since the taking of Manila
(1898), have been successively Maj.-Generals Merritt, Otis, McArthur,
Chaffee, Davis, Wade, Corbin, and Wood.
The Division is administratively subdivided into three departments,
namely Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, the two former being commanded
by Brig.-Generals and the last by a Maj.-General.
The _Department of Luzon_, headquarters at Manila, includes the
following principal islands, viz. Luzon, Catanduanes, Romblon,
Masbate, Marinduque, Mindoro, Sibuyán, Polillo, Ticao, Tablas, Lúcbang,
and Búrias.
The _Department of Visayas_, headquarters at Yloilo, embraces the
islands of Cebú, Negros, Panay, Leyte, Sámar, and Bojol.
The _Department of Mindanao_, headquarters at Zamboanga, includes
all the remaining islands of the Philippine Archipelago.
STATEMENT OF ARMY STRENGTH IN THE PHILIPPINES ON JUNE 30, 1904 [244]
Present Absent Present and Absent
Officers. Troops. Officers. Troops. Officers. Troops.
General Officers 5 0 0 0 5 0
Gen. Staff Officers 45 0 4 0 49 0
Non-Com Officers at
posts 0 109 0 0 0 109
Medical Department 93 919 10 0 103 919
[245]Contract Surgeons 63 0 22 0 85 0
[245]Contract Dental
Surgeons 17 0 0 0 17 0
Engineers 25 395 1 7 26 402
Signal Corps 7 353 2 1 9 354
Ordnance Corps 2 49 0 2 2 51
Officers temporarily
in the Division 33 0 0 0 33 0
Total Cavalry 172 2,903 27 32 199 2,935
Total Artillery 9 293 3 0 12 293
Total Infantry 356 7,020 78 70 434 7,090
Total American Forces 827 12,041 147 112 974 12,153
Philippine Scouts 77 4,565 23 413 100 4,978
Total Strength 904 16,606 170 525 1,074 17,131
Besides the American troops, there is a voluntary enlistment
of Filipinos, forming the Philippine Scout Corps, a body of rural
police supplementary to the constabulary, commanded by a major and 100
American first and second lieutenants. Until recently the troops were
stationed over the Islands in 98 camps and garrison towns, as follows,
viz.:--In the Department of Luzon 76, Visayas 8, and Mindanao 14;
but this number is now considered unnecessarily large and is being
reduced to effect economy.
The Army, Navy, and Philippine Scouts expenses are entirely defrayed
by the United States Treasury. A military prison is established in
the little Island of Malahi, in the Laguna de Bay, whence the escape
of a prisoner is signalled by three shots from a cannon, and whoever
captures him receives a $30-reward. As the original notice to this
effect required the recovery of the prisoner "alive or dead," two armed
natives went in pursuit of an American soldier. To be quite sure of
their prey they adopted the safe course of killing him first. Such an
unexpected interpretation of the notice as the grim spectacle of an
American's head was naturally repugnant to the authorities, and the
"alive or dead" condition was thenceforth expunged.
CHAPTER XXIX
The Land of the Moros
"Allah Akbar!"
The Military Department of Mindanao comprises the large island of
that name and the adjacent insular territories inhabited chiefly by
Mahometans, called by the Christians _Moros_ (_vide_ p. 129, et seq.).
The natural features of these southern islands are, in general,
similar to those of the other large islands of the Archipelago,
but being peopled by races (exclusive of the settlers) of different
habits, customs, religions, and languages, some aggressively savage
and warlike, others more or less tractable, but all semi-civilized,
the social aspect is so distinct from that of the islands inhabited
by the Christian Filipinos as almost to appear like another quarter
of the tropical globe.
Early in the year 1899 General John C. Bates was appointed to the
command of the Mahometan islands. In Mindanao Island there was no
supreme chieftain with whom to treat for the gradual introduction
of civilization and American methods, the whole territory being
parcelled out and ruled by petty Sultans, _Dattos_ or chiefs,
in separate independence. In the Lake Lanao district, for instance,
there is at least one _Datto_ for every 50 men. The only individual who
had any pretence to general control of the Mahometan population was
Hadji [246] Mohammad Jamalul Kiram, the Sultan of Sulu [247] (_vide_
p. 141). Therefore, in August, 1899, General Bates and this petty
prince made an agreement which was ratified by Congress on February
1 following, on the recommendation of the Schurman Commission (_vide_
p. 562), and thenceforth came into force. The principal conditions of
this convention were: (1) The Sultan's dignity and certain monopoly
rights were recognized under American suzerainty. (2) An annual pension
of 3,000 pesos was secured to him, and annual salaries ranging from
180 to 900 pesos were to be paid to eight of his _Dattos_ and one
priest. (3) A Moro accused of crime was to be tried by a Moro judge,
the maximum penalty for murder being fixed at 105 pesos (equal to
about ten guineas), which was a fair price in this region, from the
Moro point of view, for life here is held very cheap. (4) Absconding
Americans or Sulus were to be mutually surrendered. (5) The Americans
were (_a_) to protect the Sultan against encroachments by foreigners
or European nations; (_b_) not to take arms against the Sulus without
consulting the Sultan; (_c_) not to transfer their dominion over Joló
to others except in agreement with the Sultan; (_d_) to be at liberty
to occupy any place in the Sultan's domains without trespassing on
lands about the royal residence, except as a military necessity of
war with a foreign Power; (_e_) not to interfere with the Mahometan
religion, or its rites, or its customs; (_f_) not to travel about
Sulu Island without the permission of the Sultan, who would provide an
escort. (6) The American flag was to be used on land and at sea. (7)
The Sulus were to be free to carry their native arms. (8) The Sultan
was at liberty to collect tribute everywhere in his domains, and to
have the right of direct intercourse with the American Gov.-General.
In consideration of the above, the Sultan undertook to maintain order
between his _Dattos_, to repress internecine warfare, and gradually
to abolish slavery throughout his jurisdiction.
Apparently the Sultan entered into the agreement much in the spirit
of Mr. Micawber, who signed the I.O.U.'s and thanked God his
debts were paid. The ruler of Sulu was not over-willing and far
less able to give effect to its conditions, his power being more
nominal than real in his own possessions, and in Mindanao almost
_nil_. Nevertheless, it was a politic measure on the Americans'
part, because its non-fulfilment opened the way for the adoption,
with every appearance of justification, of more direct and coercive
intervention in the affairs of this region. General Bates was
succeeded by other generals in the command of this district, without
any very visible progress towards definite pacification and subjection
to civilization. The military posts on the coasts, evacuated by the
Spaniards, were occupied by American troops and new ones were created,
but every attempt to establish law and order beyond their limits, on
the white man's system, was wasted effort. When the Spanish-American
War broke out, the Spanish military authorities were on the point
of maturing a plan for the final conquest of Mindanao. Due to the
persistent activity of my old friend General González Parrado, they
had already achieved much in the Lake Lanao district, through the
Marahui campaign. On the evacuation of the Spaniards the unrestrained
petty chiefs were like lions released from captivity. Blood-shed,
oppression, extortion, and all the instinctive habits of the shrewd
savage were again rife. A preconcerted plan of campaign brings little
definite result; it never culminates in the attainment of any final
issue, for, on the native side, there is neither union of tribes nor
any combined organized attempt at even guerilla warfare, hence the
destruction of a _cotta_ or the decimation of a clan has no immediate
and lasting moral effect on the neighbouring warlike tribe. Life is
cheap among them; a Moro thinks no more about lopping off another's
head than he does about pulling a cocoanut from the palm-tree. The
chief abhors the white man because he interferes with the chief's
living by the labour of his tribe, and the tribesman himself is
too ignorant even to contemplate emancipation. Subservience to the
bidding of the wily _Datto_, poverty, squalidity, and tribal warfare
for bravado or interest seem as natural to the Moro as the sight of
the rising sun. Hence, when the Americans resolved to change all this
and marched into the tribal territories for the purpose, the war-gongs
rallied the fighting-men to resist the dreaded foe, unconscious of
his mission of liberty under the star-spangled banner. The sorrows
or the joys of one tribe are no concern of the other; thus there was
seldom, if ever, any large combination of forces, and the Americans
might be fighting hard in the Taraca country, or around the Lanao
Lake, whilst the neighbouring clan silently and doggedly awaited its
turn for hostilities. The signal for the fray would be the defiant
reply of a chief to the Americans' message demanding submission, or a
voluntary throwing down of the gauntlet to the invader, for the Moro
is valiant, and knows no cringing cowardice before the enemy. Troops
would be despatched to the _cotta_, or fortress, of the recalcitrant
ruler, whence the _lantaca_ cannon would come into action, whilst the
surging mob of warriors would open fire in squads, or rush forward
in a body, _bárong_ or kris in hand, only to be mown down, or put to
flight and the _cotta_ razed to the ground. A detailed account of the
military operations in these islands would be but a tedious recital of
continuous struggles with the irresistible white man. In Mindanao, the
Malanao tribes, occupying the northern regions around the Lake Lanao
districts, seem to have offered the most tenacious resistance. On
April 5, 1902, a fierce encounter with the Bacólod tribes ended
with their fort being destroyed, 120 Moros killed, and 11 Americans
wounded. In the following month the bloody battle of Bayan brought
such disastrous results to the natives that they willingly accepted
peace for the time being. In the Taraca River engagement, 10 _cottas_
were destroyed, 250 Moros were killed, 52 were taken prisoners, and
the booty amounted to 36 cannon and 60 rifles. The Moros possessed a
large number of Remington rifles, looted from the Spaniards, on whom
they had often made surprise raids. The Bacólod and the Taraca tribes,
although frequently defeated, gave much trouble long after the other
districts had been forced into submission.
One of the most exciting expeditions was that of Lieutenant Forsyth,
who went out reconnoitring with 15 men, marching from Párang-Párang
Camp northwards. Moros came to meet him on the way to warn him not to
advance, but Forsyth bravely pushed on until his party, surrounded
by hundreds of hostile natives, was almost all destroyed. Forsyth
and his fellow-survivors fled into an unknown region, where they
lost themselves, and all would have perished had they not been
befriended by a _Datto_ who enabled them to get back. Then Colonel
(now Brig.-General) F. D. Baldwin set out from Malábang Camp in
May, attacked and captured the _cottas_ of the Datto of Binadáyan
and the Sultan of Bayan on Lake Lanao, and gained a signal victory
over them with a loss of seven killed and 44 wounded. Lieutenant
Forsyth's horses and rifles were recovered, and the Moros suffered
so severely in this engagement that it was hardly thought they would
rise again. In consequence of this humiliation of the great Sultan
of Bayan, many minor Lake _Dattos_ voluntarily cultivated friendly
relations with the Americans. Even among the recalcitrant chiefs there
was a lull in their previous activity until they suddenly swept down
on the American troops twelve times in succession, killing four and
wounding 12 of them. The whole Lanao Lake district was in a ferment
when, on September 28, 1902, Captain John J. Pershing was detached
from Baldwin's force to lead another expedition against them "composed
of a battalion of the 7th Infantry, a troop of the 15th Cavalry, and
two platoons of the 25th Field Artillery." [248] Pershing inflicted
such a crushing defeat on the Macui Moros, destroying many of their
strongholds, one Sultan and a large number of his warriors, that he
was hailed with delight as the pacifier of Mindanao. The expedition
returned with a total loss of only two Americans wounded, and after
Pershing's heroic exploit, not only was it in the mouth of every one,
"there is peace in Mindanao," but in the Report of the Secretary of
War for 1902, p. 19, there is a paragraph beginning thus:--"_Now that
the insurrection has been disposed of_ we shall be able to turn our
attention, not merely to the slave trade, but to the already existing
slavery among the Moros." But peace was by no means assured, and
again Captain J. J. Pershing distinguished himself as the successful
leader of an expedition in the Marahui district. Starting from Camp
Vicars [249] on April 5, 1903, with 150 men, Maxim guns, mortars, and
artillery, his instructions were to "explore" the north and west coast
of Lake Lanao, but to overcome any opposition offered. It was quite
expected that his progress would be challenged, hence the warlike
preparations. Arrived at Súgud, the Moros kept up a constant fire
from the hills on the American front. On the high ridge running down
to the lake the Bacólod fort was clearly seen flying the battle flags
of defiance. On the battlements there was a yelling crowd of Moros
beating their gongs, rushing to and fro, flourishing their weapons,
and firing their _lantaca_ cannon towards the Americans; but the
range was too great to have any effect. The artillery was brought into
action, forcing many of the Moros to try their fortunes in the open;
but again and again they were repulsed, and by nightfall the Bacólod
ridge was occupied by the troops. The next morning the mortars were
brought into play, and shells were dropped into the fort during all
that day and night. On the third day Captain Pershing decided to storm
the fort; bridges were constructed across the ravines, Maxim guns
poured shot through the loopholes, and finally an assault party of
10 men rushed across the bridge and climbed the parapet, where they
were met by the Moros, with whom they had a desperate hand-to-hand
fight. It was a fine display of American pluck. The attacking party
was quickly supported by more troops, who either killed or captured
the defenders. Finally all the combustible portion of the fort was
burnt to the ground, 12 cannon were captured, and about 60 Moros
were slain. The demolition of Bacólod fort was a great surprise to
the Moros, who had considered it impregnable, whilst the defeat of
the savage Sultan (the _Panandungan_) destroyed for ever his former
unlimited prestige among the tribe. The force was then divided, and
before the troops reached camp again there were several smaller fights,
including the bombardment of Calahui _cotta_. The distance traversed by
this expedition was about 80 miles, the American losses being one man
killed and two officers and 14 men wounded. For this signal victory the
War Department cabled its thanks to Captain J. J. Pershing on May 11.
As to the management of the Moros, Captain J. J. Pershing expresses
the following just opinion, viz.:--"As far as is consistent with
advancement, a government by a Sultan, or a _Datto_, as the case may
be, should be disturbed as little as possible; that is, the people
should be managed through the _Dattos_ themselves," etc. [250]
The last general in command of the District of Mindanao, prior to the
present constitution of the Moro Province, was Brig.-General Samuel
Sumner, who, just before his departure therefrom, wrote as follows,
viz.:--"Murder and robbery will take place as long as we are in the
country, at least for years to come. The Moro is a savage, and has no
idea of law and order _as we understand it_. _Anarchy_ practically
prevails throughout the region. To take power and control away from
the Sultans and _Dattos_ until we can inaugurate and put in force a
better government would add to the confusion already existing." [251]
The instructions of the President of the United States to the
Philippine Commission, dated April 7, 1900, direct as follows,
viz.:--"In dealing with the uncivilized tribes of the Islands the
Commission shall adopt the same course followed by Congress in
permitting the tribes of our North American Indians to maintain
their tribal organizations and government, and under which many of
those tribes are now living in peace and contentment, surrounded by
a civilization to which they are unable or unwilling to conform."
From the American point of view, but not from the Moro way of looking
at things, an apparent state of anarchy prevailed everywhere; but the
Sultans and the _Dattos_ took very good care not to tolerate what,
in Europe, one would term anarchy, tending to subvert the local
rule. There is no written code of Moro justice. If a Moro stole a
buffalo from another, and the case were brought before the judge,
this functionary and the local chief would, by custom, expect to make
some profit for themselves out of the dispute. The thief would have
to pay a fine to the headman or go into slavery, but having no money
he would have to steal it to purchase his freedom. The buffalo being
the object of dispute would be confiscated, and to be even with the
defendant for the loss of the buffalo, the plantiff would lop off
the defendant's head if he were a man of means and could afford to
pay 105 pesos fine for his revenge.
The real difficulty was, and still is, that there is no Sultan,
or _Datto_, of very extended authority to lay hold of and subdue,
and whose defeat or surrender would entail the submission of a whole
district or tribe. The work of subjection has to be performed piecemeal
among the hundreds of _Dattos_, each of whom, by established custom,
can only act for himself and his own retainers, for every _Datto_ would
resent, at the risk of his life, any dictation from another. All this
is extremely irritating to the white commander, who would prefer to
bring matters to a definite crisis by one or more decisive contests,
impossible of realization, however, in Mindanao or Sulu Islands.
Such was the condition of affairs in the southern extremity of
the Archipelago when it was decided to appoint a Maj.-General to
command it and create a semi-independent government for its local
administration. Maj.-General Leonard Wood [252] was happily chosen for
this arduous and delicate task, and on July 25, 1903, he took up his
appointment, holding it for about two years, when he was transferred
to Manila to command the Division in succession to Maj.-General Henry
C. Corbin.
This region, now called the _Moro Province_, was established under
Philippine Commission Act No. 787 of June 1, 1903 (which came into
effect on July 15 following), and includes all Mindanao [253] except
the larger portion of Misámis Province and all Surigao Province
(N. and E.), which are under civil government, [254] the Joló (Sulu)
Archipelago, the Tawi Tawi group, and all the islands south of Lat. 8°
N., excepting therefrom Palaúan (Parágua) and Balábac Islands and
the islands immediately adjacent thereto, but including the Island
of Cagayán de Joló. The seat of government is at Zamboanga, the
headquarters of the military district, whose commander (Maj.-General
Wood) acted in the dual capacity (but not _ex-officio_) of military
commander and President of the Legislative Council of the Moro
Province, which was organized September 2, 1903, and is composed as
follows, viz.:--
Legislative Council Emolument
President, the Provincial Governor $6,000 gold (if he be
a civilian). [255]
Provincial Secretary Not exceeding
Provincial Treasurer $4,000 gold
Provincial Attorney
Provincial Superintendent of Schools
Provincial Engineer
The Council has power to enact laws "by authority of and subject to
annulment or amendment by the Philippine Commission," and four members
of the six constitute a quorum for legislative action. The Provincial
Governor is responsible, and must report from time to time to the
Gov.-General of the Philippines. The province is sub-divided into
five governmental districts, and one sub-district under governors
and lieut.-governor respectively. [256]
Districts Emolument of Governor
Zamboanga (including Basilan Is.)
Joló (sulu) (including Tawi Tawi group)
Lanao (including Ylígan and Lake Lanao) Not exceeding $3,500
Cottabato (including Polloc) gold if he be a civilian.
Davao (including Cátil)
Dapítan (a sub-district of Zamboanga) Not exceeding $2,000
gold, if he be a civilian.
Each district is controlled by a District Council composed of the
governor, the secretary, and the treasurer. At present all the district
governors are army officers.
Section 15 of the above Act No. 787 provides that governors and
secretaries of districts must learn and pass an examination in the
dialects of their localities within 18 months after taking office,
or be subject to dismissal.
Under Philippine Commission Act No. 82, entitled "The Municipal Code,"
amended in its application to the Moro Province by the Legislative
Council of the Moro Province Act No. 35, of January 27, 1904, the
Moro districts and sub-districts are furthermore sub-divided in the
following manner, viz.:--
_Municipalities_ are established in the district or sub-district
capital towns, and wherever there is a population sufficiently large
and enlightened to be entitled to municipal rights. [257] A president
(mayor), vice-president, or councillor must be between twenty-six
and sixty-five years of age, and must intelligently speak, read, and
write Spanish, English, or the principal local dialect. Ecclesiastics,
soldiers in active service, and persons receiving emolument from
public funds are debarred from these offices. Every municipal officer
must give a bond with two or more sureties equal to at least half
of the amount of annual funds which will probably pass through his
hands. The maximum salary of a president (mayor) is P1,200, and that
of municipal secretary P600. Certain other officers are also paid,
but the vice-presidency and councillorships are honorary posts. A
person elected to office by the people is not permitted to decline it,
except for certain reasons defined in the code, subject to a maximum
penalty of six months' imprisonment. The mayor's symbol of office is
a cane with a silver knob, plated ferrule, and black cord and tassels.
Natives whose habits and social condition will not yet permit their
inclusion in a municipality are segregated into _Tribal Wards_ [258]
(Legislative Council Act No. 39, of February 19, 1904). The headman
is generally the chief recognized by his race or people as such,
and is immediately responsible to the district governor by whom
he is appointed. His annual salary ranges from P240 to P1,800, and
his badge of office is a baldric of red leather with a metal disc,
bearing an impression of the Moro Province seal. He and his advisory
council perform the usual municipal functions on a minor scale, and
are permitted to "conform to the local customs of the inhabitants,
unless such customs are contrary to law or repugnant to the usages
or moral sense of civilized peoples."
A Tribal Ward is furthermore divided into _Tribal Ward Districts_. The
district headman is the deputy of the tribal ward headman to whom he
is immediately responsible. His annual salary ranges from P96 to P600,
and his badge of office is a baldric of yellow canvas with a metal
disc as mentioned above. The tribal ward headman's district deputies
together constitute the police force of the whole ward. Tribal ward
headmen and their district deputies are not required to give bond. At
any time, on certain conditions, a member of a tribal ward can apply
for full citizenship in a municipality. In short, the governmental
system adopted is intended to raise the native progressively from
savagery to municipal life.
The sources of _Revenue_ are briefly as follows, viz:--
_Provincial._--Property tax (7/8 per cent. of assessed value),
industrial, cédula (poll tax of 1 peso for each male over 18 years),
stamps, court fees, fines, sales of supplies to municipalities,
and forestry collection.
_Municipal._--Ownership and transfer of cattle, rents and profits,
licences, fines and carts.
_Customs Revenues_ in the five ports of entry, viz.:--Joló, Zamboanga,
Cottabato, Siassi, and Bongao.
The Summary of the fiscal year ending June 30, 1904, stands thus:--
Revenue
Provincial Taxes and Forestry payments P114,713.66
Customs Revenue 222,664.39
----------
P337,378.05
Expenditure
Provincial P174,361.70
Appropriated for Public Works 26,181.76
Customs Expenses 53,170.62
Balance available 83,663.97
----------
P337,378.05
The maintenance of the Constabulary Force, Post Office Department,
and Courts of First Instance in this Province is an Insular Government
charge.
The revenue collected within the province (including the customs
receipts) is spent therein. No remittance of funds is made to the
Insular Treasury, but provincial accounts are subject to Insular
Government audit, and have to be rendered to Manila.
The troops assigned to this command are as follows, viz. [259]:--
Armed Forces in the Moro Province. Present and Absent.
Officers. Troops.
Regular troops [260] 236 3,766
Contract and Dental Surgeons and attached Staff 25 --
Total American forces 261 3,766
Native troops 11 543
Total Strength, Military District 272 4,309
Philippine Constabulary (Moro and Christian mixed)
under Civil Government orders 22 530
--- -----
294 4,839
On General Wood's recommendation, the Bates Agreement (_vide_
p. 571) was rescinded on the ground that it was an obstacle to
good government. In truth, the Sultan of Sulu was probably quite
as unable as he was unwilling to carry out its provisions. However,
under Philippine Commission Act No. 1259 (amended by Act No. 1320 of
April 12, 1905), certain small annual money allowances are made to
the present Sultan of Sulu and his principal advisers.
In Mindanao, trouble again arose on the east shore of Lake Lanao,
and an expedition was organized to march against the Taracas, who
were, however, only temporarily subdued. Defiant messages were sent
by the _Dattos_, and General Wood decided to conduct operations in
person. According to private information given to me by officers
in Mindanao some months after the battle, immense slaughter was
inflicted on this tribe, whose _cottas_ were annihilated, and they were
utterly crushed for the time being. About the beginning of 1904 the
depredations of the Moros in the upper valley of the Cottabato River
were revolting beyond all toleration. Cottabato town was pillaged under
the leadership of Datto Ali and of his brother, Datto Djimbangan. In
March an expedition invested the Serenaya territory in the Cottabato
district and operated from the 4th to the 14th of that month without
any American casualties. Datto Ali's fort at Kudarangan was taken and
destroyed. [261] This formidable stronghold is described by General
Wood thus:--"It was larger than twenty of the largest _cottas_ of the
Lake region or Sulu, and would have easily held a garrison of four or
five thousand men. It was well located, well built, well armed, and
amply supplied with ammunition. There were embrasures for 120 pieces
of artillery. Eighty-five pieces were captured, among them many large
cannon of from 3 inches to 5 1/2 inches calibre. The other pieces in
the work, small _lantacas_, were carried off or thrown into the river"
(_vide_ First Annual Report of the Moro Province).
Datto Ali thenceforth became a fugitive with some 60 armed followers
and about a hundred others whom he pressed into his service as
carriers. After the battle, Datto Djimbangan, Ali's brother, was
taken unawares at his ranche by a detachment of American troops. He
was conducted as a prisoner to Cottabato, and in February, 1905, he
was transferred to the Zamboanga jail to await his trial for sedition
and rebellion. Again the Taracas ventured on a series of attacks on
the American military posts in the locality. A body of troops was
despatched there in March, and after ten days' operations this tribe
was routed and dispersed, the American casualties being two men killed,
one drowned, 10 wounded, and one officer slightly wounded. On May
8 a party of 39 men and two officers, reconnoitring about Simbalan,
up the Cottabato Valley, was attacked, 13 men being killed, two taken
prisoners, six wounded, and the two officers killed. It would appear
that the guides were conducting the party safely, when a lieutenant
insisted on taking another route and landed his troops in a plateau
covered with _cogon_ (pampas-grass) about eight feet high. On emerging
from this they all got into a stream, where the Moros suddenly fell
upon them. The punitive Simpetan Expedition immediately set out for
that district and successfully operated from the 13th to the 28th
of May without any American casualties. Datto Ali, who was again
on the warpath, is the son-in-law of old Datto Piang, the terror
of the neighbourhood in his younger days and also just after the
evacuation by the Spaniards. Ali declared that he would not yield to
the Americans one iota of his independence, or liberate his slaves, and
swore vengeance on all who went in his pursuit. Being the hereditary
_Datto_, the inhabitants of the valley generally sympathized with him,
at least passively. In the latter half of 1904, constant endeavour
was made to effect the capture of this chieftain, whilst old Datto
Piang, the son of a Chinaman with a keen eye to business, supplied
the Americans with baggage-carriers at a peso a day per man for the
troops sent to hunt down his refractory son-in-law. Active operations
were sustained against him, and from the military posts of Malábang
(formerly a Moro slave-market) and Párang-Párang on the Illana Bay
coast there were continually small punitive parties scouring the
district here and there. At the former camp I was the guest of the
genial Colonel Philip Reade, in command of the 23rd Infantry, when
Lieutenant C. R. Lewis was brought in wounded from a Cottabato River
sortie. Colonel Reade, whose regiment had had about the roughest
work of any in the Island, had certainly inspired his men with the
never-know-when-you-are-beaten spirit, for the report of a reverse
set them all longing to be the chosen ones for the next party. But
up to July, 1905, Datto Ali had been able to elude capture, although
General Wood personally conducted operations against him a year before,
establishing his headquarters at Cabacsalan, near the Lake Ligusan.
The most ferocious and arrogant Mindanao tribes occupy regions within
easy access of the coast. Perhaps their character is due to their
having led more adventurous lives by land and sea for generations,
plundering the tribes of the interior and making slave raids in
their _vintas_ on the northern islands and christian native coast
settlements. In the centre of the Island and around the mountainous
region of the Apo the tribes are more peaceful and submissive, without
desire or means for warfare. Many of the Bagobo tribe (which I have
twice visited), in the neighbourhood of Davao, have come down to
settle in villages under American protection, paying only an occasional
visit to their tribal territory to make a human sacrifice.
In Basílan Island, a dependency of Zamboanga, about 13 miles distant,
Datto Pedro Cuevas accepted the new situation, and under his influence
peace was assured among the large Moro population of that island. The
history of this man's career bristles with stirring episodes. Born in
1845, of Tagálog parentage, he started life as a Cavite highwayman,
but was captured and deported to the agricultural colony of San
Ramón, near Zamboanga, where he, with other convicts, attacked and
killed three of the European overseers, and Cuevas escaped to Basílan
Island. After innumerable difficulties, involving the conquest of a
score of villages, he gained the control of a large number of Yacan
Moros and became a sort of chief. Some years afterwards the Moros
organized an attack on the Christians at Zamboanga and Isabela de
Basílan, and Cuevas offered to save the Spaniards on condition of
receiving a full pardon. Two Spaniards were accordingly sent as
hostages to Cuevas' camp, and after Isabela was freed of the enemy
he came to see the Spanish governor. There were several Spaniards
present at the interview, and it is related that one of them let
slip a phrase implying doubt as to Cuevas' worthiness for pardon,
whereupon the undaunted chief remarked, "Sir, I thought I had won my
liberty, seeing that, but for me, you would not be alive to accord
it." Thenceforth he was always a reliable ally of the Spaniards against
Moro incursions. In 1882 Cuevas was opposed by an arrogant Sulu chief,
Datto Calun, who challenged him to single combat, and Cuevas having
slain his adversary, the tribe of the vanquished warrior, admiring
the conqueror's valour, proclaimed him their _Datto_, which title was
acknowledged by Datto Aliudi, the claimant to the Sulu Sultanate. On
July 6, 1904, his graceful daughter Urang was married, with Mahometan
rites, to a twenty-one-year-old Spanish half-caste, Ramón Laracoechea,
who was introduced to me by his father, a very pleasant Vizcayan,
resident in the Island since 1876. Educated in Manila, the son speaks
English, Spanish, Yacano and Joloáno. The festivities lasted for
several days, some Americans being among the invited guests. Shortly
after this event the _Datto_, at the age of fifty-nine years, ended
his adventurous career in this world, regretted by all. In expectation
of the demise of Datto Cuevas, which was anticipated months before,
there were three aspirants to the coming vacant dattoship in the
persons of the son-in-law, Ramón, Cuevas' nephew, and an American of
humble origin and scant education who had married a Zamboangueña woman.
In Sulu Island social conditions were most deplorable. Under the Bates
Agreement the Moros became turbulent, and even attempted to take Joló
town by assault. In August, 1903, General Wood went there, and the
_Dattos_ having been invited to meet him, quite a crowd of them came,
accompanied by about 600 fighting-men in a splendid fleet of armed
_vintas_ (war-canoes). Precautions had to be taken against possible
treachery, and a company of troops was brought into the town in
readiness for any event. The object of the meeting was to discuss the
respective limits of the _Dattos'_ spheres, but owing to the haughty,
insolent tone of the chiefs, nothing definite was arrived at. When
they were invited to state their claims, they arrogantly replied,
"We have no information to give. You say you are going to define
our limits--well, what have you to tell us? We come to listen, not
to talk." Some chiefs, however, feigned to offer their submission,
and all was apparently quiet for a time.
Major Hugh L. Scott (14th Cavalry) was then appointed (in September) to
the government of that district. The Sultan being too weak to control
his subordinates, many of them rallied their men and independently
defied all interference with their old mode of living and rule. The
Sultan, not unnaturally, was averse to ceding his sovereign rights to
any one, and he and his _Dattos_ obstructed, as far as they could, the
Americans' endeavours to better the conditions of the people. Every
few days a _juramentado_ (_vide_ pp. 146, 150) would enter the town
and attack a white man with his _bárong_ in broad daylight. There
was nothing furtive in his movements, no hiding under cover to take
his victim unawares, but a straight, bold frontal attack. _Bárong_
in hand, a Moro once chased a soldier though the street, upstairs into
a billiard-room, and down the other steps, where he was shot dead by
a sentinel. At another time a _juramentado_ obtained access into the
town by crawling through a drain-pipe, and chased two soldiers until
he was killed. Many Americans were wounded in the streets of Joló,
but the aggressors were always pursued to death. Petty hostilities,
attacks and counter-attacks, the sallies of punitive parties to avenge
some violence committed, and the necessity for every individual in
the town, civil or military, being armed and always alert, made life
there one of continual excitement and emotion.
In November, 1903, the attitude of the _Dattos_ became very
menacing. Datto Andong actually cut a trench just outside the walled
town of Joló as a base of operations against the Americans. It was
evident that an important rising of chiefs was contemplated. Major
Scott having called upon the biggest chief, Panglima [262] Hassan,
to present himself and account for the murder of an American survey
party, he came with a large force, estimated at about 4,000, well
armed, as far as the town walls. He said he wanted to enter the
town with a suite of only 700 armed men, including his subordinate
_Dattos_. Finally Major Scott agreed to his entry with 70 warriors,
but still the position was threatening with Hassan's army in the
vicinity. During the interview Panglima Hassan appeared quite friendly;
indeed, whilst he and the major were riding together, the chief,
perceiving that his host was unarmed, gallantly remarked, "As you are
without arms I will relinquish mine also," and at once took off his
_bárong_ and handed it to his attendant. In the meantime Major Scott
had sent a request to General Wood for more troops, but the general,
who had only just finished his Taraca operations, replied that he
would come to Joló himself. Almost simultaneously with his arrival in
Zamboanga the general had the satisfaction to receive a message from
the Taraca _Datto_ offering his submission, and asking to be judged
according to the Koran. On General Wood's arrival with troops in Joló
a demand was made on Panglima Hassan to surrender. After protracted
negotiations and many insolent messages from Hassan, the general
led his troops down to Lake Seite, where an engagement took place,
leaving 60 dead Moros on the field. Panglima Hassan, pursued from
place to place, lost many warriors at every halt, the total being
estimated at 400 to 500. _Cottas_ were razed to the ground, and the
notorious Panglima Hassan himself was captured on November 14, with a
loss, so far, of one soldier killed and five wounded on the American
side. Panglima Hassan was being escorted into Joló town by Major
Scott and other officers when suddenly the chief, pointing towards
a native-built house, begged the major to save his family. Moved by
compassion and influenced by Hassan's previous friendly attitude, the
major generously consented, and as they all approached the entrance,
in an instant out rushed the "family"--a mob of armed Moros, who
attacked the officers whilst the Panglima made his escape. Poor Major
Scott was so badly cut about on his hands that he had to go into
hospital for four months, and I noticed that he had had one left-hand
finger and two right-hand half-fingers amputated. Unable to handle
any kind of weapon, in March, 1904, he led his troops against the
cunning _Datto_, who sent out a large body of fighting-men to meet
him. After several attacks were repelled, Panglima Hassan took to
flight, his followers all the time decreasing in numbers until, with
only 80 men, the chief sought refuge in his _cotta_ at Pang-Pang,
the strongest fortress in the Island. Breaches were made in it, and
Hassan fled for his life on a swift pony, with only two retainers,
to the crater of an extinct volcano, which was quickly surrounded
by the Americans. Each time a head appeared above the crater edge a
volley was fired, but the wounded chief still bravely held out and
hit some soldiers before he died, riddled by bullets, on March 4.
Again, in May, 1905, Datto Pala, of Sulu Island, with a large
following, threatened Joló town, and General Wood personally led
the expedition against this chief. Eight miles from Maybun the Moros
had dug pits and placed wires to impede the Americans' advance, but,
notwithstanding these obstacles, the enemy was vigorously attacked
and surrounded near the Maybun Lake, three miles from the town. After
several days' desperate fighting the _cotta_ of Lumbo was captured,
and the _Datto_ and his men were vanquished, the losses being about
seven Americans killed, about 20 wounded, and over 250 Moros killed.
In June, 1904, Datto Ambutong had a dispute with another about the
possession of some property, and on Major Scott being appealed to
in the matter, he ordered Ambutong to appear before him in Joló
for a _bichâra_ (judicial inquiry). The _Datto_, in a sulky mood,
at first refused to come, but on further pressure he changed his
mind. Early in the morning of the appointed day a friendly chief,
Datto Timbang, came into town with four retainers, all armed, to
see the Governor. Major Scott, whose guest I was, kindly invited me
to the interview, during which it transpired that Datto Timbang had
heard Ambutong declare he would come to the _bichâra_, but he would
not leave it without taking heads. Datto Timbang added that he too
desired to attend the _bichâra_ with his bodyguard, resolved to slay
Ambutong if he observed any threatening move on his part. The major
made no objection, and at the appointed hour four of us--my gallant
host, Major Barbour, Captain Charles and myself--went to the _bichâra_
at the Governor's office in town. The Governor (i.e., the major) sat
at his desk, and we other three took seats just behind him. Before
us were the Datto Ambutong, his opponent in the question at issue,
and, a yard off him, the friendly Datto Timbang and his followers,
each with his hand on his _bárong_, ready to cut down Ambutong at a
stroke if need be. Whilst the case was being heard, Hadji Butu, the
Sultan's Prime Minister, and Sultan Tattarassa, of Parágua Island,
the latter afflicted with _locomotor ataxy_, came in, saluted us all,
and took seats. The business ended, Datto Ambutong rose from his
stool, gave his hand to the major, and then walked to the back of
him to salute us. I thought I should like to handle the beautiful
_bárong_ which was to have served him in taking heads. The _Datto_
complaisantly allowed me to draw it from the sheath and pass it round
to my friends. Sharp as a razor, it was the finest weapon of the class
I had ever touched. The handle was of carved ivory and Camagon wood
(_vide_ p. 314), the whole instrument being valued at quite $100. Datto
Timbang was watching, and the occasion was not a propitious one for
taking christian blood.
The following translation of a letter which Major Hugh L. Scott
courteously gave me will serve to illustrate how lightly human life
is appreciated by the Moro.
This letter from your son, His Highness Datto Mohammed Dahiatul
Kalbi, to my father, the Governor of Sulu, Major Scott, and to
my younger brother, Sali.
I want to inform you that at 7 o'clock in the morning of Saturday,
we had a fight with Tallu. I have taken his head, but if you
will allow it, I will bury it, if my father will let me do that,
because he is an Islam and I would commit an offence. It scared
my wife very much when she looked at the head in my house. Those
that are dead were Sadalani, Namla, Muhamad, and Salui. Beyond
that I have not investigated.
With greetings to my father and to my younger brother, I beg you,
my younger brother, to let me bury the head, if my father does not
feel bad about it. If our father should not believe that the head
is there, come to our house and see yourself, so to be sure. I
would not soil the faith my father has in me. To close I herewith
send the kris of Orang Kaya Tallu. The end of the pen. Sunday,
February 23, 1904.
Whilst I was in Zamboanga in June, 1904, Datto Pedro Cuevas, of
Basílan Island, sent a message over to say that there would be no
more trouble with certain pirates who had been caught, as he had cut
off their heads.
It would fill a volume to recount the legends of the sharks near
Cagayán de Joló which wreck ships; the Moro who heard the voice of
Allah rising from a floating cocoanut to urge him to denounce the
Sultan's evil ways; the new prophet who could point at any object
and make it disappear, and a hundred other superstitious extravagances.
Joló (_vide_ p. 149), one of the prettiest places on earth, has
been improved since the American occupation. Apart from the many
new buildings erected for military convenience, there is now a fine
jetty with a tramway, a landing-stage for small vessels, a boys'
and a girls' school, some new residences, etc. The municipality
is under the presidency of a military officer, and the clean,
orderly aspect of the town is evidence of Anglo-Saxon energy in
its administration. In 1904 there was only one drinking-saloon,
kept by a Bohemian-born American, who paid $6,000 a year for his
monopoly licence. Much to the disgust of the military, a society of
well-intentioned temperance ladies in America procured the prohibition
of alcohol-selling in military canteens and Post Exchanges. The
eastern extremity of Joló is appropriated for military purposes,
and on the rising ground is situated the stabling for the cavalry
horses. There is a large military hospital, well appointed, and a
club-house for whites, overlooking the picturesque harbour. Outside
the town walls towards the west the dwellings of natives, chiefly from
other islands in their origin, extend about a mile as far as Tulay,
where the Sultan has a residence. On the way one passes through the
little square, in the centre of which stands a monument erected to
commemorate the landing here of Gov.-General Corcuera, April 17,
1638. During my last visit to Joló I called upon His Highness the
Sultan at Tulay, accompanied by the civil interpreter, Mr. J. Schück,
whose late father I had known many years before. [263] Tulay signifies
_bridge_ in Tagálog, and probably this place derives its name from the
bridge spanning the rivulet, which forms a natural division between
this village and the Joló ex-mural western suburb. Just across the
bridge, in most unattractive surroundings, stands a roofed rough pile
of wooden planks--the residence of the Sultan. At a few paces to
the left of it one sees another gloomy structure, smaller and more
cheerless than the royal abode--it is the domicile of Hadji Butu,
the Sultan's Prime Minister.
Passing through the ground-floor, which serves as a vestibule and
storehouse for nondescript rubbish, I was met by several armed Moros
who conducted me up a dark staircase, the lid of which, at the top,
was raised to admit me to the royal presence. His Highness, the
Majasari Hadji Mohammad Jamalul Kiram, reclining on a cane-bottomed
sofa, graciously smiled, and extending his hand towards me, motioned
to me to take the chair in front of him, whilst Mr. Schück sat on
the sofa beside the Sultan. His Highness is about thirty-six years
of age, short, thick set, wearing a slight moustache and his hair
cropped very close. With a cotton _sárong_ around his loins, the
nakedness of his body down to the waist was only covered by _jábul_
(_vide_ p. 146) thrown loosely over him. Having explained that I
was desirous of paying my respects to the son of the great Sultan
whose hospitality I had enjoyed years ago at Maybun, I was offered
a cigar and the conversation commenced. Just at that moment came
the Prime Minister, who spoke a little English, and at the back of
me, facing the Sultan, stood his trusted warriors in semi-circle,
attired in fantastic garments and armed to the teeth. From time to
time a dependent would come, bend the knee on the royal footstool and
present the _buyo_ box, or a message, or whatever His Highness called
for. The footstool attracted my curiosity, and my eye was fixed on
it for a while until I could decipher the lettering, which was upside
down. At last I made it out--"Van Houten's Cocoa." The audience-chamber
needs no minute description; it can be all summed up in bare boards,
boxes, bundles, weapons, dirt, a dilapidated writing-desk, a couple
of old chairs, and the Sultan's sofa-seat. Of course the Sultan
had a grievance. The Americans, he said, had appropriated his
pearl-fisheries, his tribute-money, and other sources of valuable
income; they were diverting the taxes payable to him into their own
coffers, with detriment to his estate and his dignity as a ruler. [264]
The questions in dispute and his position generally were, he added,
to be discussed between him and the Insular Government in Manila in the
following month. Naturally, the study of the man and his surroundings
interested me far more than conversation on a subject which was not
my business. Speaking with warmth, at every gesture the _jábul_ would
slide down to his waist, exposing his bare breast, so that perhaps
I saw more of the _Majasari_ than is the privilege of most European
visitors. On leave-taking His Highness graciously presented me with
a handsome Moro dress-sword and a betel-cutter set in a solid silver
handle, and, in return, I sent him my portrait from Manila.
Exactly a month after my visit, the Sultan, accompanied by Major
Scott, the Governor and Commander of Joló, came and made a short stay
in Manila, where he was conducted around town and to the presence of
the authorities. Many valuable presents were officially made to him,
together with P5,000 pocket-money to console him for the postponement
_sine die_ of the "settlement" question. Driving round in wagonettes,
his retinue saw the sights of the capital and made their purchases,
but the Sultan himself was strictly guarded from pressmen and others
who might give local publicity to his claims.
America's policy with regard to the Sultan of Sulu and all other
Sultans and _Dattos_, as expounded to me by the best American
authorities, is as clear as crystal. They wish all these petty
potentates were elsewhere; but as that cannot be, they must be shorn
of all power, princely dignity being out of harmony with American
institutions. Nevertheless, they can call themselves what they like
among their own people, provided that in their relations with the
Government of the Islands they are to be simple citizens with dominion
over their own personal property, but not over that of others. There
is to be no sovereign power, great or small, other than American,
and tribal wards are to supersede dattoships. The _Dattos_ are more
numerous than Continental barons, and of varying grades, from the
Panglima Hassan type, possessor of fortresses, commander of 5,000
men, down to the titular lord of four score acres who lounges in the
village, in filthy raiment, closely followed by two juveniles, the
one carrying his bright metal _buyo_ box, in case he needs a quid,
and the other the bearer of the _bárong_, lest he must assert his
dignity by force. America has decreed that from these and all their
compeers the Philippines are to be preserved.
In November, 1903, the District Governor of Zamboanga summoned
the Manguiguin, or Sultan of Mindanao (_vide_ p. 131), and all the
_Dattos_ in his district to attend a durbar. The aged Sultan very
reluctantly responded to the call, and, accompanied by his Prime
Minister, Datto Ducalat, and a large retinue, the royal party came
in about 250 armed _vintas_. When they were within a few miles
of the port they sent a message to ask if they would be allowed to
salute with their _lantacas_, and the reply being in the affirmative,
they entered the harbour with great _éclat_, amidst the booming of a
hundred cannon. Interpreters put off to meet them and escorted them
to the landing-stage, where the District Governor waited to receive
them. The Sultan wore a gorgeous turban, a royal _sárong_ worked
in thread of gold, and shoes with similar adornments. On landing,
the old prince, trembling from top to toe, with despairing glance
clutched the arm of the Governor for protection. Never before had
he seen the great city of Zamboanga; he was overcome and terrified
by its comparative grandeur, and possibly by the imposing figure of
the six-foot Governor himself. The police had to be called out to
restrain the mobs who watched his arrival. On the other hand, as the
Sultans, the _Dattos_ and their suites together numbered about 600,
and from other places by land about 400 more had come, all armed,
many of the townspeople, with traditional dread, shut themselves
up in their houses, believing that such a vast assemblage of Moros
might, at any moment, commence a general massacre. It is well known
that the question of public security did engage the attention of the
American authorities, for the gathering was indeed a formidable one,
and at the moment General Wood was in Sulu Island, leading his troops
against Panglima Hassan. All the available forces were therefore
held in readiness to meet any emergency. With faltering footsteps and
shaking like an aspen leaf, the Manguiguin, followed by his _Dattos_,
approached the double lines of soldiers with fixed bayonets stationed
on the quay. There was a pause; the Sultan, who in his youthful days
had known no fear, now realized the folly of walking into the jaws
of death. But the Governor assured him, through the interpreters,
that he was doing him the greatest honour that could be rendered to
any prince or to the great president of the greatest republic. Only
half convinced and full of suspicion, the Sultan walked on in a daze,
as though he were going to his last doom. Having emerged safely from
this peril, the great durbar was held, and lasted some hours. This was
followed by a reception at the Army and Navy Club, where a throne was
erected under a canopy for the Sultan, with seats of honour around
it for the chief _Dattos_. The reception over, the royal party was
conducted to where waggons and teams awaited them to take them to a
suburb at the foothills of the great sierra. The Governor purposely
had the biggest American horses and the largest vehicles brought
out to make an impression. The Sultan point blank refused to enter
the waggon. He had run the gauntlet through rows of pointed steel,
and now new horrors awaited him. Perfectly bewildered at the sight
of such enormous animals, he turned piteously to his Prime Minister
and invited him to lead the way. "I will follow your Highness," the
minister discreetly replied, but the muscular Governor, Captain John
P. Finley, ended the palaver by gently lifting the Sultan into the
vehicle, whilst he himself immediately entered it, and the timorous
Prime Minister and suite summoned up courage to follow. During the
drive the Governor gave the word to the teamsters to detach the
forecarriages on reaching the foothills and let the teams go. To
the great amazement of the Moro chiefs, the waggons suddenly became
stationary, whilst the released horses galloped on ahead! The Sultan
and his suite glanced at each other speechless with fright. Surely
now their last day had come! So this was the trick treacherously
prepared for them to segregate them from their fighting-men! But
the teams were caught again, and the waggons brought them safely
back to the sight of the port and the _vintas_. Allah had turned the
hearts of the great white men and rescued his chosen people in the
hour of imminent danger. The durbar was continued day by day until
every point had been discussed. Meanwhile the Sultan and suite daily
returned to their _vintas_ afloat to eat, drink, and sleep, whilst
in the town of Zamboanga the christian natives quaked, and crowds
of Moros perambulated the streets in rich and picturesque costumes,
varying in design according to the usage of their tribes. Before the
departure of the royal visitor the troops were formed up, military
evolutions were performed with clockwork precision, and volley after
volley was fired in the air. The Sultan declared he could never receive
the Governor with such splendour, but he wanted him to promise to
return his visit. It was not politic, however, to agree to do so. And
the Sultan and his people left, passing once more through lines of
troops with bayonets fixed, this time with a firmer step than when
they landed, thanking the Great Prophet for their happy deliverance
from what had appeared to them a dreamland of dreadful novelty.
The Manguiguin of Mindanao was indeed "a man of sorrows and acquainted
with grief," for in the days of his decrepitude he was jilted by the
widow of Utto (_vide_ p. 143), the once celebrated Cottabato _Datto_,
the idol of the Christian-haters.
Education is one of the chief concerns of the Moro Province
Government. The efforts of the _School Department_, up to June 30,
1904, will be understood from the following official statistics,
viz. [265]:--
Teachers employed--15 Americans, 50 Christian Filipinos, and nine
Mahometan Filipinos.
41 Schools were established.
2,114 Children were on the school rolls.
1,342 Christian children attended on average.
240 Moro children attended on average.
P46,898.17 were expended in the School Department, of which P28,355.09
were disbursed in Zamboanga District.
Besides the public schools, the Jesuits are permitted to continue
their excellent work of civilization and education in their own
schools wherever they have a mission established.
According to Moro custom the fruit of a man's labour belongs to
the _Datto_ who gives the man a subsistence. The Americans are
teaching the man that the fruit of his labour is his own, and, for
that purpose, market-places are established at many centres on the
coast with the hope of inculcating free-labour notions, so that the
seller can get cash for his goods and keep it. I visited three of
these markets on the south coast of Mindanao, and also the one in
course of construction at Zamboanga (ward of Magay), where Governor
John P. Finley was putting his heart and soul into his scheme for
creating an important Moro Exchange. By Legislative Council Act
No. 55, the sum of P1,850 was appropriated for its construction,
and the Governor had succeeded in persuading the Moros themselves
to contribute P1,300 towards its completion. The Moros are urged to
come in their produce-laden _vintas_ and occupy the stalls erected
for them in the large commodious market-shed, which has accommodation
for carts and cattle if need be. Boats of less than 15 tons gross are
free of tax, licence, or documents (Phil. Com. Act No. 1354, of June
15, 1905). Whenever any trouble arises up the coast the Governor's
official _vinta_ is despatched, manned by Moros, under the command
of the Governor's messenger, Hadji Nuño, a parvenu _Datto_ whose name
reveals his Spanish origin.
Everything within the powers of the Legislative Council of the
Moro Province seems to have been done to introduce law, order, and
administrative uniformity, constrain violence, propagate knowledge
and set the inhabitants on the path of morality and prosperity. The
result of a century's labour, at the present rate of development,
might, however, be achieved in a decade if the Insular Government had
authority from Washington to relax the rigidity of the "Philippines for
the Filipinos" doctrine in the special case of the Moro Province. It
is true the Moros are as much Filipinos as the rest of the Philippine
inhabitants, but it will be generations before they can know how to
enjoy their birthright without the example of energetic white men who
are, naturally, unwilling to come and philanthropically devote their
lives to "pulling the chestnuts out of the fire" for the Moro. They
want to reap some material advantage for themselves. Gen. Leonard Wood,
in his First Annual Report of the Moro Province, remarks:--"What is
needed to develop this portion of the world is a suitable class of
settlers, bringing with them knowledge of modern agricultural methods,
enterprise and some capital.... If he (the Moro) could see the results
... it is believed that his ambition would be stimulated and that his
development would be comparatively rapid. In short, a scattering of
good agriculturists throughout the province would be of inestimable
value to the people. At the present time such a class of settlers
is _not_ coming, and it is not believed they will come until much
more liberal inducements are offered them, especially in the way of
obtaining land by settlement. Our standing among the people of these
Islands has been much injured by the presence of a large and tough
class of so-called Americans whose energies have been principally
extended in the construction, maintenance and patronage of rum shops,
which outnumber other American business establishments."
The American who would go to Mindanao to settle on 40 acres of land
could not be of the class desired. [266] A maximum of 1,000 acres to
an individual settler and 10,000 acres to a company of not less than
five persons, would produce a rapid and beneficial development of
Mindanao and push on its civilization by giant strides. There would
be little fear of the natives' rights being unduly encroached upon by
whites if, in addition to the Homestead Law conditions, the period
of application for land were limited to two or three years from the
promulgation of the law, with solid guarantees to prevent a flood of
bogus applications from land-grabbers. The Treasurer, in his First
Annual Report of the Moro Province, says:--"It is not reasonable to
expect, under present conditions, any systematic effort on their
(the Moros') part to cultivate the soil, as they know, as well as
the powers that be, that they have no assurance that the land they
will improve to-day will be theirs to-morrow. They have title to not
one foot of land, and no guarantee from the Government that present
improvements will be theirs when they are finally settled by the
former. A liberal _land law_ will also bring an influx of settlers
and capital.... It will not only make this province the richest part
of the Philippine Islands and the State the beneficiary, but it will
remove the necessity for the soldier in the field. No other legislation
is going to improve financial conditions here to any extent. There is
no doubt the Government land unsettled and untouched in this province
amounts to 90 per cent. of all the tillable land, and equals in area
and excels in richness that of all the tillable land of Luzon."
The District of Davao is far more developed agriculturally than the
other four. Planters whom I know personally are opening up land and
producing large quantities of hemp, giving employment to Bagobos
and others, but without any certainty about the possession of the
land. Inexhaustible forests of fine timber remain undisturbed,
and are left to decay in the ordinary course of nature, whilst
shiploads of Oregon pine arrive for public works. My attendance at
the public conferences on the timber-felling question, before the
Philippine Commission in Manila, did not help me to appreciate the
policy underlying the Insular Government's apparent reluctance to
stimulate the development of the timber industry; indeed, it is not
easy to follow the working of the "Philippines for the Filipinos"
policy in several details.
In 1904 General Wood recommended to the Philippine Commission the
incorporation of the present provinces of Misámis and Surigao in
the Moro Province, seeing that the people of those provinces and
the Moro Province belong to the same races and have identical
interests. As it is, the hill tribes of Misámis find themselves
between two jurisdictions, and have to pass nearly a hundred miles
through the Moro Province to reach the sea coast--an anomaly which
will no doubt be rectified by including the whole Island of Mindanao
in the Moro Province.
The American Government's abstinence from proselytism in dealing
with the Moros is more likely to succeed than Spain's well-meant
"policy of attraction" adopted in the last years of her rule, for
whatever progress this system made was counterbalanced by the futile
endeavour to induce the Mahometans to change their religion. Under
the wise administration set in progress by General Leonard Wood there
is a hopeful future for Moroland.
CHAPTER XXX
The Spanish Friars, After 1898
The Aglipayan Schism. Education. Politics. Population.
With the American dominion came free cult. No public money is
disbursed for the support of any religious creed. No restraint is
placed upon the practice of any religion exercised with due regard
to morality. Proselytism in public schools is declared illegal. [267]
The prolonged discussion of the friars' position and claims encouraged
them to hope that out of the labyrinthine negotiations might emerge
their restoration to the Philippine parishes. For a while, therefore,
hundreds of them remained in Manila, others anxiously watched the
course of events from their refuges in the neighbouring British and
Portuguese colonies, and the unpopular Archbishop Bernardino Nozaleda
only formally resigned the archbishopric of Manila years after he
had left it. Having prudently retired from the Colony during the
Rebellion, he returned to it on the American occupation, and resumed
his archiepiscopal functions until the end of 1899. Preliminary
negotiations in Church matters were facilitated by the fact of the
Military Governor of the Islands at the time being a Roman Catholic,
an American army chaplain acting as chief intermediary between the lay
and ecclesiastical authorities. The common people were quite unable, at
the outset, to comprehend that under American law a friar could be in
their midst without a shred of civil power or jurisdiction. There were
Filipinos of all classes, some in sympathy with the American cause,
who were as loud in their denunciation of the proposed return of the
friars as the most intransigent insurgents. They thought of them most
in their lay capacity of _de facto_ Government agents all over the
Islands. It cannot be said that the parish priests originally sought
to discharge civil functions; they did so, at first, only by order
of their superiors, who were the _de facto_ rulers in the capital,
and afterwards by direct initiative of the lay authorities, because
the Spanish Government was too poor to employ civil officials. What
their functions were is explained in Chapter xii. The complaints of the
people against the friars constituted the leading theme of Dr. Rizal's
writings, notably his "Noli me tángere," and the expulsion of the four
obnoxious Religious Orders is claimed to have been one of the most
important reforms verbally promised in connexion with the alleged
Treaty of Biac-na-bató. The allegation of the prelates and other
members of the regular clergy who gave evidence before the American
Civil Commission in 1900, to the effect that the _Katipunan Society_
members invaded the parishes only to murder the friars and rob the
churches, should be weighed against the fact that two hundred thousand
Filipinos were ready to leave glowing life for grim death to rid
the country of monastic rule. The townspeople, apparently apathetic,
were afraid to express their opinion of the friars until they were
backed up by the physical force of the _Katipunan_ legions. It was
the conflict of material interests and the friars' censorship which
created the breach between the vicar and the people. The immorality
of the friars was not general and by no means the chief ground,
if any, for hostility against them; the frailties of the few simply
weakened the prestige of all and broke the pedestal of their moral
superiority. My own investigations convinced me that the friars'
incontinence was generally regarded with indifference by the people;
concubinage being so common among the Filipinos themselves it did
not shock them in the pastor's case. Moreover, women were proud of
the paternity of their children begotten in their relationship to
the friars.
When, on the American occupation, the friar question could be freely
discussed, hot disputes at once ensued between the friar party and
the Philippine clergy, supported by the people. In the meantime, an
Apostolic Delegate, Monsignor P. L. Chapelle, [268] was appointed by
the Pope, in agreement with the American Government, to endeavour to
adjust the friar problem. The details to be considered were manifold,
but the questions which most interested the public were the return
of the friars to the parishes and the settlement of their property
claims. Monsignor Chapelle so vigorously espoused the cause of the
friars that he appeared to be more their advocate than an independent
judge in the controversy. Many friars, anxious to quit the Islands,
were dissuaded from doing so by this prelate. [269] He arrived in
Manila on January 2, 1900, and, without having made any personal
investigations in the provinces, by the 16th of April he deemed
himself competent to declare that "the accusations adduced against
them (the Religious Orders) are the merest pretexts of shrewd and
anti-American Filipino politicians." [270] As a matter of fact,
nothing anti-American, or American, had any connexion with the
subject. The struggle to expel the friars from these Islands was
initiated years before the Americans contemplated intervention in
Philippine affairs. Open rebellion was started against the friars
twenty months before the Battle of Cavite. Nozaleda and Chapelle
wished to appoint friars to the provincial benefices, whilst protests
against this proposal were coming from nearly every Christian quarter
of the Colony. The Filipinos desired to have the whole administration
of the Church in their own hands and, if possible, to see every
friar leave the Archipelago. The representative Philippine clergy
were Dr. Mariano Sevilla, Father Rojas, Father Changco, and Father
Singson. The great champions of the national cause were the first two,
who stoutly opposed Nozaleda's schemes. Fierce discussions arose
between the parties; Father Sevilla and party defied Nozaleda to
make the appointments he desired, and then sent a cablegram to the
Pope to the following effect:--"Archbishop and Apostolic Delegate
want to appoint friars to the Philippine benefices. The Philippine
people strongly oppose. Schism imminent." Father Sevilla could
not be wheedled into agreeing to Nozaleda's and Chapelle's plans,
so he was sent to prison for two months in the _Calle de Anda_,
Manila, and deportation to the Island of Guam was menacingly hinted
at. When the reply came from Rome, disapproving of the action of the
two prelates, Father Sevilla was released from prison. Nevertheless,
Nozaleda's wrath was unappeased. He then proposed that the benefices
should be shared between Filipinos and friars, whilst Father Sevilla
insisted on the absolute deposition of the friars. At this time there
were 472 members of the four confraternities in the Islands, mostly
in Manila. [271] At a meeting of the Philippine clergy the expulsion
of the friars was proposed and supported by a majority; but Father
Sevilla vetoed the resolution, and his ruling was obeyed. Moreover,
he agreed that the friars should hold some benefices in and near Manila
and the ecclesiastical-educational employments in the colleges. "We,"
said Father Sevilla, "are for the Church; let them continue their work
of education; it is not our function." Nozaleda then made advances
towards Father Sevilla, and endeavoured to cajole him by the offer of
an appointment, which he repeatedly refused. Rome, for the time being,
had overruled the question of the benefices contrary to Nozaleda's
wish. For the moment there was nothing further for the Philippine
clergy to defend, but in their general interests Father Sevilla,
their spokesman, elected to remain in an independent position until
after the retirement of Monsignor Chapelle, when Father Sevilla became
parish priest of Hagonoy (Bulacan).
The outcome of the controversy respecting the benefices was that the
friars could be sent to those parishes where the people were willing to
receive them, without danger of giving rise to public disorder. This
was in accordance with President McKinley's Instructions to the Taft
Commission dated April 7, 1900, [272] which says: "No form of religion
and no minister of religion shall be forced upon any community or
upon any citizen of the Islands."
Archbishop Nozaleda left for Spain, but did not relinquish his
archbishopric until June, 1903. [273] In his absence his office was
administered by Father Martin Garcia Alcocér, the Spanish bishop
of Cebú, whilst the bishopric of Cebú was left in charge of a
popular Chinese half-caste secular priest, Father Singson, [274] who
subsequently became vicar of Cebú on the appointment of an American
prelate, Father Hendrichs, to the bishopric.
In the matter of the _Friars' lands_, it was apparently impossible
to arrive at any settlement with the friars themselves. The purchase
of their estates was recommended by the Insular Government, and the
Congress at Washington favourably entertained that proposal. In many
places the tenants refused to pay rent to the friars, who then put
forward the extraordinary suggestion that the Government should send
an armed force to coerce the tenants. The Government at once refused
to do this, pointing out that the ordinary courts were open to them
the same as to all citizens. Truly the friars found themselves in a
dilemma. By the rules of their Order they could not sue in a court of
law; but under the Spanish Government, which was always subservient
to their will, they had been able to obtain redress by force. Under
the American Government these immunities and privileges ceased.
In 1902 the Civil Governor of the Philippines, Mr. W. H. Taft, visited
the United States, and on May 9 in that year he was commissioned
by his Government to visit Rome on his way back to the Islands in
order to negotiate the question of the friars' lands with the Holy
See. The instructions issued to him by the Secretary of War contain
the following paragraphs, namely [275]:--
One of the controlling principles of our Government is the complete
separation of Church and State, with the entire freedom of each
from any control or interference by the other. This principle is
imperative wherever American jurisdiction extends, and no modification
or shading thereof can be a subject of discussion. . . . By reason of
the separation, the Religious Orders can no longer perform, in behalf
of the State, the duties in relation to public instruction and public
charities formerly resting upon them. . . . They find themselves the
object of such hostility on the part of their tenantry against them
as landlords, and on the part of the people of the parishes against
them as representatives of the former Government, that they are no
longer capable of serving any useful purpose for the Church. No rents
can be collected from the populous communities occupying their lands,
unless it be by the intervention of the civil government with armed
force. Speaking generally, for several years past the friars, formerly
installed over the parishes, have been unable to remain at their posts,
and are collected in Manila with the vain hope of returning. They
will not be voluntarily accepted again by the people, and cannot be
restored to their positions except by forcible intervention on the
part of the civil government, which the principles of our Government
forbid....It is for the interest of the Church, as well as for the
State, that the landed proprietorship of the Religious Orders in the
Philippine Islands should cease, and that if the Church wishes...to
continue its ministration among the people of the Islands...it should
seek other agents therefor. It is the wish of our Government, in
case Congress shall grant authority, that the titles of the Religious
Orders to the large tracts of agricultural lands which they now hold
shall be extinguished, but that full and fair compensation shall be
made therefor. It is not, however, deemed to be for the interests
of the people of the Philippine Islands that...a fund should thereby
be created to be used for the attempted restoration of the friars to
the parishes from which they are now separated, with the consequent
disturbance of law and order. Your errand will not be, in any sense
or degree, diplomatic in its nature; but will be purely a business
matter of negotiation by you, as Governor of the Philippines, for the
purchase of property from the owners thereof, and the settlement of
land titles."
Governor Taft arrived in Rome in June, 1902, in the pontificate
of His Holiness Leo XIII., whose Secretary of State was Cardinal
M. Rampolla. In Governor Taft's address to His Holiness, the following
interesting passage occurs: "On behalf of the Philippine Government, it
is proposed to buy the lands of the Religious Orders with the hope that
the funds thus furnished may lead to their withdrawal from the Islands,
and, if necessary, a substitution therefor, as parish priests, of
other priests whose presence would not be dangerous to public order."
In the document dated June 22, in reply to Governor Taft's address
to His Holiness, Cardinal Rampolla says: "As to the Spanish religious
in particular belonging to the Orders mentioned in the instructions,
not even they should be denied to return to those parishes where the
people are disposed to receive them without disturbance of public
order . . . The Holy See will not neglect to promote, at the same
time, the better ecclesiastical education and training of the native
clergy, in order to put them in the way, according to their fitness,
of _taking gradually_ the place of the Religious Orders in the
discharge of the pastoral functions. The Holy See likewise recognizes
that in order to reconcile more fully the feelings of the Filipinos
to the religious possessing landed estates, _the sale of the same is
conducive thereto_. The Holy See declares it is disposed to furnish the
new Apostolic Delegate, who is to be sent to the Philippine Islands,
with necessary and opportune instructions in order to treat amicably
this affair in understanding with the American Government and the
parties interested."
In the same document the Holy See asked for indemnity for "the acts of
vandalism perpetrated by the insurgents in the destruction of churches
and the appropriation of sacred vestments," and also for the damage
caused by the occupation by the American Government of "episcopal
palaces, seminaries, convents, rectories, and other buildings intended
for worship." The Holy See further claimed "the right and the liberty
of administering the pious trusts of ecclesiastical origin, or of
Catholic foundation, which do not owe their existence to the civil
power exclusively"; also "suitable provisions for religious teaching
in the public schools, especially the primary."
Governor Taft, in his reply to the Holy See, dated July 3, expressed
regret at the suggested appointment of a new Apostolic Delegate,
and sought to bring the Holy See to a definite contract. For the
settlement of the friars' land question he proposed "a tribunal
of arbitration to be composed of five members--two to be appointed
by His Holiness, two to be appointed by the Philippine Government,
and one, the fifth, to be selected by an indifferent person, like
the Governor-General of India"; the expenses to be defrayed wholly
by the Philippine Government, and the tribunal to meet in the City
of Manila not later than January 1, 1903. He further proposed that
the lands should be valued in Mexican dollars, and be paid for in
three cash instalments of three, six, and nine months after the
report of the award and the delivery of the deeds. Furthermore, that
"the payments ought to be made to the person designated by the Holy
See to receive the same," on the condition that "no money shall be
paid for the lands to be purchased until proper conveyances for the
land shall have been made to the Philippine Government." Another
condition was "that all the members of the four Religious Orders
of Dominicans, Agustinians, Recoletos, and Franciscans now in the
Islands shall withdraw therefrom after two years from the date of
the first payment. An exception is made in favour of any member of
those Orders who has been able to avoid hostility of the people and
to carry on his duties as parish priest, in his parish outside Manila,
from August, 1898, to date of this agreement," because "it is certain
that such a priest is popular with the people." Governor Taft adds:
"Nothing will calm the fears of the people.... except the definite
knowledge ... that the Spanish friars of the four Orders are to leave
the Islands at a definite time, and are not to return to the parishes."
Cardinal Rampolla replied on July 9 to Governor Taft's communication
of July 3, which covered his proposed contract and enclosed a counter
project of convention, explaining as follows:--"The Holy See cannot
accept the proposition of the Philippine Government to recall from the
Archipelago in a fixed time all the religious of Spanish nationality
... and to prevent their return in the future. In effect, such a
measure ... would be contrary to the positive rights guaranteed by
the Treaty of Paris, and would put, consequently, the Holy See in
conflict with Spain ... Such a measure would be, in the eyes of the
Filipinos and of the entire Catholic world, the explicit confirmation
of all the accusations brought against the said religious by their
enemies, accusations of which ... the evident exaggeration cannot
be disputed. If the American Government, respecting, as it does,
individual rights, does not dare to interdict the Philippine soil
to the Spanish religious ... how could the Pope do it? The Holy See,
in accord with the diocesan authorities, will not permit the return
of the Spanish religious ... in the parishes where their presence
would provoke troubles."
The Holy See's counter-proposal was cabled to the Secretary of War,
who, in his reply dated July 14, which was tantamount to a rejection of
it, remarked: "The lay Catholic population and the parish priests of
native and non-Spanish blood are practically a unit in desiring both
to expel the friars and to confiscate their lands ... This proposed
confiscation, without compensation for the Church lands, was one of the
fundamental policies of the Insurgent Government under Aguinaldo." As
an alternative, the Secretary of War accepted the proposal of the Holy
See to send a new Apostolic Delegate, with necessary instructions to
negotiate the affair amicably. Therefore, in transmitting this reply
to Cardinal Rampolla on July 15, Gov. Taft closed the negotiations
by stating: "I have the honour to request ... that the negotiations
concerning the various subjects touched upon in the proposals and
counter-proposals be continued in Manila between the Apostolic Delegate
and myself, on the broad lines indicated in this correspondence.... I
much regret that we cannot now reach a more precise agreement...."
The receipt of this last communication was courteously acknowledged
by Cardinal M. Rampolla on July 18, 1902, and Gov. Taft then continued
his journey to the Philippines. [276]
Monsignor Chapelle's mission had entirely failed to achieve its
purpose, and he retired from the Islands on the appointment of the
new Apostolic Delegate, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Guidi. Bora
on April 27, 1852, this prelate was a man of great culture and a
distinguished linguist, who had travelled considerably. From Rome he
proceeded to Washington, and, with the United States _exequatur_,
he entered Manila on November 18, 1902, and died there on June 26,
1904. During his mission the conditions of the friars' land settlement
were embodied in a contract dated December 28, 1903, whereby the
United States undertook to pay, within six months from date, the sum
of $7,227,000 gold in exchange for the title-deeds and conveyances of
all the rural lands belonging to the three corporations possessing
such--namely, the Dominicans, Agustinians, and Recoletos. [277]
To cover this purchase, bonds were issued in America for $7,000,000
bearing 4 per cent, interest per annum; but, as the bonds obtained
a premium on the money market, the total amount realized on the
issue was $7,530,370. It remained, therefore, with the corporations
themselves to deliver the title-deeds, but on personal inquiry of
the Gov.-General in the month of July following I learnt that up to
that date they had only partially fulfilled this condition. This,
however, concerns them more than it does the American Government,
which is ready to pay for value received. The approximate extent of
the friars' lands is as follows [278]:--
Province. Acres.
Cavite. 121,747 Some held for centuries. None
less than one generation.
La Laguna 62,172
Rizal 50,145
Bulacan 39,441
Rizal (Mórong) 4,940
Bataán 1,000
Cebú 16,413
Cagayán 49,400 Gov't. grant to Austin friars,
Sept. 25, 1880.
Mindoro 58,455 Gov't. grant to Recoleto friars
in 1894.
-------
Total 403,713
The purchase negotiations became all the more complicated because,
from 1893 onwards, the Religious Orders had sold some of their lands
to speculators who undertook to form companies to work them; however,
the friars were the largest stockholders in these concerns.
As the lands become State property they will be offered to the tenants
at the time being at cost price, payable in long terms with moderate
interest. The annual compounded sum will be only a trifle more than
the rent hitherto paid. [279]
As Governor Taft stated before the United States Senate, it would be
impolitic to allow the tenants to possess the lands without payment,
because such a plan would be promotive of socialistic ideas. The
friars' land referred to does not include their urban property in and
around Manila, which, with the buildings thereon, they are allowed
to retain for the maintenance of those members of their Orders who
still hope to remain in the Islands. In July, 1904, there were about
350 friars in the Islands, including the Recoletos in Cavite and the
few who were amicably received by the people in provincial parishes,
exclusively in their sacerdotal capacity. At this period, at least,
the Filipinos were not unanimous in rejecting friars as parish
priests. Bishop Hendrichs, of Cebú, told me that he had received a
deputation of natives from Bojol Island, begging him to appoint friars
to their parishes. In May, 1903, the _Centro Católico_, a body of lay
Filipinos, well enough educated to understand the new position of the
clergy, addressed a memorial to the Papal delegate, Monsignor Guidi,
expressing their earnest desire for the retention of the friars. In
the localities where their presence is desired their influence over
the people is great. Their return to such parishes is well worth
considering. Their ability to restrain the natives extravagances is
superior to that of any lay authority, and it is obvious that, under
the new conditions of government, they could never again produce a
conflict like that of the past.
The administrator of the archbishopric of Manila, Father Martin Garcia
Alcocér, retired to Spain (October 25, 1903) on the appointment of
the present American Archbishop, Monsignor Jeremiah J. Harty, who
arrived in the capital in January, 1904. He is a man of pleasing
countenance, commanding presence, and an impressive orator. Since
1898 churches and chapels of many denominations and creeds have been
opened in the Islands. Natives join them from various motives, for it
would be venturesome to assert that they are all moved by religious
conviction. In Zamboanga I had the pleasure of meeting an enthusiastic
propagandist, who assured me with pride that he had drawn quite a
number of christian natives from their old belief. His sincerity of
purpose enlisted my admiration, but his explanation of the advantages
accruing to his neophytes was too recondite for my understanding.
The limpid purity of purpose in the lofty ideal of uplifting all
humanity, so characteristic of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe,
was unfortunately obscured in the latter days of Spanish dominion in
these Islands by the multifarious devices to convert the Church into a
money-making channel. If the true religious spirit ever pervaded the
provincial Filipino's mind, it was quickly impaired in his struggle
to resist the pastor's greed, unless he yielded to it and developed
into a fanatic or a monomaniac. [280]
Astute Filipinos, of quicker discernment than their fellows, did not
fail to perceive the material advantages to be reaped from a religious
system, quite apart from the religion itself, in the power of union
and its pecuniary potentiality. As a result thereof there came into
existence, at the close of Spanish rule, the _Philippine Independent
Church_, more popularly known as the _Aglipayan Church_. Some eight or
nine years before the Philippine Rebellion a young Filipino went to
Spain, where he imbibed the socialistic, almost anarchical, views of
such political extremists as Lerroux and Blasco-Ybañez. By nature of
a revolutionary spirit, the doctrines of these politicians fascinated
him so far as to convert him into an intransigent opponent of Spanish
rule in his native country. In 1891 he went to London, where the
circumstance of the visit of the two priests alluded to at p. 383
was related to him. He saw in their suggestion a powerful factor for
undermining the supremacy of the friars. The young Filipino pondered
seriously over it, and when the events of 1898 created the opportunity,
he returned to the Islands impressed with the belief that independence
could only be gained by union, and that a pseudo-religious organization
was a good medium for that union.
The antecedents and the subsequent career of the initiator of the
Philippine Independent Church would not lead one to suppose that there
was more religion in him than there was in the scheme itself. The
principle involved was purely that of independence; the incidence of
its development being in this case pseudo-religious, with the view
of substituting the Filipino for the alien in his possession of sway
over the Filipinos' minds, for a purpose. The initiator of the scheme,
not being himself a gownsman, was naturally constrained to delegate
its execution to a priest, whilst he organized another union, under
a different title, which finally brought incarceration to himself
and disaster to his successor.
Gregorio Aglípay, the head of the Philippine Independent, or Aglipayan,
Church, was born at Bátac, in the province of Ilocos Norte, on May
7, 1860, of poor parents, who owned a patch of tobacco land on which
young Gregorio worked. Together with his father, he was led to prison
at the age of sixteen for not having planted the obligatory minimum
of 4,000 plants (_vide_ p. 294). On his release he left field-work
and went to Manila, where he took his first lessons at the house
of a Philippine lawyer, Julian Cárpio. Two years afterwards, whilst
working in a menial capacity, he attended the school of San Juan de
Letran. Through a poor relation he was recommended to the notice of
the Dominican friars, under whose patronage he entered Saint Thomas's
University, where he graduated in philosophy and arts. Then he returned
to his province, entered the seminary, and became a sub-deacon of the
diocese of Nueva Segovia. In 1889 he was ordained a priest in Manila,
Canon Sanchez Luna being his sponsor, and he said his first mass in the
church of Santa Cruz. Although the friars had frequently admonished
him for his liberal tendencies, he was appointed coadjutor curate
of several provincial parishes, and was acting in that capacity at
Victoria (Tárlac) when the rebellion of 1896 broke out. About that
time he received a warning from a native priest in another parish
that the Spaniards would certainly arrest him on suspicion of being
in sympathy with the rebels. In fear of his life he escaped to Manila,
where he found a staunch friend in Canon Sanchez Luna, who allowed him
to stay at his house on the pretext of illness. Canon Luna, who was a
Spaniard, obtained from Gov.-General Blanco papers in favour of Aglípay
to ensure his safety back to Victoria. Aglípay then left the capital,
making use of the safe-conduct pass to go straight to the rebel camp,
where, with the title of chaplain to General Tinio's forces, he was
present at several engagements and enjoyed the friendship of General
Emilio Aguinaldo. The Malolos Government appointed him Vicar-General,
and after the War of Independence broke out he assumed command of
a large body of insurgents in the mountain region of his native
province. In 1899 he proclaimed himself chief of the Philippine
Independent Church, whereupon the Archbishop publicly excommunicated
him. Later on he voluntarily presented himself to the military
authorities, and obtained pardon under the amnesty proclamation.
Dr. Mariano Sevilla and several other most enlightened Philippine
priests were in friendly relation with Aglípay for some time, but
eventually various circumstances contributed to alienate them from
his cause. In his overtures towards those whose co-operation he sought
there was a notable want of frankness and a disposition to treat them
with that diplomatic reserve compatible only with negotiations between
two adverse parties. His association with the lay initiator of the
scheme, unrevealed at the outset, incidentally came to their knowledge
with surprise and disapproval. Judging, too, from the well-known
tenets of the initiator's associates, there was a suspicion lest the
proposed Philippine Independent Church were really only a detail in
a more comprehensive plan involving absolute separation from foreign
control in any shape. Again, he hesitated openly to declare his views
with respect to the relations with Rome. Conscience here seemed
to play a lesser part than expediency. The millions in the world
who conscientiously disclaim the supremacy of the Pope, at least
openly avow it. In the present case the question of submission to,
or rebellion against, the Apostolic successor was quite subordinate
to the material success of the plans for independence. It is difficult
to see in all this the evidence of religious conviction.
Dr. Sevilla had been requested to proceed to Rome to submit to the
Holy Father the aspirations of the Philippine people with respect to
Church matters, and he consented to do so, provided the movement did
not in any way affect their absolute submission to the Holy See, and
that the Philippine Church should remain a Catholic Apostolic Church,
with the sole difference that its administration should be confided
to the Filipinos instead of to foreigners, if that reform met with
the approval of his Holiness. [281]
Only at this stage did Aglípay admit that he sought independence
of Rome; thereupon the Philippine clergy of distinction abandoned
all thought of participation in the new movement, or of any action
which implied dictation to the Holy See. Nevertheless, two native
priests were commissioned to go to Rome to seek the Pope's sanction
for the establishment of an exclusively Philippine hierarchy under
the supreme authority of the Pope. But His Holiness immediately
dismissed the delegates with a _non possumus_. The petition to His
Holiness was apparently only the prelude to the ultimate design to
repudiate the white man's control in matters ecclesiastical, and
possibly more beyond.
Gregorio Aglípay then openly threw off allegiance to the Pope, went to
Manila, and in the suburb of Tondo proclaimed himself _Obispo Máximo_
(_Pontifex Maximus_) of his new Church.
His sect at once found many followers in the provinces of Rizal,
Bulacan and Ilocos, and eventually spread more or less over the other
christian provinces. The movement is strongest in Ilocos, where several
parishes, indeed, have no other priest than an Aglipayan. This district
is part of the bishopric of Nueva Segovia, now administered by the
American Bishop Dougherty. As to the number of Aglipayan adherents, no
reliable figures are procurable from any source, but it is certain they
amount to thousands. I found Aglipayans as far south as Zamboanga. Just
a few priests ordained in the Roman Catholic Church have joined the
schismatic cause. One of these repented and offered his submission
to the administrator of the archbishopric (Father Martin Alcocér),
who pardoned his frailty and received him again into the Church. No
period of preparation was necessary, at least in the beginning, for
the ordination of an Aglipayan priest. He might have been a domestic
servant, an artisan, or a loafer shortly before; hence many would-be
converts refused to join when they saw their own or their friends'
retainers suddenly elevated to the priesthood. At Ylígan (Mindanao
Is.) an American official arrested a man, tonsured and robed as
a priest in an Aglipayan procession, on a charge of homicide. In
1904 they had not half a dozen well-built churches of their own, but
mat-sheds for their meetings were to be seen in many towns. In the year
1903 these sectarians made repeated raids on Roman Catholic property,
and attempted to gain possession of the churches by force. Riots
ensued, religion seemed to be forgotten by both parties in the _mélée_,
and several were given time for reflection in prison. In April, 1904,
at Talisay and Minglanilla (Cebú Is.), they succeeded in occupying
the churches and property claimed by the friars, and refused to vacate
them. In the following month an Aglipayan priest, Bonifacio Purganan,
was fined $25 for having taken forcible possession of the Chapel of
Peñafrancia (Paco suburb of Manila). In the province of Yloilo the
Aglipayans were forcibly ejected from the church of La Paz. In 1904
they entered a claim on the novel plea that, as many churches had
been subscribed to or partially erected at their expense before they
seceded from the Catholic Church, they were entitled to a restitution
of their donations. The Catholics were anxious to have the contention
decided in a formal and definite manner, and the case was heard at the
Court of Guagua (Pampanga). The decision was against the sectarians,
on the ground that what had been once given for a specific purpose
could not be restored to the donor, or its application diverted from
the original channel, notwithstanding any subsequent change in the
views of the donor. It was probably in consequence of these disputes
that in January, 1905, the Secretary of War approved of a proposed
Act of the Insular Government conferring authority upon the Supreme
Court of these Islands to hear cases relating to Church property
claims and pronounce a final decision thereon.
Up to the middle of 1904 the particular doctrines of the Philippine
Independent Church were not yet defined, and the Aglipayans professed
to follow the Roman ritual. It was intended, however, to introduce
reforms of fundamental importance. For two days and a half I
travelled in company with the titular Aglipayan ecclesiastical
governor of the Visayas, from whom I learnt much concerning the
opinions of his sect. It appears that many are opposed to celibacy of
the clergy and auricular confession. My companion himself rejected
the biblical account of the Creation, the doctrine of original sin,
hereditary responsibility, the deity of Christ, and the need for the
Atonement. His conception of the relations between God and mankind
was a curious admixture of Darwinism and Rationalism; everything
beyond the scope of human reasoning had but a slender hold on his mind.
It is most probable that the majority of Aglipayans have given no
thought as to the possible application of the power of union in this
particular form, and that their adhesion to the movement is merely a
natural reaction following the suppression of sacerdotal tyranny--an
extravagant sense of untrammelled thought which time may modify by
sober reflection when it is generally seen that the clergy of the
Roman Catholic Church henceforth strictly limit themselves to the
exercise of their proper functions. With the hope of re-establishing
peace and conformity in the Church, His Holiness Pope Pius X. sent
to the Islands his new Apostolic Delegate, Monsignor Ambrose Agius,
who reached Manila on February 6, 1905. [282]
It is doubtful whether the native parish priest, bereft of the
white man's control, would have sufficient firmness of character to
overcome his own frailties and lead his flock in the true path. Under a
Philippine hierarchy there would be a danger of the natives reverting
to paganism and fetichism. There have been many indications of that
tendency from years back up to the present. Only a minority of native
Christians seem to have grasped the true spirit of Christianity. All
that appeals to the eye in the rites and ceremonies impresses
them--the glamour and pomp of the procession attract them; they are
very fervent in outward observances, but ever prone to stray towards
the idolatrous. A pretended apparition of the Blessed Virgin is an old
profitable trick of the natives, practised as recently as December,
1904, in the village of Namacpacan (Ilocos), where a woman, who
declared the Virgin had appeared to her in the _form_ of the Immaculate
Conception and cured her bad leg, made a small fortune in conjunction
with a native priest. In May, 1904, a small party of fanatics was seen
on the Manila seashore going through some pseudo-religious antics,
the chief feature of which was a sea-bath. Profiting by the liberty
of cult now existing, it is alleged that the spirits of the departed
have made known their presence to certain Filipinos. A native medium
has been found, and the pranks which the spirits are said to play
on those who believe in them have been practised, with all their
orthodox frolic, on certain converts to the system. Tables dance
jigs, mysterious messages are received, and the conjuring celestials
manifest their power by displacing household articles. The _Coloram_
sect of the southern Luzon provinces has, it is estimated, over
50,000 adherents whose worship is a jumble of perverted Christian
mysticism and idolatry. The _Baibailanes_ of Negros are not entirely
pagans; there is just a glimmer of Christian precept mingled in their
belief, whilst the scores of religious monomaniacs and saint-hawkers
who appear from time to time present only a burlesque imitation of
christian doctrine.
Great progress has been made in the direction of _Education_. [283]
Schools of different grades have been established throughout the
Archipelago, and the well-intentioned efforts of the Government have
been responded to by the natives with an astonishing alacrity. Since
September 3, 1900, night-schools have also been opened for students
to attend after their day's work. The natives exhibit great readiness
to learn, many of them having already attained a very high standard--a
fact which I had the opportunity of verifying through the courtesy of
Dr. David P. Barrows, the able General Superintendent of Education, and
his efficient staff. Both the higher schools and the night-schools are
well attended. A special eagerness to learn English is very apparent,
and they acquire the language quickly up to a certain point. In
September, 1903, [284] out of the 934 towns in the Islands, 338 were
supplied with American teachers, the total number of teachers in the
Archipelago being 691 Americans and 2,496 Filipinos. The night-schools
were attended by 8,595 scholars. The percentage of school-children who
frequented the day-schools was as follows: In Manila, 10 per cent.;
in Nueva Vizcaya Province, 77 per cent. (the highest); and in Parágua
Island, 5 per cent. (the lowest). The average attendance throughout the
provinces was 13 per cent. of the total population of school-children.
Education has received the greatest solicitude of the Insular
Government; and Dr. Barrows informed me that at the end of June,
1904, there were 865 American teachers in the Islands (including about
200 female teachers), 4,000 Philippine teachers of both sexes, and a
school attendance throughout the Colony of 227,600 children. For the
youngest children there are now seven kindergarten schools in Manila,
and more applications for admission than can be satisfied.
The _Normal School_, situated in the Manila suburb of Ermita, is a
splendidly-equipped establishment, organized in the year 1901 with
a branch for training Filipinos to become teachers in the public
schools. The buildings are four of those (including the main structure)
which served for the Philippine Exhibition some years ago. They
contain an assembly hall, fourteen class-rooms, two laboratories,
store-rooms, and the principal's office. In the same suburb, close
to the school, there is a dormitory for the accommodation of forty
girl boarders coming from the provinces. The school is open to both
sexes on equal terms, subject to the presentation of a certificate
of character and a preliminary examination to ascertain if they can
understand written and spoken English and intelligibly express their
thoughts in that language. The training covers four years, with the
following syllabus, viz.:--
Algebra.
Arithmetic.
Botany.
Drawing.
English.
General History.
Geography.
Music.
Nature-study.
Philippine History.
Physics.
Physiology and Hygiene.
Professional Training.
United States History.
Zoology.
The training-class for children ranging from five to eleven years
serves a double purpose by enabling student-teachers to put into
practice the theory of professional training under supervision. For
the training of youths who intend to follow a trade, there is a branch
_School of Arts and Trades_ equipped with class-rooms, workshops,
mechanical and architectural drawing-rooms, and the allied branches
of industry. The subjects taught are:--
Architectural Drawing.
Blacksmithing.
Cabinet-making.
Carpentry.
Cooking.
Machine-shop Practice.
Mathematics.
Mechanical Drawing.
Plumbing.
Steam Engineering.
Stenography.
Telegraphy.
Tinsmithing.
Typewriting.
Wood-carving.
There is also a night-class for those working in the daytime who
desire to extend their theoretical knowledge.
The _Nautical School_ (_vide_ p. 195), established in Spanish times,
is continued with certain reforms, additions having been made to the
equipment. American naval officers have undertaken its superintendence
from time to time, and it is now under the direction of a civilian
graduate of the United States Naval Academy. The instruction ranges
from history and geography to practical seamanship, with all the
intermediate scientific subjects. Graduates of this school obtain
third-mate's certificates, and many of them are actually navigating
in the waters of the Archipelago.
A course of study in _Vocal Music_ is also offered to Normal School
students, and this may possibly lead to the first discovery of a fine
Philippine musical voice.
There is also a _Public School for Chinese_ situated in the _Calle
de la Asuncion_, in the business quarter of Binondo (Manila).
In the _Saint Thomas's University_ (_vide_ p. 194) there are few
changes. The diplomas now issued to students in Law and Medicine
are only honorific. With or without this diploma a student must pass
an examination at the centres established by the Americans for the
faculties of Law and Medicine before he can practise, and the same
obligation applies to Americans who may arrive, otherwise qualified,
in the Islands. Practical instruction in the healing art, or "walking
the hospitals," as it is called in England, is given at the _San
Juan de Dios Hospital_ as heretofore. The theoretical tuition in
these faculties is furnished at the _College of San José_. Besides
the Government schools, there are many others continuing the Spanish
system, such as the _Colegio de San Juan de Dios_, where, besides
the usual subjects taught, the syllabus is as follows:--
Commerce.
Drawing.
Japanese Language.
Modelling in Plaster.
Piano, Violin.
Sketching from Nature.
Stenography.
Typewriting.
Watercolouring.
And preparation for the B.A. examination.
The _Seminario Central de San Javier_, under Jesuit superintendence,
is really intended for students proposing to enter the Church. Many,
however, follow the course of study and enter civil life. In the
large provincial towns there are Spanish schools, and at Dagúpan the
_Colegio Instituto_ follows the same curriculum as that established
in the Manila _College of San Juan de Letran_. In Spanish times Jaro
was the educational centre of the Visayas Islands. Since the American
advent Yloilo has superseded Jaro in that respect, and a large school
is about to be erected on 75 acres of land given by several generous
donors for the purpose. The system of education is uniform throughout
the Islands, where schools of all grades are established, and others
are in course of foundation in every municipality. Including about
P1,000,000 disbursed annually for the schools by the municipalities,
the cost of Education is about 20 per cent, of the total revenue--a
sum out of all proportion to the taxpayers' ability to contribute.
According to the Philippine Commission Act No. 1123, of April, 1904,
the official language will be English from January 1, 1906. It will
be used in court proceedings, and no person will be eligible for
Government service who does not know that language.
In general the popular desire for education is very
pronounced. American opinion as to the capability of the Filipinos
to attain a high degree of learning and _maintain_ it seems much
divided, for many return to America and publicly express pessimistic
views on this point. In daily conversation with young middle-class
Filipinos one can readily see that the ambition of the majority is
limited to the acquisition of sufficient English to qualify them for
Government employment or commercial occupations. The industries of
the Islands are relatively insignificant. The true source of their
wealth is agriculture. In most, not to say all, tropical countries,
the educated native shuns manual labour, and with this tendency
dominant in the Filipino, it is difficult to foresee what may happen
as education advances. The history of the world shows that national
prosperity has first come from industrial development, with the
desire and the need for education following as a natural sequence. To
have free intercourse with the outside world it is necessary to
know a European language. This is recognized even in Japan, where,
notwithstanding its independent nationality, half the best-educated
classes speak some European tongue. If the majority of the Filipinos
had understood Spanish at the period of the American advent, it might
be a matter of regret that this language was not officially preserved
on account of the superior beauty of all Latin languages; but such
was not the case. Millions still only speak the many dialects; and
to carry out the present system of education a common speech-medium
becomes a necessity. However, generations will pass away before native
idiom will cease to be the vulgar tongue, and the engrafted speech
anything more than the official and polite language of the better
classes. The old belief of colonizing nations that European language
and European dress alone impart civilization to the Oriental is an
exploded theory. The Asiatic can be more easily moulded and subjected
to the ways and the will of the white man by treating with him in his
native language. It is difficult to gain his entire confidence through
the medium of a foreign tongue. The Spanish friars understood this
thoroughly. It is a deplorable fact that the common people of Asia
generally acquire only the bad qualities of the European concurrently
with his language, lose many of their own natural characteristics,
which are often charmingly simple, and become morally perverted.
The best native servants are those who can only speak their
mother-tongue. In times past the rustic who came to speak Spanish
was loth to follow the plough. If an English farm labourer should
learn Spanish, perhaps he would be equally loth. One may therefore
assume that if the common people should come to acquire the English
language, agricultural coolie labour would become a necessity. In
1903 one hundred Philippine youths were sent, at Government expense,
to various schools in America for a four-years' course of tuition. It
is to be hoped that they will return to their homes impressed with
the dignity of labour and be more anxious to develop the natural
resources of the country than to live at the expense of the taxpayers.
Since the Rebellion, and especially since the American advent,
a great number of Filipinos have migrated to the adjacent British
colonies, China, Japan, America, and Europe. There is a small colony
of rich Filipinos in Paris, and about 50 or 60 (principally students)
in England. They have no nationality, and are officially described as
"Filipinos under the protection of the United States." When the Treaty
of Paris was being negotiated, the Spanish Commissioners wished to have
the option of nationality conceded to all persons hitherto under the
dominion of Spain in the ceded colonies; but the American Commissioners
rejected the proposal, which might have placed their country in the
peculiar position of administering a colony of foreigners.
In 1904 the Government sent selected groups of the different Philippine
wild and semi-civilized races to the St. Louis Exhibition, where
they were on view for several months; also a Philippine Commission,
composed of educated Filipinos, was sent, at public expense, to
St. Louis and several cities in America, including Washington,
where the President received and entertained its members. Many of
the members of this Commission were chosen from what is called
the _Federal Party_. In the old days politics played no part in
Philippine life. The people were either anti-friar or conformists to
the _status quo_. The Revolution, however, brought into existence
several distinct parties, and developed the natural disintegrating
tendency of the Filipinos to split up into factions on any matter of
common concern. The Spanish reform party, led by Pedro A. Paterno,
collapsed when all hope was irretrievably lost, and its leader passed
over to Aguinaldo's party of sovereign independence. To-day there
is practically only one organized party--the Federal--because there
is no legislative assembly or authorized channel for the legitimate
expression of opposite views. The Federal Party, which is almost
entirely anti-clerical, comprises all those who unreservedly endorse
and accept American dominion and legislation. They are colloquially
alluded to as "Americanistas." Through the tempting offers of civil
service positions with emoluments large as compared with times
gone by, many leading men have been attracted to this party, the
smarter half-caste predominating over the pure Oriental in the higher
employments. There are other groups, however, which may be called
parties in embryo, awaiting the opportunity for free discussion in
the coining _Philippine Assembly_. [285] Present indications point to
the _Nationalists_ as the largest of these coming opposition parties,
its present programme being autonomy under American protection. The
majority of those who clamour for "independence" [I am not referring
to the masses, but to those who have thought the matter out in their
own fashion] do not really understand what they are asking for, for
it generally results from a close discussion of the subject that they
are, in fact, seeking autonomy _dependent_ on American protection,
with little idea of what the Powers understand by Protection. In
a conversation which I had with the leader of the Nationalists, I
inquired, "What do you understand by independence?" His reply was,
"Just a thread of connexion with the United States to keep us from
being the prey of other nations!" Other parties will, no doubt, be
formed; and there will probably be, for some time yet, a small group
of _Irreconcilables_ affiliated with those abroad who cannot return
home whilst they refuse to take the oath of allegiance prescribed in
the United States President's peace and amnesty proclamation, dated
July 4, 1902. The Irreconcilables claim real sovereign independence for
the Filipinos; they would wish the Americans to abandon the Islands as
completely as if they had never occupied them at all. It is doubtful
whether entire severance from American or European control would last
a year, because some other Power, Asiatic or European, would seize
the Colony. Sovereign independence would be but a fleeting vision
without a navy superior in all respects to that of any second-rate
naval Power, for if all the fighting-men of the Islands were armed to
the teeth they could not effectively resist a simultaneous bombardment
of their ports; nor could they, as inhabitants of an archipelago,
become united in action or opinion, because their inter-communication
would be cut off. When this is explained to them, there are those who
admit the insuperable difficulty, and suggest, as a compromise, that
America's position towards them should be merely that of the policeman,
standing by ready to interfere if danger threatens them! This is the
naïve definition of the relation which they (the Irreconcilables)
term "Protection."
However, the cry for "independence" has considerably abated since the
Secretary of War, Mr. W. H. Taft, visited Manila in August, 1905,
and publicly announced that America intended to retain the Islands
for an indefinitely long period. Before America relinquishes her hold
on the Colony (if ever) generations may pass away, and naturally the
Irreconcilable, will disappear with the present one.
That the Filipinos would, if ever they obtain their independence, even
though it were a century hence, manage their country on the pattern
set them by their tutors of to-day, is beyond all imagination. "We want
them to learn to think as we do," an American minister is reported to
have said at a public meeting held in Washington in May, 1905. The
laudable aim of America to convert the Filipino into an American in
action and sentiment will probably never be realized.
Why the Philippines should continue to be governed by a Commission
is not clear to the foreign investigator. Collective government
is inconsonant with the traditions and instincts of these Asiatic
people, who would intuitively fear and obey the arbitrary mandate of a
paramount chief, whether he be called Nawab, Sultan, or Governor. Even
as it is, the people have, in fact, looked more to the one man,
the Mr. Taft or the Mr. Wright as the case may be, than they have to
the Commission for the attainment of their hopes, and were there an
uncontrolled native government, it would undoubtedly end in becoming
a one-man rule, whatever its title might be. The difficulty in making
the change does not lie in the choice of the man, because one most
eminently fitted for personal rule in the name of the United States
of America (assisted by a Council) is in the Islands just now.
The Philippine Assembly, which is, conditionally, to be conceded
to the Islanders in 1907, will be a Congress of deputies elected by
popular vote; the Philippine Commission, more or less as at present
constituted, will be practically the Senate or controlling Upper
House. The Filipinos will have no power to make laws, but simply to
propose them, because any bill emanating from the popular assembly
can be rejected by the Upper House with an American majority. The
Philippine Assembly will be, in reality, a School of Legislature to
train politicians for the possible future concession of complete
self-government. In connexion with the public schools a course of
instruction in political economy prepares youths for the proper
exercise of the right of suffrage on their attaining twenty-three
years of age. The studies include the Congress Law of July 1, 1902;
President McKinley's Instruction to the Civil Commission of April 7,
1900; Government of the United States, Colonial Government in European
States, and Parliamentary Law.
The question of the Filipinos' capacity for _self-government_ has been
frequently debated since the Rebellion of 1896. A quarter of a century
ago the necessary 500 or 600 Filipinos, half-caste in the majority,
could have been found with all the requisite qualifications for the
formation of an intelligent oligarchy. The Constitution drawn up by
Apolinario Mabini, and proclaimed by the Malolos Insurgent Government
(January 22, 1899), was a fair proof of intellectual achievement. But
that is not sufficient; the working of it would probably have been as
successful as the Government of Hayti, because the Philippine character
is deficient in disinterested thought for the common good. There is
no lack of able Filipinos quite competent to enact laws and dictate
to the people what they are to do; but if things are to be reversed
and the elected assembly is to be composed of deputies holding the
_people's_ mandates, there will be plenty to do between now and March,
1907, in educating the electors to the point of intelligently using the
franchise, uninfluenced by the _caciques_, who have hitherto dominated
all public acts. According to the census of 1903, there were 1,137,776
illiterate males of the voting age. In any case, independently of
its legislative function, the Philippine Assembly will be a useful
channel for free speech. It will lead to the open discussion of the
general policy, the rural police, the trade regulations, the taxes,
the desirability of maintaining superfluous expensive bureaux, the
lavish (Manila) municipal non-productive outlay, and ruinous projects
of no public utility, such as the construction of the Benguet road,
[286] etc.
The Act providing for a Philippine Assembly stipulates that the
elected deputies shall not be less than 50 and not more than 100
to represent the civilized portion of the following population,
viz. [287]:--Civilized, 6,987,686; wild, 647,740; total, 7,635,426. The
most numerous civilized races are the Visayos (about 2,602,000)
and the Tagálogs (about 1,664,000).
_Population of Manila_ (_Approximate Sub-divisions_) [288]
Race. Pop. Race. Pop. Race. Pop.
Filipinos 189,915 Americans 3,700 Other Europeans 1,000
Chinese 21,500 Spaniards 2,500 Other Nationalities 1,313
Total in the Census of 1903 ... 219,928
(Exclusive of the Army and Navy.)
The divisions of the Municipality of Manila stand in the following
order of proportion of population, viz.:--
1. Tondo (most).
2. Santa Cruz.
3. San Nicolás.
4. Sampaloc.
5. Binondo.
6. Ermita.
7. Intramuros (i.e., Walled City).
8. Quiapo.
9. Malate.
10. San Miguel.
11. Paco.
12. Santa Ana.
13. Pandácan (least).
The total number of towns in the Archipelago is 934.
_Populations of 40 Provincial Towns of the 934 Existing in the Islands_
(_Exclusive of Their Dependent Suburbs, Districts, and Wards_) [289]
Town. Civilized Pop.
Bacólod 5,678
Dagupan 3,327
San José de Buenavista 3,636
Batangas 1,610
Ilagán 1,904
Balanga 4,403
Ilígan (or Ylígan) 2,872
San Fernando (La Union) 1,142
Balinag 1,278
Imus 1,930
Báguio 270
Jaro 7,169
San Fernando (Pampanga) 1,950
Biñan (or Viñan) 1,173
Joló (Walled City) 541
Cabanatúan 1,894
S. Isidro 3,814
Cápiz 7,186
Lipa 4,078
Tabaco 4,456
Calamba 2,597
Lingayen 2,838
Taal 2,658
Calbayoc 4,430
Olongapó 1,121
Taclóban 4,899
Cebú 18,330
Majayjay 1,680
Tárlac 3,491
Cottabato 931
Molo 8,551
Tuguegarao 3,421
Daet 2,569
Puerta Princesa 382
Vigan 5,749
Davao 1,010
Santa Cruz (Laguna) 4,009
Yloilo 19,054
Dapítan 1,768
Zamboanga 3,281
_Civilized Population, Classified by Birth_
_According to the Census of 1903_
Born in the Philippine Islands 6,931,548
Born in China 41,035
Born in United States 8,135
Born in Spain 3,888
Born in Japan 921
Born in Great Britain 667
Born in Germany 368
Born in East Indies 241
Born in France 121
Born in Other countries of Europe 487
Born in All other countries 275
6,987,686
The regulations affecting Chinese immigration are explained at
p. 633. Other foreigners are permitted to enter the Philippines
(conditionally), but all are required to pay an entrance fee (I had
to pay $5.30 Mex.) before embarking (abroad) for a Philippine port,
and make a declaration of 19 items, [290] of which the following
are the most interesting to the traveller:--(1) Sex; (2) whether
married or single; (3) who paid the passage-money; (4) whether
in possession of $30 upward or less; (5) whether ever in prison;
(6) whether a polygamist. The master or an officer of the vessel
carrying the passenger is required to make oath before the United
States Consul at the port of embarkation that he has made a "personal
examination" of his passenger, and does not believe him (or her) to
be either an idiot, or insane person, or a pauper, or suffering from
a loathsome disease, or an ex-convict, or guilty of infamous crime
involving moral turpitude, or a polygamist, etc. The ship's doctor
has to state on oath that he has also made a "personal examination"
of the passenger. If the vessel safely arrives in port, say Manila,
she will be boarded by a numerous staff of Customs' officials. In the
meantime the passenger will have been supplied with declaration-forms
and a printed notice, stating that an "Act provides a fine of not
exceeding $2,000 or imprisonment at hard labour, for not more than
five years, or both, for offering a gratuity to an officer of the
Customs in consideration of any illegal act in connexion with the
examination of baggage." The baggage-declaration must be ready for the
officers, and, at intervals during an hour and a half, he (or she)
has to sign six different declarations as to whether he (or she)
brings fire-arms. The baggage is then taken to the Custom-house in
a steam-launch for examination, which is not unduly rigid. Under a
Philippine Commission Act, dated October 15, 1901, the Collector of
Customs, or his deputy, may, at his will, also require the passenger
to take an oath of allegiance in such terms that, in the event of
war between the passenger's country and America, he who takes the
oath would necessarily have to forfeit his claim for protection
from his own country, unless he violated that oath. No foreigner
is permitted to land if he comes "under a contract expressed, or
implied, to perform labour in the Philippine Islands." In 1903 this
prohibition to foreigners was disputed by a British bank-clerk who
arrived in Manila for a foreign bank. The case was carried to court,
with the result that the prohibition was maintained in principle,
although the foreigner in question was permitted to remain in the
Islands as an act of grace. But in February, 1905, a singular case
occurred, exactly the reverse of the one just mentioned. A young
Englishman who had been brought out to Manila on a four years'
agreement, after four or five months of irregular conduct towards the
firm employing him, presented himself to the Collector of Customs
(as Immigration Agent), informed against himself, and begged to be
deported from the Colony. The incentive for this strange proceeding
was to secure the informer's reward of $1,000. It was probably the
first case in Philippine history of a person voluntarily seeking
compulsory expulsion from the Islands. The Government, acting on the
information, shipped him off to Hong-Kong, the nearest British port,
in the following month, with a through passage to Europe.
Since the American advent the _Administration of Justice_ has been
greatly accelerated, and Municipal Court cases, which in Spanish times
would have caused more worry to the parties than they were worth, or,
for the same reason, would have been settled out of court violently,
are now despatched at the same speed as in the London Police Courts. On
the other hand, quick despatch rather feeds the native's innate love
for litigation, so that an agglomeration of lawsuits is still one
of the Government's undesirable but inevitable burdens. There is a
complaint that the fines imposed in petty cases are excessive, and
attention was drawn to this by the Municipality of Manila. [291] After
stating that the fines imposed on 2,185 persons averaged $5 per capita,
and that they had to go to prison for non-payment, the Municipality
adds: "It shows an excessive rigour on the part of the judges in the
imposition of fines, a rigour which ought to be modified, inasmuch
as the majority of the persons accused before the Court are extremely
poor and ignorant of the ordinances and the laws for the violation of
which they are so severely punished." Sentences of imprisonment and
fines for high crimes are justly severe. During the governorship of
Mr. W. H. Taft, 17 American provincial treasurers were each condemned
to 25 years' imprisonment for embezzlement of public funds. In
February, 1905, an army major, found guilty of misappropriation of
public moneys, had his sentence computed at 60 years, which term
the court reduced to 40 years' hard labour. The penalties imposed on
some rioters at Vigan in April, 1904, were death for two, 40 years'
imprisonment and $10,000 fine each for twelve, 30 years' imprisonment
for thirty-one, and 10 years' imprisonment for twenty-five.
The American law commonly spoken of in the Philippines as the
"Law of Divorce" is nothing more than judicial separation in its
local application, as it does not annul the marriage and the parties
cannot marry again as a consequence of the action. The same could be
obtained under the Spanish law called the _Siete Partídas_, with the
only difference that before the _decree nisi_ was made absolute the
parties might have had to wait for years, and even appeal to Home.
On May 26,1900, the Military Governor authorized the solemnization
of marriages by any judge of a court inferior to the Supreme Court,
a justice of the peace, or a minister of any denomination. For the
first time in the history of the Islands, _habeas corpus_ proceedings
were heard before the Supreme Court on May 19, 1900. Besides the
lower courts established in many provincial centres, sessions are
held in circuit, each usually comprising two or three provinces. The
provinces are grouped into 16 judicial districts, in each of which
there is a Court of First Instance; and there is, moreover, one
additional "Court of First Instance at large." The Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court, some of his assistant judges, several provincial
judges, the Attorney-General, and many other high legal functionaries,
are Filipinos. The provincial justices of the peace are also natives,
and necessarily so because their office requires an intimate knowledge
of native character and dialect. Their reward is the local prestige
which they enjoy and the litigants' fees, and happily their services
are not in daily request. At times the findings of these local
luminaries are somewhat quaint, and have to be overruled by the more
enlightened judicial authorities in the superior courts. Manila and
all the judicial centres are amply supplied with American lawyers who
have come to establish themselves in the Islands, where the custom
obtains for professional men to advertise in the daily newspapers. So
far there has been only one American lady lawyer, who, in 1904, held
the position of Assistant-Attorney in the Attorney-General's office.
CHAPTER XXXI
Trade and Agriculture Since the American Advent
During the year 1898 there were those who enriched themselves
enormously as a consequence of the American advent, but the
staple trade of the Colony was generally disrupted by the abnormal
circumstances of the period; therefore it would serve no practical
purpose to present the figures for that year for comparison with the
results obtained in the years following that of the Treaty of Paris.
The tables at the end of this chapter show the increase or decrease in
the various branches of export and import trade. Regarded as a whole,
the volume of business has increased since the American occupation--to
what extent will be apparent on reference to the table of "Total Import
and Export Values" at p. 639. When the American army of occupation
entered the Islands, and was subsequently increased to about 70,000
troops, occupying some 600 posts about the Archipelago, there came
in their wake a number of enterprising business men, who established
what were termed trading companies. Their transactions hardly affected
the prosperity of the Colony one way or the other. For this class of
trader times were brisk; their dealings almost exclusively related
to the supply of commodities to the temporary floating population
of Americans, with such profitable results that, although many of
them withdrew little by little when, at the close of the War of
Independence, the troops were gradually reduced to some 16,000 men,
occupying about 100 posts, others had accumulated sufficient capital
to continue business in the more normal time which followed. Those
were halcyon days for the old-established retailers as well as the
new-comers; but, as Governor W. H. Taft pointed out in his report
to the Civil Commission dated December 23, 1903, [292] "The natural
hostility of the American business men, growing out of the war, was
not neutralized by a desire and an effort to win the patronage and
goodwill of the Filipinos. The American business men controlled much of
the advertising in the American papers, and the newspapers naturally
reflected the opinion of their advertisers and subscribers in the
advocacy of most unconciliatory measures for the native Filipino,
and in decrying all efforts of the Government to teach Filipinos
how to govern by associating the more intelligent of them in the
Government.... The American business man in the Islands has really,
up to this time, done very little to make or influence trade. He
has kept close to the American patronage, and has not extended his
efforts to an expansion of trade among the Filipinos.... There are
a few Americans who have pursued a different policy with respect to
the Filipinos to their profit."
Governor Taft's comments were only intended to impress upon the
permanent American traders, for their own good, the necessity
of creating a new _clientèle_ which they had neglected. The war
finished, the wave of temporarily abnormal prosperity gradually
receded with the withdrawal of the troops in excess of requirements;
the palmy days of the retailer had vanished, and all Manila began to
complain of "depression" in trade. The true condition of the Colony
became more apparent to them in their own slack time, and for want of
reflection some began to attribute it to a want of foresight in the
Insular Government. Industry is in its infancy in the Philippines,
which is essentially an agricultural colony. The product of the soil
is the backbone of its wealth. The true causes of the depression
were not within the control of the Insular Government or of any
ruling factor. Five years of warfare and its sequence--the bandit
community--had devastated the provinces. The peaceful pursuits of the
husbandman had been nearly everywhere interrupted thereby; his herds
of buffaloes had been decimated in some places, in others annihilated;
his apparatus or machinery and farm buildings were destroyed, now
by the common exigencies of war, now by the wantonness of the armed
factions. The remnant of the buffaloes was attacked by rinderpest,
or _epizootia_, as the Filipino calls this disease, and in some
provinces up to 90 per cent. were lost. Some of my old friends
assured me that, due to these two causes, they had lost every head
of cattle they once possessed. Laudable effort was immediately made
by the Insular Government to remedy the evil, for so great was the
mortality that many agricultural districts were poverty-stricken,
thousands of acres lying fallow for want of beasts for tillage and
transport. Washington responded to the appeal for help, and a measure
was passed establishing the Congressional Relief Fund, under which
the sum of $3,000,000 was authorized to be expended to ameliorate the
situation. By Philippine Commission Act No. 738, $100,000 of this
fund were appropriated for preliminary expenses in the purchase of
buffaloes. Under the supervision of the Insular Purchasing-Agent a
contract was entered into with a Shanghai firm for the supply of 10,000
head of inoculated buffaloes to be delivered in Manila, at the rate
of 500 per month, at the price of P85 per head. An agent was sent to
Shanghai with powers to reject unsuitable beasts before inoculation,
and the Government undertook to remunerate the contractors at the rate
of P40 for every animal which succumbed to the operation. The loss on
this process was so great that a new contract was entered into with the
same firm to deliver in Manila temporarily immunized buffaloes at the
rate of P79 per head. On their arrival the animals were inspected, and
those apparently fit were herded on the Island of Masbate for further
observation before disposing of them to the planters. The attempt
was a failure. Rinderpest, or some other incomprehensible disease,
affected and decimated the imported herds. From beginning to end the
inevitable wastage was so considerable that up to November 20, 1903,
only 1,805 buffaloes (costing P118,805) were purchased, out of which
1,370 were delivered alive, and of this number 429 died whilst under
observation; therefore, whereas the price of the 1,805 averaged
P65 per head, the cost exceeded P126 per head when distributed
over the surviving 941, which were sold at less than cost price,
although in private dealings buffaloes were fetching P125 to P250
per head (_vide_ Buffaloes p. 337, et seq.). Veterinary surgeons and
inoculators were commissioned to visit the buffaloes privately owned
in the planting-districts, the Government undertaking to indemnify
the owners for loss arising from the compulsory inoculation; but this
has not sufficed to stamp out the disease, which is still prevalent.
Another calamity, common in British India, but unknown in these
Islands before the American advent, is _Surra_, a glandular disease
affecting horses and ponies, which has made fatal ravages in the pony
stock--to the extent, it is estimated, of 60 per cent. The pony which
fully recovers from this disease is an exceptional animal. Again,
the mortality among the field hands, as a consequence of the war,
was supplemented by an outbreak of _Cholera morbus_ (_vide_ p. 197),
a disease which recurs periodically in these Islands, and which was,
on the occasion following the war, of unusually long duration. Together
with these misfortunes, a visitation of myriads of locusts (_vide_
p. 341) and drought completed the devastation.
Consequent on the total loss of capital invested in live-stock, and
the fear of rinderpest felt by the minority who have the wherewithal
to replace their lost herds, there is an inclination among the
agriculturists to raise those crops which need little or no animal
labour. Hence sugar-cane and rice-paddy are being partially abandoned,
whilst all who possess hemp or cocoanut plantations are directing
their special attention to these branches of land-produce. Due to these
circumstances, the increased cost of labour and living in the Islands
since the American advent, the want of a duty-free entry for Philippine
sugar into the United States, the prospective loss of the Japanese
market, [293] the ever-accumulating capital indebtedness, and the
need of costly machinery, it is possible to believe that sugar will,
in time, cease to be one of the leading staple products of the Islands.
With regard to the duty levied in the United States on Philippine
sugar imports, shippers in these Islands point out how little it
would affect either the United States' revenue or the sugar trade if
the duty were remitted in view of the extremely small proportion of
Philippine sugar to the total consumption in America. For instance,
taking the average of the five years 1899-1903, the proportion was
.313 per cent., so that if in consequence of the remission of duty
this Philippine industry were stimulated to the extent of being able
to ship to America threefold, it would not amount to 1 per cent,
of the total consumption in that country.
At the close of the 1903 sugar season the planters were more deeply
in debt than at any previous period in their history. In 1904 the
manager of an Yloilo firm (whom I have known from his boyhood)
showed me statistics proving the deplorable financial position of
the sugar-growers, and informed me that his firm had stopped further
advances and closed down on twelve of the largest estates working on
borrowed capital, because of the hopelessness of eventual liquidation
in full. For the same reasons other financiers have closed their
coffers to the sugar-planters.
Another object of the grant called the Congressional Relief Fund was
to alleviate the distress prevailing in several Luzon provinces,
particularly Batangas, on account of the scarcity of rice, due,
in a great measure, to the causes already explained. Prices of the
imported article had already reached double the normal value in former
times, and the Government most opportunely intervened to check the
operations of a syndicate which sought to take undue advantage of
the prevailing misery. Under Philippine Commission Acts Nos. 495,
786 and 797, appropriations were made for the purchase of rice for
distribution in those provinces where the speculator's ambition had
run up the selling-price to an excessive rate. Hitherto the chief
supplying-market had been the French East Indies, but the syndicate
referred to contrived to close that source to the Government, which,
however, succeeded in procuring deliveries from other places. The
total amount distributed was 11,164 tons, costing P1,081,722. About
22 tons of this amount was given to the indigent class, the rest
being delivered at cost price, either in cash or in payment for the
extermination of locusts, or for labour in road-making and other public
works. The merchant class contended that this act of the Government,
which deprived them of anticipated large profits, was an interference
in private enterprise--a point on which the impartial reader must
form his own conclusions. To obviate a recurrence of the necessity
for State aid, the Insular Government passed an Act urging the people
to hasten the paddy-planting. The proclamation embodying this Act
permitted the temporary use of municipal lands, the seed supplied
to be repaid after the crop. It is said that some of the local
native councils, misunderstanding the spirit of the proclamation,
made its non-observance a criminal offence, and incarcerated many
of the supposed offenders; but they were promptly released by the
American authorities.
Under the circumstances set forth, the cultivation of rice in the
Islands has fallen off considerably, to what extent may be partially
gathered from a glance at the enormous imports of this cereal, which
in the year 1901~ were 167,951 tons; in 1902, 285,473 tons; in 1903,
329,055 tons (one-third of the value of the total imports in that
year); and in 1904, 261,553 tons. The large increase of wages and
taxes and the high cost of living since the American advent (rice in
1904 cost about double the old price) have reduced the former margins
of profit on sugar and rice almost to the vanishing-point.
If all the land in use now, or until recently, for paddy-raising were
suitable for the cultivation of such crops as hemp, tobacco, cocoanuts,
etc., for which there is a steady demand abroad, the abandonment of
rice for another produce which would yield enough to enable one to
purchase rice, and even leave a margin of profit, would be rather an
advantage than otherwise. But this is not the case, and naturally a
native holds on to the land he possesses in the neighbourhood, where
he was perhaps born, rather than go on a peregrination in search
of new lands, with the risk of semi-starvation during the dilatory
process of procuring title-deeds for them when found.
Fortunately for the Filipinos, "Manila hemp" being a speciality
of this region as a fibre of unrivalled quality and utility, there
cannot be foreseen any difficulty in obtaining a price for it which
will compensate the producer to-day as well as it did in former
times. Seeing that buffaloes can be dispensed with in the cultivation
of hemp and coprah, which, moreover, are products requiring no
expensive and complicated machinery and are free of duty into the
United States, they are becoming the favourite crops of the future.
In 1905 there was considerable agitation in favour of establishing a
Government Agricultural Bank, which would lend money to the planters,
taking a first mortgage on the borrower's lands as guarantee. In
connexion with this scheme, the question was raised whether the
Government could, in justice, collect revenue from the people who had
no voice at all in the Government, and then lend it out to support
private enterprise. Moreover, without a law against usury (so common in
the Islands) there would be little to prevent a man borrowing from the
bank at, say, 6 per cent.--up to the mortgage value of his estate--to
lend it out to others at 60 per cent. A few millions of dollars,
subscribed by private capitalists and loaned out to the planters,
would enormously benefit the agricultural development of the Colony;
and if native wealthy men would demonstrate their confidence in the
result by subscribing one-tenth of the necessary amount, perhaps
Americans would be induced to complete the scheme. The foreign banks
established in the Islands are not agricultural, but exchange banks,
and any American-Philippine Agricultural Bank which may be established
need have little reason to fear competition with foreign firms who
remember the house of Russell & Sturgis (_vide_ p. 255) and also
have their own more recent experiences. Philippine rural land is a
doubtful security for loans, there being no free market in it.
Between the years 1902 and 1904 the Insular Government confiscated the
arable lands of many planters throughout the Islands for delinquency
in taxes. The properties were put up to auction; some of them
found purchasers, but the bulk of them remained in the ownership of
the Government, which could neither sell them nor make any use of
them. Therefore an Act was passed in February, 1905, restoring to
their original owners those lands not already sold, on condition of
the overdue taxes being paid within the year. In one province of Luzon
the confiscated lots amounted to about one-half of all the cultivated
land and one-third of the rural land-assessment in that province. The
$2,400,000 gold spent on the Benguet road (_vide_ p. 615) would have
been better employed in promoting agriculture.
Up to 1898 Spain was the most important market for Philippine tobacco,
but since that country lost her colonies she has no longer any
patriotic interest in dealing with any particular tobacco-producing
country. The entry of Philippine tobacco into the United States is
checked by a Customs duty, respecting which there is, at present,
a very lively contest between the tobacco-shippers in the Islands and
the Tobacco Trust in America, the former clamouring for, and the latter
against, the reduction or abolition of the tariff. It is simply a clash
of trade interests; but, with regard to the broad principles involved,
it would appear that, so long as America holds these Islands without
the consent of its inhabitants, it is only just that she should do all
in her power to create a free outlet for the Islands' produce. If this
Archipelago should eventually acquire sovereign independence, America's
moral obligations towards it would cease, and the mutual relations
would then be only those ordinarily subsisting between two nations.
By Philippine Commission Act dated April 30, 1902, a Bureau of
Agriculture was organized. The chief of this department is assisted
by experts in soil, farm-management, plant-culture, breeding, animal
industry, seed and fibres, an assistant agrostologist, and a tropical
agriculturist. Shortly after its organization, 18,250 packages of
field and garden seeds were sent to 730 individuals for experiment
in different parts of the Colony, with very encouraging results. The
work of this department is experimental and investigative, with a
view to the improvement of agriculture in all its branches.
In Spanish times agricultural land was free of taxation. Now it pays a
tax not exceeding .87 per cent. of the assessed value. The rate varies
in different districts, according to local circumstances. For instance,
in 1904 it was .87 per cent. in Baliuag (Bulacan) and in Viñan (La
Laguna), and .68 per cent. in San Miguel de Mayumo (Bulacan). This tax
is subdivided in its application to provincial and municipal general
expenses and educational disbursements. The people make no demur
at paying a tax on land-produce; but they complain of the system of
taxation of capital generally, and particularly of its application to
lands lying fallow for the causes already explained. The approximate
yield of the land-tax in the fiscal year of 1905 was P2,000,000; it
was then proposed to suspend the levy of this tax for three years in
view of the agricultural depression.
The Manila Port Works (_vide_ p. 344), commenced in Spanish times, are
now being carried on more vigorously under contract with the Atlantic,
Gulf, and Pacific Company. Within the breakwater a thirty-foot deep
harbour, measuring about 400 acres, is being dredged, the mud raised
therefrom being thrown on to 168 acres of reclaimed land which is to
form the new frontage. Also a new channel entrance to the Pasig River
is to be maintained at a depth of 18 feet. The Americans maintain
that there will be no finer harbour in the Far East when the work is
completed. The reclaimed acreage will be covered with warehouses and
wharves, enabling vessels to load and discharge at all seasons instead
of lying idle for weeks in the typhoon season and bad weather, as they
often do now. With these enlarged shipping facilities, freights to
and from Manila must become lower, to the advantage of all concerned
in import and export trade. The cost of these improvements up to
completion is estimated at about one million sterling.
The port of Siassi (Tapul group), which was opened in recent years by
the Spaniards, was discontinued (June 1, 1902) by the Americans, who
opened the new coastwise ports of Cape Melville, Puerta Princesa, and
Bongao (October 15, 1903) in order to assist the scheme for preventing
smuggling between these extreme southern islands and Borneo. Hitherto
there had been some excuse for this surreptitious trade, because
inter-island vessels, trading from the other entry-ports, seldom,
if ever, visited these out-of-the-way regions. In February, 1903,
appropriations of $350,000 and $150,000 were made for harbour works in
Cebú and Yloilo respectively, although in the latter port no increased
facility for the entry of vessels into the harbour was apparent up to
June, 1904. Zamboanga, the trade of which was almost nominal up to the
year 1898, is now an active shipping centre of growing importance,
where efforts are being made to foster direct trade with foreign
eastern ports. An imposing Custom-house is to be erected on the new
spacious jetty already built under American auspices. Arrangements
have also been made for the Hong-Kong-Australia Steamship Company to
make Zamboanga a port of call. Here, as in all the chief ports of the
Archipelago, greater advantages for trade have been afforded by the
administration, and one is struck with the appearance of activity and
briskness as compared with former times. These changes are largely
owing to the national character of the new rulers, for one can enter
any official department, in any branch of public service, from that
of the Gov.-General downwards, to procure information or clear up a
little question "while you wait," and, if necessary, interview the
chief of the department. The tedious, dilatory time and money-wasting
"come later on" procedure of times gone by no longer obtains.
What is still most needed to give a stimulus to agriculture and the
general material development of the Islands is the conversion of
hundreds of miles of existing highways and mud-tracks into good hard
roads, so as to facilitate communication between the planting-districts
and the ports. The corallaceous stone abounding in the Islands is
worthless for road-making, because it pulverizes in the course of one
wet season, and, unfortunately, what little hard stone exists lies
chiefly in inaccessible places--hence its extraction and transport
would be more costly than the supply of an equal quantity of broken
granite brought over in sailing-ships from the Chinese coast, where
it is procurable at little over the quarryman's labour. From the days
of the Romans the most successful colonizing nations have regarded
road-making as a work of primary importance and a civilizing factor.
Among the many existing projects, there is one for the construction
of railroads (1) from Manila (or some point on the existing railway)
northward through the rich tobacco-growing valleys of Isabela and
Cagayán, as far as the port of Aparri, at the mouth of the Cagayán
River--distance, 260 miles; (2) from Dagúpan (Pangasinán) to Laoag
(Ilocos Norte), through 168 miles of comparatively well-populated
country; (3) from San Fabian (Pangasinán) to Báguio (Benguet), 55
miles; and three other lines in Luzon Island and one in each of the
islands of Negros, Panay, Cebú, Leyte, and Sámar. A railway line from
Manila to Batangas, _via_ Calamba (a distance of about 70 miles), and
thence on to Albay Province, was under consideration for many years
prior to the American advent; but the poor financial result of the only
(120 miles) line in the Colony has not served to stimulate further
enterprise in this direction, except an endeavour of that same company
to recuperate by feeder branches, two of which are built, and another
(narrow gauge) is in course of construction from Manila to Antipolo,
_via_ Pasig and Mariquina (_vide_ Railways, p. 265).
Since February, 1905, a Congress Act, known as the "Cooper Bill,"
offers certain inducements to railway companies. It authorizes the
Insular Government to guarantee 4 per cent, annual interest on railway
undertakings, provided that the total of such contingent liability
shall not exceed $1,200,000--that is to say, 4 per cent, could be
guaranteed on a maximum capital of $30,000,000. The Insular Government
is further empowered under this Act to admit, at its discretion, the
entry of railway material free of duty. As yet, no railway construction
has been started by American capitalists. Projects _ad infinitum_ might
be suggested for the development of trade and traffic--for instance, a
ship-canal connecting the Laguna de Bay with the Pacific Ocean; another
from Laguimanoc to Atimonan (Tayabas); an artificial entry-port in
Negros Island, connected by railway with two-thirds of the coast, etc.
Up to the present the bulk of the export and import trade is handled
by Europeans, who, together with native capitalists, own the most
considerable commercial and industrial productive "going concerns"
in the Islands. In 1904 there were one important and several
smaller American trading-firms (exclusive of shopkeepers) in the
capital, and a few American planters and successful prospectors in
the provinces. There are hundreds of Americans about the Islands,
searching for minerals and other natural products with more hopeful
prospects than tangible results. It is perhaps due to the disturbed
condition of the Islands and the "Philippines for the Filipinos"
policy that the anticipated flow of private American capital has
not yet been seen, although there is evidently a desire in this
direction. There is, at least, no lack of the American enterprising
spirit, and, since the close of the War of Independence, several
joint-stock companies have started with considerable cash capital,
principally for the exploitation of the agricultural, forestal, and
mineral wealth of the Islands. Whatever the return on capital may
be, concerns of this kind, which operate at the natural productive
sources, are obviously as beneficial to the Colony as trading can be
in Manila--the emporium of wealth produced elsewhere.
There are, besides, many minor concerns with American capital,
established only for the purpose of selling to the inhabitants goods
which are not an essential need, and therefore not contributing to
the development of the Colony.
The tonnage entered in Philippine ports shows a rapid annual increase
in five years. Many new lines of steamers make Manila a port of call,
exclusive of the army transports, carrying Government supplies,
and in 1905 there was a regular goods and passenger traffic between
Hong-Kong and Zamboanga. Still, the greater part of the freight
between the Philippines and the Atlantic ports is carried in foreign
bottoms. The shipping-returns for the year 1903 would appear to show
that over 85 per cent, of the exports from the Islands to America,
and about the same proportion of the imports from that country
(exclusive of Government stores brought in army transports) were
borne in foreign vessels. The carrying-trade figures for 1904 were
78.41 per cent, in British bottoms; 6.69 per cent, in Spanish,
and 6.65 per cent, in American vessels. The desire to dispossess
the foreigners of the carrying monopoly is not surprising, but it
is thought that immediately-operative legislation to that end would
be impracticable. The latest legislation on the subject confines the
carrying-trade between the Islands and the United States to American
bottoms from July 1, 1906. It is alleged that the success of the new
regulations which may (or may not, for want of American vessels)
come into force on that date will depend on the freights charged;
it is believed that exorbitant outward rates would divert the hemp
cargoes into other channels, and a large rise in inward freights
would facilitate European competition in manufactured goods. Any
considerable rise in freights to America would tend to counterbalance
the benefits which the Filipinos hope to derive from the free entry
of sugar and tobacco into American ports. The text of the Shipping
Law, dated April 15, 1904, reads thus; "On and after July 1, 1906, no
merchandise shall be transported by sea, under penalty of forfeiture
thereof, between ports of the United States and ports or places of
the Philippine Archipelago, directly, or _via_ a foreign port, or
for any part of the voyage in any other than a vessel of the United
States. No foreign vessel shall transport passengers between ports of
the United States and ports or places in the Philippine Archipelago,
either directly, or _via_ a foreign port, under a penalty of $200
for each passenger so transported and landed."
The expenses of the Civil Government are met through the insular
revenues (the Congressional Relief Fund being an extraordinary
exception). The largest income is derived from the Customs'
receipts, which in 1904 amounted to about $8,750,000, equal to about
two-thirds of the insular treasury revenue (as distinguished from the
municipal). The total _Revenue and Expenditure_ in the fiscal year
1903 (from all sources, including municipal taxes expended in the
respective localities, but exclusive of the Congressional Relief Fund)
stood thus:--
Total Revenue $14,640,988
Total Expenditure $15,105,374
Excess of Expenditure over Revenue 464,386
========== ==========
15,105,374 15,105,374
In 1903, therefore, Government cost the inhabitants the equivalent
of about 46 per cent, of the exports' value, against 45 per cent, in
Spanish times, taking the relative averages of 1890-94. The present
abnormal pecuniary embarrassment of the people is chiefly due to the
causes already explained, and perhaps partly so to the fact that the
P30,000,000 to P40,000,000 formerly in circulation had two to three
times the local purchasing value that pesos have to-day.
The "Cooper Bill," already referred to, authorizes the Insular
Government to issue bonds for General Public Works up to a total of
$5,000,000, for a term of 30 years, at 4 1/2 per cent, interest per
annum; and the municipalities to raise loans for municipal improvements
up to a sum not exceeding 5 per cent. of the valuation of the real
estate of the municipalities, at 5 per cent. interest per annum. For
the purchase of the friars' lands a loan of $7,000,000 exists, bearing
interest at 4 per cent. per annum, the possible interest liability
on the total of these items amounting to about $2,000,000 per annum.
On November 15, 1901, the high Customs tariff then in force was reduced
by about 25 per cent. on the total average, bringing the average duties
to about 17 per cent. _ad valorem_, but this was again amended by the
new tariff laws of May 3, 1905. Opium is still one of the imports,
but under a recent law its introduction is to be gradually restricted
by tariff until March 1, 1908, from which date it will be unlawful to
import this drug, except by the Government for medicinal purposes only.
On August 1, 1904, a new scheme of additional taxation came into
force under the "Internal Revenue Law of 1904." This tax having been
only partially imposed during the first six months, the full yield
cannot yet be ascertained, but at the present rate(P5,280,970.96,
partial yield for the fiscal year 1905) it will probably produce at
the annual rate of $4,250,000 gold, which, however, is not entirely
extra taxation, taking into account the old taxes repealed under
Art. XVII., sec. 244. The theory of the new scheme was that it
might permit of a lower Customs tariff schedule. The new taxes are
imposed on distilled spirits, fermented liquors, manufactured tobacco,
matches, banks and bankers, insurance companies, forestry products,
valid mining concessions granted prior to April 11, 1899, business,
manufactures, occupations, licences, and stamps on specified objects
(Art. II., sec. 25). Of the taxes accruing to the Insular Treasury
under the above law, 10 per cent. is set apart for the benefit
of the several provincial governments, apportioned _pro rata_ to
their respective populations as shown by the census of 1903; 15 per
cent. for the several municipal governments, provided that of this
sum one-third shall be utilized solely for the maintenance of free
public primary schools and expenditure appertaining thereto. In the
aforesaid distribution Manila City ranks as a municipality and a
province, and receives apportionment under this law on the basis of
25 per cent. (Art. XVII., sec. 150).
From the first announcement of the projected law up to its promulgation
the public clamoured loudly against it. For months the public
organs, issued in Spanish and dialect, persistently denounced it as a
harbinger of ruin to the Colony. Chambers of Commerce, corporations and
private firms, foreign and native, at meetings specially convened to
discuss the new law, predicted a collapse of Philippine industry and
commerce. At a public conference, held before the Civil Commission on
June 24, 1904, it was stated that one distillery alone would have to
pay a yearly tax of P744,000, and that a certain cigar-factory would
be required to pay annually P557,425. Petitions against the coming
law were sent by all the representative trading-bodies to the Insular
Government praying for its withdrawal. When the Commissioners retired
to their hill-station at Báguio (Benguet) they were followed up by
protests against the measure, but it became law under Philippine
Commission Act No. 1189. Since the imposition of this tax there
has been a general complaint throughout the civilized provinces of
depression in the internal trade, but to what extent it is justified
there is no available precise data on which to form an estimate.
As already stated, the American occupation brought about a rapid
rise in the price of everything, not of necessity or in obedience
to the law of supply and demand, but because it was the pleasure
of the Americans voluntarily to enhance established values. To the
surprise of the Filipinos, the new-comers preferred to pay wages
at hitherto unheard-of rates, whilst the soldiers lavishly paid in
gold for silver-peso value (say, at least, double), of their own
volition--an innovation in which the obliging native complacently
acquiesced, until it dawned upon him that he might demand anything he
chose. The soldiers so frequently threw away copper coin given them in
change as valueless, that many natives discontinued to offer it. It
followed that everybody was reluctantly compelled to pay the higher
price which the American spontaneously elected to give. Labour, food,
house-rent, and all the necessaries of life rose enormously. [294]
The Colony soon became converted from a cheap into an expensive place
of residence. Living there to-day costs at least three times what
it did in Spanish times. Urban property and lands were assessed at
values far beyond those at which the owners truly estimated them. Up
to 1904 it was not at all uncommon to find the rent of a house raised
to five times that of 1898. Retailers had to raise their prices;
trading-firms were obliged to increase their clerks' emoluments,
and in every direction revenue and expenditure thenceforth ranged on
an enhanced scale. It is remarkable that, whilst pains were taken by
the new-comers to force up prices, many of them were simultaneously
complaining of expensive living! Governor W. H. Taft, with an annual
emolument of $20,000 gold, declared before the United States Senate
that the Gov.-General's palace at Malacañan was too expensive a place
for him to reside in. The lighting of the establishment cost him $125
gold a month, and his servants' wages amounted to $250 monthly. He
added that he would rather pay his own rent than meet the expenses
of the Malacañan residence. [295]
Two and a half years later General Leonard Wood reported:
"There has been a great increase in the cost of living and in wages
in this (Moro) as in other provinces--an increase which has not been
accompanied either by improved methods or increased production. The
cause of the increase can be traced, in most cases, to the _foolishly
high prices paid_ by army officials for labour." [296]
Wages steadily advanced as a natural consequence of the higher cost
of living, and, under the guidance of a native demagogue, the working
classes, for the first time in Philippine history, collectively began
to grumble at the idea of labour-pay having a limit. It was one of
the abuses of that liberty of speech suddenly acquired under the new
dominion. On February 2, 1902, this person organized the malcontents
under the title of a "Labour Union," of which he became the first
president. The subscription was 20 cents of a peso per week. The
legality of peacefully relinquishing work when the worker felt so
inclined was not impugned; but when the strikers sought to coerce
violently their fellow-men, the law justly interfered and imprisoned
their leader. The presidency of the so-called "Labour Union" was
thenceforth (September following) carried on by a half-caste, gifted
with great power of organization and fluent oratory. He prepared the
by-laws of the association, and fixed the monthly subscription at one
peso per man and one peseta (one-fifth of a peso) per woman. About
100,000 members were enrolled in the union, the ostensible aim of
which was the defence of the working man's interests. It is difficult
to discern what those interests were which needed protection; the
position of the labouring class was the very reverse of that existing
in Europe; the demand for labourers, at any reasonable wage, exceeded
the supply. The idea of a Filipino philanthropically devoting his
life to the welfare of the masses was beyond the conception of all who
understood the Philippine character. At the end of about eight months,
notwithstanding the enormous assets from subscriptions, the "Labour
Union" became insolvent, with a deficit of 1,000 or more pesos. Where
the assets had gone needed investigation. In the meantime the leader,
posing as mediator between the Insular Government and certain notorious
outlaws, had endeavoured to negotiate with Governor W. H. Taft for
their surrender, on the condition of full pardon. The Government, at
length, becoming suspicious of his intentions and the full measure of
his sympathy for these individuals, caused the leader to be arrested on
May 29, 1903, on the allegations of "founding, directing, and presiding
over an illegal association known as 'The Democratic Labour Union,'"
irregularities connected with the foundation and administration of
the same, sedition, confederacy with brigands, and other minor counts.
It was clear to every thinking man, American or European, that the
control of such a formidable body was a menace to peace. The accused
was brought to trial on the chief allegations, and in September,
1903, he was sentenced to four years and two months' imprisonment,
but appealed against the sentence to the Supreme Court. Later
on he was tried on the other counts, and, although the public
prosecution failed, it served the useful purpose of dissolving a
league the scope of which was shrouded in obscurity, at a period
when the political atmosphere was still clouded by aspirations of
impossible and undesirable realization. I followed the course of
the trial daily, and I interviewed the accused at his house a week
before it ended. Three hundred documents were read at the trial, and
160 witnesses were brought against him. To endeavour to establish
a case of conspiracy against him, another individual was produced
as his colleague. The first accused was defended by an American
advocate with such fervid eloquence, apparently inspired by earnest
conviction of his client's innocence, that those who had to decide his
fate acquitted him of the charge of conspiracy on May 11, 1904. The
defendant's verbal explanation to me of the "Labour Union" led me to
the conclusion that its abolition would benefit the community.
The abnormal rise in wages had the bad effect of inducing the
natives to leave their pastoral pursuits to flock into the towns. The
labour question is still a difficult problem, for it is the habit
of the Filipino to discontinue work when he has a surplus in his
pocket. Private employers complain of scarcity and the unreliability
of the unskilled labourer. Undoubtedly the majority of them would
welcome the return of Chinese coolies, whose entry into the Islands is
prohibited by the Insular Government, in agreement with the desire of
the Filipinos, who know full well that the industrious Chinaman would
lower wages and force the Filipinos into activity for an existence.
Consul-General Wildman, of Hong-Kong, in his report for 1900 to the
State Department, Washington, said: "There has been, during the past
year, quite an investment of Hong-Kong capital in Manila; but it
is the general opinion that _no investment in mines or agriculture_
in the Islands _will be of any great value until the introduction of
Chinese labour_ is not only _permitted_ but _encouraged_."
Section IV. of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1902 provides that every
Chinese labourer rightfully in any insular territory of the United
States (Hawaii excepted), at the time of the passage of this Act,
shall obtain, within one year thereafter, a certificate of residence,
and upon failure to obtain such certificate he shall be deported;
and the Philippine Commission is authorized and required to make all
regulations necessary for the enforcement of this section in the
Philippine Islands. No restriction is placed upon their movement
from one island to another of the Philippines, but they cannot go
from the Philippines to America.
The regulations established by the Insular Government (Act of March
27, 1903) in conformity with the above-cited Act are as follows: The
Chinese can leave the Islands and return thereto within a year. They
must obtain a certificate of departure and be photographed. To
re-enter the Islands they must procure a certificate of departure at
the place of embarkation (usually China) for the Philippines. Thus,
during the year ending June 30, 1902, 10,158 Chinese entered Manila,
and 11,432 left it with return certificates. Chinese resident in the
Islands must be registered. The first banishment for contravention
of this regulation took place on January 6, 1905.
For a long time there was a big contraband business done in Chinese. A
coolie would pay as much as 400 pesos premium to find himself where he
could earn up to 100 pesos per month. The contraband agent in China
was an ex-Custom-house officer. The Manila agent was in the Customs
service, and the colleagues on the China side were high officials. When
the conspiracy was discovered the agent in China came to Manila to
answer the charge, and was at once arrested. A prosecution was entered
upon; but after a protracted trial, the proceedings were quashed,
for reasons which need not be discussed. The Exclusion Act is so
rigidly upheld that in the case of a Chinese merchant who died in
the Islands leaving a fortune of about 200,000 pesos, his (Chinese)
executor was refused permission to reside temporarily in the Colony
for the sole purpose of winding up the deceased's affairs.
The social position of the Chinese permitted to remain in the
Islands has changed since the American advent. In former times, when
the highest authorities frowned upon the Chinese community, it was
necessary to propitiate them with bags of silver pesos. There was no
Chinese consul in those days; but Chino Cárlos Palanca was practically
the protector and dictator of his countrymen during the last decade of
Spanish rule, and, if a cloud descended upon them from high quarters,
he used to pass the word round for a dollar levy to dissipate it. In
February, 1900, Chino Palanca was made a mandarin of the first class,
and when his spirit passed away to the abode of his ancestors his
body was followed to interment by an immense sympathetic crowd of
Celestials. This pompous funeral was one of the great social events of
the year. Now there is a Chinese consul in Manila whose relations to
his people are very different from those between Europeans and their
consuls. The Chinese consul paternally tells his countrymen what they
are to do, and they do it with filial submission. He has given them
to understand that they occupy a higher position than that formerly
accorded to the Chinese in this Colony (_vide_ Chinese, Chapter viii).
On my first visit to Manila alter the American occupation I was struck
to see Chinese in the streets wearing the pigtail down their backs,
and dressed in nicely-cut semi-European patrol-jacket costumes of cloth
or washing-stuffs, with straw or felt "trilby" hats. Now, too, they
mix freely among the whites in public places with an air of social
equality, and occupy stall seats in the theatre, which they would
not have dared to enter in pre-American times. The Chinese Chamber
of Commerce is also of recent foundation, and its status is so far
recognized by the Americans that it was invited to express an opinion
on the Internal Revenue Bill, already referred to, before it became
law. The number of Chinese in the whole Archipelago is estimated
at about 41,000. When an enterprising American introduced a large
number of jinrikishas, intending to establish that well-known system
of locomotion here, the Chinese Consulate very shortly put its veto
on the employment of Chinese runners. The few natives who ran them
became objects of ridicule. The first person who used a jinrikisha in
Manila, with Chinese in livery, was a European consul. Other whites,
unaccustomed to these vehicles, took to beating the runners--a thing
never seen or heard of in Japan or in colonies where they are used in
thousands. The natural result was that the 'rikisha man bolted and the
'rikisha tilted backwards, to the discomfort of the fool riding in
it. The attempted innovation failed, and the vehicles were sent out
of the Colony.
Apart from the labour question, if the Chinese were allowed a free
entry they would perpetuate the smartest pure Oriental mixed class
in the Islands. On the other hand, if their exclusion should remain
in force beyond the present generation it will have a marked adverse
effect on the activity of the people (_vide_ pp. 182, 411).
At the period of the American occupation the _Currency_ of the
Islands was the Mexican and Spanish-Philippine peso, of a value
constantly fluctuating between 49 and 37 cents. gold (_vide_ table
at p. 647). The shifty character of the silver basis created such an
uncertainty in trade and investment transactions that the Government
resolved to place the currency on a gold standard. Between January 1
and October 5, 1902, the Insular Treasury lost $956,750.37 1/2 from the
fall of silver. A difficulty to be confronted was the impossibility
of ascertaining even the approximate total amount of silver current
in the Islands. Opinions varied from P30,000,000 upwards. [297]
Pending the solution of the money problem, ineffectual attempts were
made to fix the relative values by the publication of an official
ratio between gold dollar and silver peso once a quarter; but as
it never agreed with the commercial quotation many days running,
the announcement of the official ratio was altered to once in ten
days. Seeing that ten days or more elapsed before the current ratio
could be communicated to certain remote points, the complications in
the official accounts were most embarrassing. Congress Act of July
1, 1902, authorized the coinage of subsidiary silver, but did not
determine the unit of value or provide for the issue of either coin or
paper money to take the place of the Mexican and Spanish-Philippine
pesos in circulation, so that it was quite inoperative. Finally,
Congress Act of March 2, 1903, provided that the new standard should
be a peso equal in value to half a United States gold dollar. The
maximum amount authorized to be coined was 75,000,000 silver pesos,
each containing 416 grains of silver, nine-tenths fine. The peso was
to be legal tender for all debts, public and private, in the Islands,
and was to be issued when the Insular Government should have 500,000
pesos ready for circulation. The peso is officially alluded to as
"Philippine currency," whilst the popular term, "Conant," derives
its name from a gentleman, Mr. Charles Conant, in whose report, dated
November 25, 1901, this coin was suggested. He visited the Islands,
immortalized his name, and modestly retired.
The "Philippine currency," or "peso Conant," is guaranteed by the
United States Treasury to be equal to 50 cents of a gold dollar. The
six subsidiary coins are 50, 20, and 10 cents silver, 5 cents nickel,
and 1 and 1/2 cent bronze, equivalent to a sterling value of one
shilling to one farthing. This new coinage, designed by a Filipino, was
issued to the public at the end of July, 1903. The inaugurating issue
consisted of 17,881,650 silver pesos, in pesos and subsidiary coins,
to be supplemented thereafter by the re-coinage of the Mexican and
Philippine pesos as they found their way into the Treasury. For public
convenience, silver certificates, or Treasury Notes, were issued,
exchangeable for "Conant" silver pesos, to the extent of 6,000,000
pesos' worth in 10-peso notes; another 6,000,000 pesos in 5-peso notes,
and 3,000,000 pesos in 2-peso notes, these last bearing a vignette
of the Philippine patriot, the late Dr. José Rizal. On December 23,
1903, the Governor reported that "not till January 1, 1904, can the
Mexican coin be demonetized and denied as legal tender value." A
proclamation, dated January 28, 1904, was issued by the Insular
Treasury in Spanish and Tagalog to the effect (1) that after October 1,
1904, the Government would only accept Mexican or Philippine pesos at
the value of their silver contents, and (2) that after December 31,
1904, a tax would be levied on all deposits made at the banks of the
above-mentioned coinage. Notwithstanding the publication of numerous
official circulars urging the use of the new peso, the Mexican and
Spanish-Philippine dollars remained in free circulation during the
first six months of 1904, although rent and certain other payments
were reckoned in "Conant" and current accounts at banks were kept in
the new currency, unless otherwise agreed. Naturally, as long as the
seller was willing to accept Mexican for his goods, the buyer was only
too pleased to pay in that medium, because if, for instance, he had to
pay 10 Mexican dollars, and only had "Conant" in his pocket, he could
call at any of the hundred exchange shops about town, change his 10
"Conant" into Mexican at a 5 to 20 per cent. premium, settle his bill,
and reserve the premium. Almost any Far Eastern fractional coins served
as subsidiary coins to the Mexican or Spanish-Philippine peso, and
during nine or ten months there were no less than three currencies
in use--namely, United States, Mexican (with Spanish-Philippine),
and "Conant." It was not practicable to deny a legal-tender value
to so much Mexican, and Spanish-Philippine coin in circulation. The
retailer was required to exhibit in his shop a card, supplied by the
municipality, indicating the exchange-rate of the day, and declaring in
Spanish, English, and Tagálog as follows: "Our prices are in American
currency. We accept Philippine currency at the rate of..."; but the
reckoning in small-value transactions was so bewildering that, in
practice, he would accept any coinage the purchaser chose to give him
at face value. From August 1, 1904, when the "Internal Revenue Law"
(_vide_ p. 630) came into operation, merchants' and bankers' accounts
and all large transactions were settled on the new-currency basis. Many
retailers followed the lead, and the acceptance of the new medium
thenceforth greatly increased. Still, for several months, provincial
natives were loth to part with their old coin at a discount, or, as
they plainly put it, lose 10 to 20 per cent. of their cash capital
at a stroke. The Insular Treasurer therefore issued another circular
in December, 1904, stating that whosoever engaged in business should
make use of the old coinage in trade transactions after December 31,
1904, without special licence, would be condemned to pay not only
that licence, but a heavy fine, or be _sent to prison_; and that
all written agreements made after October, 1904, involving a payment
in old currency, would pay a tax of 1 per cent. per month from the
said date of December, 1904. Nevertheless, further pressure had to be
exercised by the Civil Governor, who, in a circular dated January 7,
1905, stated that "it is hereby ordered that the Insular Treasurer
and all provincial treasurers in the Philippine Islands shall, on and
after this date and until February 1, 1905, purchase Spanish-Filipino
currency, Mexican currency, Chinese subsidiary silver coins, and all
foreign copper coins now circulating in the Philippine Islands at
_one peso_, Philippine currency, for _one peso and twenty centavos_,
local currency."
As late as March, 1905, there was still a considerable amount of old
coinage in private hands, but practically the new medium was definitely
established. The total number of "Conant" pesos in circulation in
the Islands, in the middle of May, 1905, was 29,715,720 (all minted
in America), and "Conant" paper, P10,150,000.
From the time of the American occupation up to May, 1902, the two
foreign banks--the Hong-Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and
the Chartered Bank of India, Australia, and China (_vide_ Banks,
p. 258)--were the only depositaries for the Insular Treasury, outside
the Treasury itself. In the meantime, two important American banks
established themselves in the Islands--namely, the "Guaranty Trust
Company," and the "International Banking Corporation." On May 15,
1902, the "Guaranty Trust Company" was appointed a depositary for
Philippine funds both in Manila and in the United States; and on June
21 following the "International Banking Corporation" was likewise
appointed a depositary for the Insular Treasury, each being under a
bond of $2,000,000. These two banks also act as fiscal agents to the
United States in the Philippines. [298]
In 1904 the position of the "Banco Español-Filipino" (_vide_ p. 258)
was officially discussed. This bank, the oldest established in Manila,
holds a charter from the Spanish Government, the validity of which was
recognized. The Insular Government sought to reduce the amount of its
paper currency, which was alleged to be three times the amount of its
cash capital. Meanwhile, the notes in circulation, representing the
old Philippine medium, ceased to be legal tender, and were exchanged
for "Conant" peso-value notes at the current rate of exchange.
For a short period there existed an establishment entitled the
"American Bank," which did not prosper and was placed in liquidation
on May 18, 1905, by order of the Gov.-General, pursuant to Philippine
Commission Act No. 52 as amended by Act No. 556.
In February, 1909, the terms of Article 4 of the Treaty of Paris
(_vide_ p. 479) will lapse, leaving America a freer hand to determine
the commercial future of the Philippines. It remains to be seen
whether the "Philippines for the Filipinos" policy, promoted by the
first Civil Governor, or the "Equal opportunities for all" doctrine,
propounded by the first Gov.-General, will be the one then adopted
by America. Present indications point to the former merging into the
latter, almost of necessity, if it is desired to encourage American
capitalists to invest in the Islands. The advocate of the former
policy is the present responsible minister for Philippine affairs,
whilst, on this work going to press, the propounder of the latter
doctrine has been justly rewarded, for his honest efforts to govern
well, with the appointment of first American Ambassador to Japan.
Trade Statistics
Total Import and Export Values (exclusive of Silver and Gold)
Period. Imports. Exports. Total Import Excess Excess
and of Imports. of Exports.
Export Trade.
Annual
Average. Gold $. Gold $. Gold $. Gold $. Gold $.
1880-84 19,500,274 20,838,325 40,338,599 -- 1,338,051
1885-89 15,789,165 20,991,265 36,780,430 -- 5,202,100
1890-94 15,827,694 19,751,293 35,578,987 -- 3,923,599
Year.
1899 13,113,010 12,306,912 25,479,922 746,098 --
1900 20,601,436 19,751,068 40,352,504 850,368 --
1901 30,279,406 23,214,948 53,494,354 7,064,458 --
1902 32,141,842 23,927,679 56,069,521 8,214,163 --
1903 32,971,882 33,121,780 66,093,662 -- 149,898
Great Britain and the United States are the most important foreign
markets for Philippine hemp, the distribution of shipments in 1850
and in five recent years having been as follows:--
Hemp Shipments To United States, United Kingdom, and Other Countries
Year. To United States. To Great Britain. To Other Countries. Total.
Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons.
1850 7,387 1,092 323 8,802
1899 26,713 21,511 26,808 75,092
1900 20,304 46,419 22,715 89,438
1901 30,336 82,190 11,731 124,257
1902 60,384 44,813 6,303 111,500
1903 69,912 59,189 8,651 137,752
Hemp Shipments
Year. Total.
Tons.
1850 8,802
1855 14,936
1860 24,812
1865 24,862
1870 30,535
1875 32,864
1880 49,934
1885 52,141
1890 63,269
1895 104,040
1896 95,736
1897 112,755
1898 99,076
1899 75,092
1900 89,438
1901 124,257
1902 111,500
1903 137,752
Total Chief Exports from the Philippine Islands
1885. 1886. 1887. 1888. 1889. 1890. 1891. 1892. 1893.
Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons.
Sugar
Manila 65,678 84,204 83,469 91,628 92,856 48,071 73,296 67,996 107,003
Cebú 28,195 18,140 17,815 16,694 11,862 3,455 8,762 18,388 16,962
Yloilo 109,609 83,456 77,847 76,997 114,207 96,000 85,104 165,407 137,716
Total 203,482 185,800 179,131 185,319 218,925 147,526 167,162 251,791 261,681
Hemp
Manila 43,927 39,268 56,709 71,881 59,455 56,201 68,256 87,778 70,174
Cebú 8,214 7,192 7,663 11,298 11,616 7,068 11,087 11,035 10,010
Total 52,141 46,460 64,372 82,679 71,071 63,269 79,343 98,813 80,184
Sapan-wood
Manila 2,911 1,885 962 750 574 1,385 880 1,574 3,332
Yloilo
and Cebú 1,100 2,943 4,260 5,853 4,018 1,415 3,317 2,207 1,586
Total 4,011 4,828 5,222 6,603 4,592 2,800 4,197 8,841 4,918
Coprah
tons -- -- -- -- -- 4,653 17,875 22,439 11,519
Shipped from Manila only.
1885. 1886. 1887. 1888. 1889. 1890. 1891. 1892. 1893.
Coffee
tons 5,209 7,337 4,998 6,702 5,841 4,796 2,869 1,326 307
Cigars
thousands 114,821 102,717 99,562 109,109 121,674 109,636 97,740 137,059 137,458
Tobacco-Leaf
tons 6,799 6,039 4,841 10,229 10,161 8,952 9,803 12,714 11,534
Buffalo-Hides
tons 632 666 566 1,888 755 394 272 327 --
Indigo
tons 84 64 111 232 221 19 89 278 --
Gum Mastic
tons 195 205 404 330 490 188 303 136 --
Cordage
tons 265 187 175 124 94 196 149 100 --
M.O.P. Shell
tons 10 8 13 12 23 31 18 10 --
Total Chief Exports from the Philippine Islands--continued
1894. 1895. 1896. 1897. 1899. 1900. 1901. 1902. 1903. 1858.
Under American Occupation. According
Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. to Sir John
Bowring.
Sugar
Manila 94,656 107,221 97,705 57,382 5,041 27,473 5,567 421 368
Cebú 10,198 13,335 7,701 15,257 12,363 3,731 8,283 4,595 6,202
Yloilo 88,533 110,527 124,648 130,542 71,982 36,312 45,070 97,129 81,308
Total 193,387 231,083 230,054 203,181 89,386 67,536 58,920 102,145 88,378 34,821
Hemp
Manila 82,693 93,595 83,172 102,721 -- -- -- -- --
Cebú 16,804 10,445 12,564 10,034 -- -- -- -- --
Total 99,497 104,040 95,736 112,755 75,092 89,438 124,257 111,500 137,752 25,781
Sapanwood
Manila 1,292 1,619 898 1,022 No quantities stated in the
Yloilo Office Returns since 1898.
& Cebú 1,633 694 2,743 3,165
Total 2,925 2,313 3,551 4,187 Included in Table of 4,201
Total Export Values, p. 639.
Coprah
tons 33,265 37,104 37,970 50,714 15,906 65,355 32,655 59,287 83,411
Shipped from Manila only.
Coffee
tons 309 194 89 136 34 13 30 7 4 1,560
Cigars
thousands 137,877 164,430 183,667 156,916 No quantities officially stated. 85,142
Tobacco-Leaf
tons 9,545 10,368 10,986 15,836 6,272 9,834 7,764 9,016 8,593 4,106
Buffalo-Hides
tons 398 467 397 728 -- -- -- -- -- 402
Indigo
tons 72 27 23 33 114 5 8 247 40 36
Gum Mastic
tons 189 275 172 223 No quantities officially stated.
Cordage
tons 170 198 194 239
M.O.P. Shell
tons 54 79 13 42
Total Export of Sugar from the Phillipine Islands During 18 Years
1885. 1886. 1887. 1888. 1889. 1890. 1891. 1892. 1893.
Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons.
Manila
Dry 47,542 62,594 62,167 63,890 -- 33,233 50,342 51,718 72,007
Wet 18,136 21,610 21,302 27,738 -- 14,838 22,954 16,278 34,996
Total 65,678 84,204 83,469 91,628 92,856 48,071 73,296 67,996 107,003
Cebú
Dry 23,676 15,190 12,765 13,094 -- 3,145 7,562 17,488 16,712
Wet 4,519 2,950 5,050 3,600 -- 310 1,200 900 250
Total 23,195 18,140 17,815 16,694 11,862 3,455 8,762 18,388 16,962
Yliolo
Dry 102,369 81,201 71,722 72,882 -- 87,966 82,515 160,050 135,191
Wet 7,240 2,255 6,125 4,115 -- 8,034 2,589 5,357 2,525
Total 109,609 83,456 77,847 76,997 114,207 96,000 85,104 165,407 137,716
Grand Total 203,482 185,800 179,131 185,319 213,925 147,526 167,162 251,791 261,631
Total Export of Sugar from the Phillipine Islands During 18
Years--continued
1894. 1895. 1896. 1897. 1898. 1899. 1900. 1902. 1903.
Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons.
Under American Occupation
Manila
Dry 65,189 81,502 77,676 46,345
Wet 18,136 21,610 21,302 27,738 5,041 27,473 5,567 421 868
Total 94,656 107,221 97,703 57,382 5,041 27,473 5,567 421 868
Cebú
Dry 10,198 13,085 7,484 15,137
Wet -- 250 217 120 12,363 3,751 8,283 4,595 6,202
Total 10,198 13,335 7,701 15,257 12,363 3,751 8,283 4,595 6,202
Yliolo
Dry -- -- 123,720 129,174
Wet -- -- 928 1,368 71,982 36,312 45,070 97,129 81,308
Total 88,533 110,527 124,648 130,542 71,982 36,312 45,070 97,129 81,308
Grand Total 193,387 231,083 230,054 203,181 89,386 67,536 58,920 102,145 88,378
_N.B._--The total export of sugar in the year 1861 was 53,114 tons.
Trade Statistics
Tobacco and Cigar Shipments Before American Occupation
Year. Cigars. Leaf. Year. Cigars. Leaf.
Thousands. Tons. Thousands. Tons.
Under
Monopoly 1880 82,783 8,657 1889 121,674 10,161
1881 89,502 7,027 1890 109,636 8,952
1882 103,597 6,195 1891 97,740 9,803
1883 190,079 7,267 1892 137,059 12,714
1884 125,091 7,181 1893 137,458 11,534
1885 114,821 6,799 1894 137,877 9,545
1886 102,717 6,039 1895 164,430 10,368
1887 99,562 4,841 1896 183,667 10,986
1888 109,109 10,229 1897 156,916 15,836
Tobacco-leaf Shipments Since American Occupation
1899. 1900. 1901. 1902. 1903.
Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons. Tons.
6,272 9,834 7,764 9,016 8,593
Cigar Shipments Since American Occupation
The official returns do not state the quantities shipped
United States.
British Empire. [299]
Other Countries.
Total
Year. Value. Value. Value. Value.
Gold $. Gold $. Gold $. Gold $.
1899 3,405 430,013 512,281 945,699
1900 5,662 937,872 214,883 1,158,417
1901 908 1,604,470 227,071 1,832,449
1902 11,006 813,083 164,429 988,518
1903 1,900 757,783 201,672 961,355
Coprah Shipments
Year. Manila. Cebú. Total.
Tons. Tons. Tons.
1890 4,653 -- 4,653
1891 -- -- 17,875
1892 -- -- 22,439
1893 11,519 -- 11,519
1894 32,045 1,220 33,265
1895 34,332 2,772 37,104
1896 34,895 3,075 37,970
1897 47,814 2,900 50,714
1899 13,356 2,378 15,906
1900 62,469 2,886 65,355
1901 30,347 2,308 32,655
1902 41,816 17,471 59,287
1903 69,189 14,222 83,411
Coprah Shipment Values
United States.
British Empire.
Other Countries.
Year. Total Value
Gold $. Gold $. Gold $. Gold $.
1899 -- 72,095 654,558 726,653
1900 4,450 246,243 2,931,788 3,182,481
1901 -- 91,793 1,520,045 1,611,838
1902 9,057 531,421 2,161,247 2,701,725
1903 9,354 311,606 3,498,833 3,819,793
Cocoanut-oil Shipment Values
1893 1894 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903
Value Value Value Value Value Value Value
Gold $. Gold $. Gold $. Gold $. Gold $. Gold $. Gold $.
10,336 33,333 None 105 20 346 81
It will be observed that with the increase of coprah shipment,
the export of cocoanut-oil has decreased.
_Sapan-wood Shipments Before American Occupation_
Year. Tons.
1880 5,527
1881 4,253
1882 5,003
1883 2,924
1884 2,868
1885 4,011
1886 4,828
1887 5,222
1888 6,603
1889 4,592
1890 2,800
1891 4,197
1892 3,841
1893 4,918
1894 2,925
1895 2,313
1896 3,551
1897 4,187
The official returns, since 1898, do not state the _quantities_
of sapan-wood shipments.
Gum-mastic Shipments
Year. Tons.
1880 431
1881 440
1882 339
1883 235
1884 245
1885 195
1886 205
1887 404
1888 330
1889 490
1890 188
1891 303
1892 136
1894 189
1895 275
1896 172
1897 223
The official figures of _quantity_ are not procurable since 1897. The
_values_ of the shipments are as follows:--In 1901, $154,801; in 1902,
$189,193; in 1903, $143,093.
Coffee Shipments
Year. Tons.
1856 437
1858 1,560
1865 2,350
1871 3,335
1880 5,059
1881 5,383
1882 5,052
1883 7,451
1884 7,252
1885 5,209
1886 7,337
1887 4,998
1888 6,702
1889 5,841
1890 4,796
1891 2,869
1892 1,326
1893 307
1894 309
1895 194
1896 89
1897 136
1899 34
1900 13
1901 30
1902 7
1903 4
Gold and Silver Imports and Exports Since American Occupation
Year Imports Exports
Gold. Silver. Gold. Silver.
Gold $. Gold $. Gold $. Gold $.
1899 109,965 1,141,392 3,487,050 939,756
1900 71,058 2,830,263 593,143 3,147,946
1901 751,909 6,269,613 857,563 637,844
1902 3,110 4,226,924 314,295 4,173,776
1903 50,730 1,403,475 63,540 7,494,347
Tonnage Entered in Philippine Ports Since American Occupation
Year. Steamers. Net Tonnage. Sailing-ships Net Tonnage.
1899 1,562 767,605 313 58,980
1900 2,969 1,278,740 3,252 147,153
1901 3,649 1,630,176 6,333 208,092
1902 3,744 1,819,547 7,222 242,669
1903 4,679 2,343,904 6,111 251,116
Exchange Fluctuations (Of the Peso or Mexican Dollar).
Sight on London.
Year. Highest. Lowest.
1869 4/5-1/4 4/1-3/4
1879 3/11 3/9
1880 3/11-3/4 3/9-3/4
1881 4/1-1/2 3/11
1882 4/1 3/11-1/2
1883 4/0-1/4 3/9-1/2
1884 3/9-1/4 3/7-3/4
1885 3/10-1/4 3/8-1/2
1886 3/9-3/4 3/7-1/2
1887 3/8-1/2 3/3
1888 3/6-3/4 3/2-3/4
1889 3/6-1/4 3/3
1890 3/10-1/2 3/2-1/4
1892 3/3-3/4 3/-
1897 2/2 1/2-3/4
1898 2/0-5/8 1/9-1/2
1899 2/05/16 1/11-3/8
1900 2/0-7/8 1/11-7/8
1901 2/0-1/2 1/10-5/16
1902 1/10-13/16 1/6-1/4
1903 1/11-5/16 1/6-11/16
1904
Local Currency 1/11-9/16 1/9-11/16
"Conant" Peso 2/0-13/16 2/0-3/16
Proportionate Table of Exports (Exclusive of Gold and Silver)
Years 1899-1903
Year 1899
United States ==================
British Empire ===================
Spain ======
Other Countries ==========================
Year 1900
United States ====================
British Empire =======================================
Spain ========
Other Countries =======================================
Year 1901
United States ======================
British Empire ====================================================
Spain =======
Other Countries ===============================
Year 1902
United States ===================================================
British Empire =======================================
Spain =====
Other Countries ==================================
Year 1903
United States =========================================================
British Empire =============================================
Spain ======
Other Countries =====================================
Proportionate Table of Imports (Exclusive of Gold, Silver, and
U.S. Govt. Supplies) Years 1899-1903
Year 1899
United States =======
British Empire ==================
Spain ============
Other Countries ==================================================
Year 1900
United States ===========
British Empire ==================================
Spain ==========
Other Countries ============================================================
Year 1901
United States =================
British Empire ========================================
Spain =========
Other Countries ====================================================================
Year 1902
United States ===================
British Empire ================================
Spain ==============
Other Countries ====================================================================
Year 1903
United States =================
British Empire ================================
Spain ==========
Other Countries ====================================================================
Proportionate Table of Hemp, Coprah, and Sugar Exports, and Rice
Imports in the Years 1899-1903
Hemp.
1899 ===================
1900 ======================
1901 ===============================
1902 ===========================
1903 ===================================
Coprah.
1899 =========
1900 ========================================
1901 ====================
1902 ==================================
1903 ==============================================
Sugar.
1899 ==========================================
1900 ================================
1901 ============================
1902 ===================================================
1903 ===========================================
Rice (Import).
1899 ===================
1900 ======================
1901 ==========================
1902 ===========================================
1903 ====================================================
Chronological Table of Leading Events
1494 Treaty of Tordesillas (June 7).
1519 Maghallanes' expedition sailed, resulting in discovery of
the Philippines.
1521 Death of Hernando Maghallanes (April 27).
1522 Elcano completed his voyage round the world (Sept. 6).
1542 The Villalobos expedition sailed from Mexico (Nov. 1).
1545-63 Council of Trent (Dec, 1545, to Dec, 1563). Decrees published
in 1564.
1564 The Legaspi expedition sailed from Mexico (Nov. 21).
1565 Miguel de Legaspi landed in Cebú.
---- Austin friars' first arrival.
---- The image of "The Holy Child" was found on Cebú shore.
---- Cebú became the capital of the Philippines.
1571 Manila became the capital of the Philippines.
1572 Death of Miguel de Legaspi (Aug. 20).
1574 Li-ma-hong, the Chinese corsair, attacked Manila (Nov.).
1576 Death of Juan Salcedo, Legaspi's grandson (March 11).
1577 Franciscan friars' first arrival.
1578 Parish church at Manila was raised to the dignity of a
cathedral.
1580 The _Alcayceria_ (for Chinese) was established in Binondo
(Manila).
1581 Dominican friars' first arrival.
---- Domingo Salazár, first Bishop of Manila, took possession.
1587 Alonso Sanchez's mission to King Philip II. Consequent
reforms.
1590 The walls of Manila City were built about this year.
1593 Japanese Emperor demanded the surrender of the Islands.
---- First mission of friars from Manila to Japan.
1596 First expedition went to subdue the Mindanao natives.
1598 Ignacio de Santibañez, first Archbishop of Manila, took
possession.
1603 Chinese mandarins came to see the "Mount of Gold" in Cavite.
---- Massacre of Chinese; about 24,000 slain or captured.
1604 Los Baños hospital, church, and convent were established.
1606 Recoleto friars' first arrival.
1613 The Spanish victory (over the Dutch) of Playa Honda.
1616 Earliest recorded eruption of the Mayon Volcano.
1622 Rebellion in Bojol Island led by Dagóhoy.
1626 The image of "The Virgin of Antipolo" was first brought
to Manila.
---- A Spanish colony was founded in Formosa Island.
1638 Corcuera's expedition against the Moros landed in Sulu Island.
1640 Foundation of the sultanate of Mindanao.
---- Separation of Spain and Portugal.
1640 Spain made an unsuccessful attempt to capture Macao.
1641 Earliest recorded eruption of the Taal Volcano.
1642 Attempts to proselytize Japan ceased.
1645 Saint Thomas' College was raised to the status of a
university.
1649 Rebellion of "King" Málong and "Count" Gumapos.
1660 Massacre of Chinese.
1662 Koxinga, a Chinese adventurer, threatened invasion.
---- Great Massacre of Chinese in Manila.
1669 The "Letter of Anathema" was publicly read for the first time.
1684 Spanish Prime Minister Valenzuela was banished to Cavite.
1700 First admission of natives into the Religious Orders.
1718 The "Letter of Anathema" was publicly read for the last time.
1719 Friars in open riot incited the populace to rebellion.
1751 Sultan Muhamad Alimudin was imprisoned in Manila.
1754 Taal Volcano eruption destroyed Taal, Tanañan, Sala,
Lipa, etc.
---- First regular military organization.
---- Treaty with Sultan Muhamad Alimudin (March 3).
1755 Banishment of 2,070 Chinese from Manila.
1762-63 British occupation of Manila.
1762 Rebellion in Ilocos Province led by Diego de Silan.
1763 Sultan Muhamad Alimudin was restored to his throne by the
British.
1768 Expulsion of the Jesuits ordered (R. Decree, 1768; Papal
Brief, 1769).
1770 Expulsion of the Jesuits was effectuated.
---- Simon de Anda y Salazár became Gov.-General by appointment.
1776 Death of Simon de Anda y Salazár (Oct. 30).
1781 Government Tobacco Monopoly was established.
1785 The _Real Compañia de Filipinas_ was founded (March 10).
1810 Philippine deputies were first admitted to the Spanish
Parliament.
1811 The last State galleon left Manila for Mexico.
1815 The last State galleon left Acapulco (Mexico) for Manila.
1819 Secession of Mexico from the Spanish Crown.
1820 Massacre of foreigners in Manila and Cavite (Oct. 9).
1822 First Manila news-sheet (_El Filántropo_) was published.
1823 Rebellion of Andrés Novales (June).
1830 The first Philippine bank was opened about this year.
1831 Zamboanga port was opened to foreign trade.
1834 Manila port was unrestrictedly opened to foreign trade.
1835 Rebellion in Cavite led by Feliciano Páran.
1837 Philippine deputies were excluded from the Spanish Parliament.
1841 Apolinario de la Cruz declared himself "King of the Tagálogs."
1843 Chinese shops were first allowed to trade on equal terms.
1844 Claveria's expedition against the Moros.
---- Foreigners were excluded from the interior of the Islands.
---- The office of Trading-Governor was abolished.
1851 Urbiztondo's expedition against the Moros.
1852 Manila City thenceforth remained open day and night.
---- The _Banco Español-Filipino_ was instituted.
1854 Rebellion of Cuesta.
1855 Yloilo port was opened to foreign trade.
1857 The Manila mint was established.
1859 Return of the Jesuits to the Philippines.
1801 Dr. José Rizal, the Philippine patriot, was born (June 19).
1863 Manila City and Cathedral damaged by earthquake; 2,000
victims.
---- Cebú port was opened to foreign trade.
1868-70 The Assembly of Reformists in Manila.
1869 General Emilio Aguinaldo was born (March 22).
1870 Rebellion in Cavite led by Camerino.
1872 The Cavite Conspiracy (Jan.).
1875 Failure of Russell & Sturgis.
1876 Malcampo's expedition against the Moros. Joló annexed.
1877 England and Germany recognized Spain's rights in Sulu.
1880 The last destructive earthquake affecting Manila.
---- The Hong-Kong-Manila submarine cable was laid (_via_ Bolinao).
1883 Tobacco free planting was thenceforth permitted (Jan. 1).
---- Tobacco free export was thenceforth permitted (July 1).
1884 The "Carriedo" endowment water-supply for Manila was
established.
---- Tribute and Poll Tax were abolished and _Cédula personal_
introduced.
1886 Petition to the Crown asking for the expulsion of the Chinese.
---- The office of Judge-Governor was abolished.
---- Investiture in Manila of Sultan Harun Narrasid (Sept. 24).
---- Capuchin friars' first arrival.
1887 Terrero's expedition against the Moro Datto Utto.
---- Colonel Juan Arolas' victory in Sulu Island. Capture of Maybun
(April 16).
---- Philippine Exhibition was held in Madrid.
1890 Municipalities in the christian provinces were created.
1891 The first Philippine railway was opened to traffic.
1895 The Marahui campaign against the Moros of Mindanao Island.
---- Benedictine friars' first arrival.
1896 The Tagálog Rebellion opened (August 20).
---- First battle of the Rebellion (San Juan del Monte, Aug. 30).
---- Gov.-General Ramon Blanco was recalled to Spain (Dec).
---- Gov.-General Polavieja arrived in Manila (Dec).
---- Dr. José Rizal, the Philippine patriot, was executed
(Dec. 30).
1897 Gov.-General Polavieja left Manila for Spain (April 15).
---- Gov.-General Primo de Rivera returned to Manila (April).
---- First issue of the first Philippine Loan (July 15).
---- Treaty of Biac-na-bató is alleged to have been signed
(Dec. 14).
---- General Emilio Aguinaldo went into exile under treaty
(Dec. 27).
---- Tremendous tidal wave on Leyte Island. Life and property
destroyed.
1898 Tragedy of the _Calle de Camba_, Manila (March 23).
---- Rebel rising in Cebú Island (April 3).
---- Gov.-General Primo de Rivera left Manila for Spain (April).
---- Gov.-General Basilio Augusti arrived in Manila (April).
---- The Spanish-American War began (April 23).
---- Battle of Cavite. The Spanish fleet destroyed (May 1).
---- General Emilio Aguinaldo returned from exile to Cavite
(May 19).
---- General Emilio Aguinaldo assumed the Dictature (May 24).
---- Constitution of the Revolutionary Government promulgated
(June 23).
---- Revolutionists' appeal to the Powers for recognition (Aug. 6).
---- Spanish-American Protocol of Peace signed in Washington
(Aug. 12).
---- American occupation of Manila (Aug. 13).
---- Capitulation of Manila to the Americans (Aug. 14).
---- Malolos (Bulacan) became the Revolutionary capital (Sept. 15).
---- American and Spanish peace commissioners met in Paris
(Oct. 1).
1898 Capitulation of the Spaniards in Negros island to the rebels
(Nov. 6).
---- Treaty of Peace between America and Spain (Paris, Dec. 10).
---- Evacuation of Panay Island by the Spaniards (Dec. 24).
---- Evacuation of Cebú Island by the Spaniards (Dec. 26).
1899 Evacuation of Cottabato by the Spaniards (Jan).
---- Constitution of the Philippine Republic was promulgated
(Jan. 22).
---- The War of Independence began (Feb. 4).
---- Bombardment of Yloilo (Feb. 11).
---- American occupation of Cebú City (Feb. 22).
---- American occupation of Bojol Island (March).
---- Malolos, the revolutionary capital, was captured (March 31).
---- The Schurman Commission appointed (Jan. 20); in Manila
(May 2).
---- Evacuation of Zamboanga by the Spaniards (May 23).
---- Violent death of General Antonio Luna (June 3).
---- The Ladrone, Caroline, and Pelew Is. (minus Guam) sold to
Germany (June).
---- The Aglipayan schism began.
---- The Bates agreement with the Sultan of Sulu (Aug.).
---- American occupation of Zamboanga (Nov. 16).
---- Death of General Lawton (Dec).
1900 Monsignor P. L. Chapelle, papal delegate, arrived in Manila
(Jan. 2).
---- The Taft Commission appointed (Mar. 16); in Manila (June 3).
---- The Philippine Commission became the legislative body
(Sept. 1).
1901 General surrender of the Panay insurgent army (Feb. 2).
---- Capture of General Emilio Aguinaldo (Mar. 23).
---- General Emilio Aguinaldo swore allegiance to America
(April 1).
---- The Philippine Commission assumed full (civil) executive power
(July 4).
---- General surrender of Cebuáno chiefs (Oct.).
---- General surrender of Bojoláno chiefs (Dec).
1902 Capture of V. Lucban, the last recognized insurgent chief
(April 27).
---- Mr. W. H. Taft in Rome to negotiate purchase of friars'
lands (June).
---- Civil rule throughout the Islands decreed (Congress Act,
July 1).
---- War of Independence ended (actually, April 27; officially,
July 4).
---- President Roosevelt's peace proclamation and amnesty grant
(July 4).
---- Military rule (remainder of) declared ended (War Office Order,
July 4).
---- Monsignor G. B. Guidi, papal delegate, arrived in Manila
(Nov. 18).
1903 Apolinario Mabini died in Manila (May 13).
---- "The Democratic Labour Union" prosecution (May).
---- Moro Province constituted (Phil. Com. Act No. 787, June 1).
---- Archbishop Nozaleda relinquished the archbishopric of Manila
(June).
---- The Philippine peso ("Conant") issued to the public (July).
---- Moro Province Legislative Council organized (Sept. 2).
1904 Monsignor J. J. Harty, Archbishop of Manila, arrived (Jan.).
---- Mr. W. H. Taft, appointed Secretary of War, left Manila
(Jan.).
---- Mr. Luke E. Wright succeeded Mr. Taft as Civil Governor
(Jan.).
---- Greatest inundation of Manila suburbs within living memory
(July 11).
---- The "Internal Revenue Law of 1904" in operation (Aug. 1).
1905 Monsignor Ambrogio Agius, papal delegate, arrived in Manila
(Feb. 6).
---- The Philippine Assembly to be convened in 1907 proclaimed
(March 28).
---- _El Renacimiento_ prosecution for alleged libel (July).
------
1906 English became the official language (Jan. 1; Phil. Com. Act
No. 1123).
Index
Acle (wood), 313
Acuña, Gov.-General Bravo de, 74
Adasaolan, the Moro chief, 129
Aetas tribe, the, 37, 120, 145, 163
Agaña (Guam Is.), 41
Agius, Monsignor Ambrogio, papal legate, 607
Aglípay, Gregorio, career of, 603; heads the Independent Church, 604;
throws off allegiance to Rome, 605
Agno River, 14
Agoncillo, Felipe, 472, 485, 495
Agriculture, 269; proposed Bank of, 624; the Bureau of, 625
Aguinaldo, Emilio, 370; claims independence, 394; goes into exile, 399;
goes to Singapore, 419; returns to Hong-Kong, 421; becomes Dictator,
436; becomes President of The Revolutionary Government, 469; triumphal
entry into Malolos of, 470; capture of, 507; swears allegiance
to America, 509; home of, 510; as witness in _El Renacimiento_
prosecution, 550. _Vide_ War of Independence
Agusan River, 14
Albinos, 128
_Alcayceria, _the, 110
Alcocér, Father Martin Garcia, 597, 602
_Alférez Real, _50
Alva, Francisco, 31
Alcalde-Governors, 212
_Alcalde Mayor, _213
_Alguacil_, 226
Ali, Datto, 529, 580-2
Allocution of the Archbishop of Madrid, 423
Alvarez, Vicente, the _Tamagun Datto_, 532
Ambutong, Datto, 585
_Amor seco_, 324
Anagap (wood), 313
Anathema, the Letter of, 82
Anda y Salazár, Simon de, usurps gov.-generalship, 91; offers rewards
for British heads, 95; rewards to, 99; character of, 99; becomes
Gov.-General, 99; death of, 100
Andrew, Saint, patron of Manila, 50, 560
Animals, 336 _et seq._
Anobing (wood), 313
Anson, Admiral, 246
_Anting-anting_, the, 237
Antipolo, Virgin of, 184
Antipolo (wood), 313
Antwerp, the Treaty of, 72
_Aparcero_ (labour) system, 274
Apiton (wood), 313
Araudia, Gov.-General Pedro de, 61, 80, 138
Araneta, General Pablo, 514, 517
Araneta, Juan, 520
Aranga (wood), 313
Archbishopric created, 56
Areca-nut, 303
Army, the (under Spain) 53, 77; pay of, 53, 230; statistics of,
229-30; the first barracks, 231; Halberdier Guard, 232; strength of,
at the outbreak of the Rebellion, 364; in 1898, 466; (under America)
strength of, during War of Independence, 553; arms captured by, 553;
strength of, in 1904, 569; general officers' pay, 569; privates' pay,
569; the three departments of, 569; scout corps; military prison, 570
Arolas, Colonel Juan, captures Maybun, 144; death of, 144 (footnote)
Artists, native, 196
_Asiento_ Contract, the, 257
Assembly of Reformists, the, 362
_Asuan_ (evil spirit), 181
Athenæum, the, 194
Augusti, General Basilio, succeeds Gen. Primo de Rivera, 413; issues
a call to arms, 424; issues a proclamation against Americans, 425;
quits Manila before the American occupation, 464
Austin friars, 55
Axa, 274
Ayala, Antonio de, 367 (footnote)
Azcárraga, General Marcelo, 105 (footnote)
Bacoor town, rebel headquarters, 499
Badiao destroyed, 16
Bagobos, the Moro tribe of, 145
_Bagsacay_ weapon, 147
_Baibailanes_, sect of the, 608
Balábac Island, 160; slaughter of Spaniards in, 478
Balambangan, slaughter of British at, 139
Balangiga, slaughter of Americans at, 536
Balanguigui Island, Corcuera's victory in, 139
Balate (trepang), 312
Baler garrison captives, 494
Balugas tribe, the, 163
Bamboos, 308
Banaba (wood), 313
Banana fruit, 317
Bancal (wood), 314
_Banco Español-Filipino_, the, 258; run on the, 435, 638
Bandits, notorious, 238-9, 546-9, 582, _Vide_ Brigands
Banks, foreign and Philippine, 258, 638; American, 637
Bansalague (wood), 314
Barangay chiefs, 189, 222-3, 225 (footnote)
Barasoain town, 469 (footnote), 567
Barbosa, Duarte de, 28
_Barong_ weapon, 147
Barracks, the first, 231
Basa, José M., 106; biographical note of, 108 (footnote)
Basan tribe, the, 128
Batac tribe, the, 158 (footnote;
Bates Agreement, the, 571
Batitínan (wood), 313
Bató Lake, 15
Bats, 340
Battle-- of Playa Honda, 75; of Saint Juan del Monte, 368; of
Binacayan, 373; of Cavite, 427; of Paco, 487; of Marilao, 490
Bautista, Ambrosio Rianzares, 106
Bautista, Fray Pedro, martyr-saint, 64
Bay Lake, 15
Bayabos, the Moro tribe of, 145
Bejuco (rattan), 310
Benguet Road, the, 615 (footnote)
Berenguer y Marquina, Gov-General, 80
Beri-beri disease, 197
Betel, 303
Betis (wood), 313
Biac-na-bató, the alleged Treaty of, 396, 414 (footnote)
Bicol River, 14, 37
_Bigaycaya_, the, 178
Bilibíd jail, 557
Binacayan, Battle of, 373
Birds, 341
Birds'-nests, edible, 311
Bishop of Manila, the first, 51, 56
Blanco, Gov.-General Ramon, 377
Blood Compact, the, 28, 369
Boar, 340
Boayan Lake, 15
_Bocayo_, 305
Bojo, 310
Bojol Island, rebellion in, 101; American occupation of, 528; Pedro
Sanson, the insurgent leader in, 528
_Boleta_ shipping-warrant, the, 244
Bombon Lake, 15
Bongso, Rajah, 130
Bonifacio, Andrés, 370
Borneo Island, Spanish relations with, 29, 165
Botanical specimens, 321
Braganza, Duke of, 81
Braganza, Major, execution of the rebel, 537
Brewery, the first Philippine, 264
Bridge of Spain, 349
Brigands-- the _tulisán_; the _pulaján_, 235, 547 _et seq._; haunts
of, 238; the _remontado_, 205; "Guards of Honour," 550. _Vide_ Bandits
British North Borneo Co., 141
British-- corsairs, 54; occupation of Manila by, 87
Bronchial affections, 197
Brunei, Sultanate of, 29, 141, 157, 165
Budgets, 227 _et seq._; of 1757, 251, 629
Buffaloes, 337; rinderpest epidemic, 338, 621; efforts of Government
to replace the stocks of, 622
Buffalo hides, shipments of, 640
Buhi Lake, 15
Bull-ring, 350
Buluan Lake, 15
Bureaux of the Insular Government, 561
Burgos, Dr. Jose, 106; executed, 107
Buri palm, 308
Bush-rope, 310
Bustamente Bustillo, Gov.-General, murder of, 60
Bustos, 92-4
Butler, John B., 257
Butterflies, 340
Butuan River, 14
Buyo, 303
_Cabeza de barangay, _189, 222-3
Cable service, 267-8
Cacao, 301; cultivation of, 302
Cachil Corralat, King, 133
Cachila or Castila, 169, 515 (footnote)
Cagayán, river of, 14; lake of, 15
Cagaaua destroyed, 16
Cagsaysay, Our Lady of, 18, 19, 184
"_Cahapon, ngayon at Bucas_," the seditious play of, 554
_Caida_, 353
_Caidas_, 224
Cailles, General Juan, 507; as provincial governor, 507
_Caja de comunidad_, 217
Calderon, Rita, 139
Calinga tribe, the, 125
_Calle de Camba_ tragedy, the, 401
Camagón (wood), 314
Camaguin Volcano, 16
Camerino, the rebel, 106, 397 (footnote)
Camote, 303
_Campilán_ weapon, 147
Campo de Bagumbayan, 369
Canga-Argüelles, Felipe, 143, 158, 161
Canlaúan Volcano, 16
Cánovas Ministry, 378, 384, 417
Capers, 321
_Capitán municipal_, 225
Capsicums, 321
Captives, the Spanish, 537; why detained, 539; Baron Du Marais
murdered, 540; the captors' terms of release, 541
Capture of Manila-- attempted by Li-ma-hong, 47; threatened by Japanese
Emperor, 64; threatened by the Dutch, 75; threatened by Koxinga, 76;
by the British, 87; by the Americans, 464
Caraballo, Juan, 29
_Carabaos_ (buffaloes), 337
Caroline Islands, the discovery of, 41, 43; seized by Germany, 44;
governor of, murdered, 45; sold to Germany, 46
Carrillo Theatre, the, 349
_Carromata_, 559 (footnote)
Carrying-trade, the inter-island, 262; regulated by the Shipping Law
of 1904, 628-9, 647
Cartagena, Juan de, 26
_Casa Misericordia_ loan office, 247
Cassava, 321
Castila or Cachila, 169, 515 (footnote)
Castor-oil, 302
_Catapúsan_, the, 179 (footnote)
Cathedral of Manila, the, 55
_Catipad_, 177
Cauit, 371 (footnote)
Cavite the conspiracy of 1872, 106, 363; fort of, 233-4; executions
in 1896, 374
_Cayinin_, the, 555
Cebú, discovery of, 27; Legaspi in, 34; the "Holy Child" of, 183;
the patron saint of, 183; the port of, 261; rising in, 402 _et seq_.;
executions of rebels in, 405; native government in the Island of, 521;
American occupation of the City of, 523; General Hughes' expedition
to, 525; the City of, 526
Cedar (wood), 314
_Cédula personal_, the, 224
Census, the, 355, 615-6
_Centro Catálico, El_, 602
Chabucano dialect, the, 535
Chaffee, Maj.-General A. R., 563
Chambers of Commerce, 261
Chamorro dialect, the, 40
Champaca, 325
_Chapdiki_, 351 (footnote)
Chapelle, Monsignor P. L., papal legate, 595 and footnote
Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, the, 258, 435, 637
Chillies, 321
Chinese, the, 54, 109; slaughter of the Moluccas expedition leader
by, 73; revolt of, 77; banishment of, 111; restrictions on, 111; as
immigrants, 112; taxes first levied on, 112; social position of, under
Spanish rule, 113; riots of, 114; mandarins come to seek the "Mount of
Gold" in Cavite, 114; Saint Francis' victory over, 115; massacre by,
115; massacre of, 77, 93, 115; as traders, 117, 263; Guilds of, 117;
patron saint of, 118; population of, 118; _Macao_, 118; _Sangley_,
118; _Suya_, 118; secret societies, 119; Exclusion Act, 119, 633;
before the Spanish advent, 166; Club, 558; social position of, under
American rule, 634; future probable effect of the exclusion of, 635
Chocolate, 301
Cholera epidemic, 116, 197
Church-- relations of, to the State, 50; Dominican friars, 51
(footnote); first bishop of Manila, 51, 56; tithes to, 55; Austin
friars, 55; Mendicant friars, 55; friars' term of residence, 55; Manila
Cathedral, 55; the Inquisition, 55, 59, 82; archbishopric created, 56;
indulgences granted, 56; relics in cathedral, 57; excommunications, 58,
67, 604; archbishop banished, 58; quarrels with the State authorities,
57-8, 99, 209-10; Chap. vii; the martyrs of Japan, 66-9; the High
Host is stolen, 82; Letter of Anathema, 82; the Hierarchy, 206;
revenue and expenditure of the, 207, 209; position of the regular
clergy after 1898, 594; Archbishop Nozaleda, 594, 597; Father Martín
Garcia Alcocér, 597, 602; attitude of the native clergy towards the,
after 1898, 596; Monsignor P. L. Chapelle, 595; Monsignor G. B. Guidi,
601; Monsignor A. Agius, 607; the friars'-7lands question, 597-601;
the Aglipayan Schism, 604. _Vide_ Friars; Religious Orders
Church, the Philippine Independent. _Vide_ Independent
Cigars, 299; shipments of, 644
Cinnamon, 311
Civil--governor, duties of the Spanish, 215; his position, 216; guard
(constabulary), the, 231; the title of Civil Governor, 561; Service,
the, 565; Commission, the, 560, 565; rule established, 566
Claudio, Juan, 81
Claveria, expedition against the Moros by, 139
Clergy, the native, capacity of, 607. _Vide_ Church; Friars
Clímaco, Arsenio, 522, 525
Clímaco, General Juan, 522
Climate, 22; of the south, 157
Clubs, 558
Coal, 326, comparative analyses, 328
Cock-fighting, 351
Cocoanuts, 304
Cocoanut-oil, 305; export values of, 645
Coffee, 289; _caracolillo_, 289; where grown, 289; dealing, 290;
cultivation, 291; statistics, 291; shipments of, 646
Cogon-grass, 307
Coir, 305
_Colerin_ disease, 197
_Coloram_, sect of the, 608
Comenge, Rafael, inflammatory speech of, 400
_Compañia General de Tabacos_, 299
_Compañia Guipuzcoana de Caracas_, 252
_Conant_ peso, the, 635-7
Concentration circuits, 391, 549
Congressional Relief Fund, the, 621, 623
_Consulado_ trading-ring, the, 244
Constabulary statistics (Spanish), 231; (American), 550, 553, 567
Contentions, State and Church, 58
Convent of Santa Clara, 81
Convicts, corps of, 231; in Bilibid jail, 557
Cooper Bill, the, 627, 629
Copper, 334
Coprah, 305; shipments of, 645
Corcuera, Gov.-General Hurtado de, 58, 79, 81; in Sulu, 131
Cordage, shipments of, 640
Cornish, Admiral, 87
Corregidor Island, 345 (footnote), 556
Corsairs, British, 54
_Cotta de San Pedro_ (Cebú), 402
Cottabato, meaning of, 142 (footnote); Spanish evacuation of, 529;
native rule in, 529; slaughter of Christians in, 530; American
intervention at, 530
Cotton-tree, 307
Council of Trent, the, 605 (footnote)
Count--of Albay, 105; of La Union, 124; of Manila, 139; of Lizárraga,
210
Courts of Justice, cost of the Spanish, 234; American, 618
Criminal law procedure, Spanish-Philippine, 241
Cruz, Apolinario de la, "King of the Tagálogs," 105
_Cuadrillero_ guard, the, 224
Cuba, America liberates, 417
_Cubang-aso_, 166 (footnote)
_Cueva del Inglés_, the, 21
Cuevas, Datto Pedro, career of, 582; his death, 583; his justice, 586
Currency, the, under Spain, 244, 259; under America, 635-7
Custom-houses, 261, 467, 626
Customs duty, the first levied, 53; under America, 629-30
"_Dabas ng pilac_," the seditious play of, 554
Dagóhoy's rebellion, 101
Dalahican camp, 374
Danao River, 15
Dancing, the _balítao_, the _comítan_, 180
Dasmariñas, Gov.-General Perez, 56, 78
_Datto_. _Vide_ Moros
Dayfusama, Emperor of Japan, 69
Death-rate, 198
Deer, 340
Delgado, General Martin, 513-14, 517-18
Demarcation of Spanish and Portuguese spheres by papal bull, 25
Democratic Labour Union, the, 632
Departments of the Insular Government, 561
Descent of Filipinos, theory of the, 120
Despujols, Gov.-General, 383
Dewey, Admiral George, 419, 427, 430, 432
_Diario de Manila, El_, founded 352, suspended, 401
Diaz, Julio, 520
_Diezmos prediales_, 55
Dilao village, 63
_Dimas alang_, 389
Dimasangcay, King of Mindanao, 129
Dinagat Island, 27
Dinglas (wood), 314
Diócno, Ananias, 513, 516
_Directorcillo_, 222
Disciplinary (convict) corps, 231
Discovery of the Philippines, 24 _et seq_.
Diseases, the prevalent, 197
Dità (quinine), 308
Divisions of the Colony under Spain, 213
Djimbangan, Datto, 530, 580
Dollars, Mexican, first introduced, 244
Doll-saints, 188
Dominican friars, 51 (footnote)
Donkeys, 388
Dowries for native women, 53
Draper, Brig.-General, 87-91
Duarte de Barbosa, 28
Du Marais, Baron, 540 (footnote)
Dúngon (wood), 314
Dutch, naval battles with the, 72 _et seq._
Dwelling-houses, 353
Dye saps, 312
Earthquakes, 23, 356
Ebony (wood), 314
_Eco de Filipinas,_ the seditious organ, 106
Education, under Spain, school-teachers, 192; State aid for, 193;
the Athenæum syllabus, 194; the Santa Isabel College curriculum, 194;
girls' schools, 194; St. Thomas' University, 194; the Nautical School,
195; the provincial student, 195; in agriculture, 228; under America,
608; the Normal School syllabus, 609; the Nautical School, 609; the
School for Chinese, 610; University and remaining Spanish schools,
610; the English language for Orientals, 611; in agriculture, 625
Egbert, Colonel, death of, 489
Elcano, Juan Sebastian, 29; voyage round the world of, 30; reward to,
31; death of, 31
"_El Filibusterismo_," 383
_El Nuevo Dia_ newspaper, 524
Emoluments of Spanish officials, 214; of American officials, 561
_Encomiendas_, 211
Espinosa, Gonzalo Gomez de, 29, 31
Exchange fluctuations, 647
Exclusion, of foreigners in general, 258; of Chinese in particular,
111, 119, 633-5
Excommunications, 58, 67, 604
Executions of monks in Japan, 66, 69
Exhortations and proclamations, rebel and insurgent, definition of
demands, 392; claim of independence, 394, 421, 433, 436, 454, 486, 502
Expenditure and revenue, under Spain, 227 _et seq._, 251; curious
items of, 229; under America, 629
Exports, duty first levied on, 53; table of values of, 639; of
produce, 639-46
Fajardo de Tua, Gov.-General, 70, 75; kills his wife, 80
_Fallas_ tax, 224
"Family Compact," the, 72, 87
Family names, 179
Farranda Kiemon, the Japanese Ambassador, 64-5
Federal party, the, 547
Felizardo, Cornelio, the famous bandit, 548 (footnote), 549
Field of Bagumbayan, 369
"_Filibusterismo, El_," 383
Filipino, the, meaning of the term, 120 (footnote), 165; theory of
the descent of, 163 _et seq._; meaning of the term "Tagálog," 164; at
the St. Louis Exhibition, 165; character of, 167; characteristics of,
168-71; notion of sleep of, 169; "Castila!" 169; hospitality of, 172,
563; good qualities of, 173-4, 176; female activity, 173; aversion to
discipline, 175; bravery of, 175; troops in Tonquin, 175; physiognomy
of, 177; marriages of, 177-9; minors' rights, 178; widows of, 178;
family names of, 179; mixed marriages of, 181; belief in evil spirits,
181; conception of religion of, 189, 607-8; penance, 188; talent of,
196; as artists, 196; as politicians, 547; the "Irreconcilables,"
547, 553, 613; capacity for self-government of, 614
Firewoods, 324
Fish, 339
Flowers, 321
Flores, Luis, 522-3
_Fondos locales_, 217. _Vide_ Government.
Forests, inspection of, 228; produce of, 307 _et seq._
Formosa Island, Spanish colony in, 76
Fort of Ylígan, 77, 231; of Zamboanga, 77, 133 (footnote), 233; of
Sampanilla (Mindanao Is.), 131; of Joló, 150; of Labo and Taytay
(Palaúan Is.), 231; of Cavite, 233-4; of Cebú, 402; of Santiago
(Manila), 427, 430; of San Antonio Abad (Malate), 463
Fortification of Manila, 54, 231, 343 (footnote)
Fowls, 341
"Frailuno," the term, 603 (footnote)
Francis of Tears, Saint, 183
Free trade penalties, Spanish, 250
Freemasonry, 363, 365 (footnote)
Friars, the Spanish, the Mendicant Order of, 55; term of residence
of, 55; in open riot, 61; attitude of, during the British occupation
(1762-3), 91-3, 96; fighting, 116, 133; as parish priests, 202; the
several Orders of, 207; as traders, 250; position of, after 1898,
594; causes of the anti-friar feeling, 595; attitude of the native
clergy towards, 596; number of, at the time of the rebellion (1896),
596; position of, after 1898, determined, 597; the question of the
real estate of, 597, _et seq._; America's negotiations with Rome,
598-600; acreage of real estate of, 601; the term "frailuno," 603
(footnote). _Vide_ Church; Religious Orders
Fruits, 317 et seq.
_Fuerza del Pilar_, 133 (footnote)
_Funcion votiva de San Andrés_, 50
Funston, Colonel, 491, 496; captures Aguinaldo, 507; reward to, 509
Fuset, Antonio, 539
Gabi, 303
Gaddanes tribe, the, 122
Gales, Nicolas, 520
Galleons, to and from Mexico, 243; officers' pay, 243; royal dues, 249
_Gigantes, Paseo de los_, 134 (footnote)
Gilolo Island, 32
Ginger, 321
_Gobernadorcillo_, 221
Gogo, 302
Goiti, Martin de, 35, 37
Gold, mining, 328 et seq.; coin, 259; imports and exports of, after
1898, 647
Gomez, Father Mariano, executed, 107
González Parrado, General, 145, 150, 572
Government, under Spain, 211 _et seq._; cost of, 214, _et seq._, 629;
of towns, 221 _et seq._; under America, 560 _et seq._, 576; cost of,
629; provincial, 566-7, 578-9
Governor-General, the, Legaspi, Miguel de, 33-4, 36; Lavezares, Guido
de, 35 (footnote), 47; Zabálburu, Domingo, 42; powers of, 54; Perez
Dasmariñas, 56, 73; Corcuera, Hurtado de, 58, 79, 131; quarrels of,
with the clergy, 58; Lara, Manrique de, 59; Salcedo, Diego, 59; Leon,
Manuel de, 60; Nargas, Juan de, 60; Bustamente Bustillo murdered,
60; Torralba, José, 60, 79, 80; Arandia, Pedro de, 61, 80; Moriones,
Domingo, 62; Raon, José, 62, 99; Fajardo de Tua, 70, 75, 80; Bravo de
Acuña, 74; Silva, Juan de, 74; Silva, Fernando de, 76; Vargas, Juan,
79; peculations of, 79, 80, 212, 220-1; Berenguer y Marquina, 80; La
Torre, Francisco, 97; Obando, José de, 134; Jovellar, Joaquin, 211;
Despujols, 383; Primo de Rivera, Fernando, 124, 211, 389, 391, 399,
408; Blanco, Ramon, 377; Polavieja, Camilo, 378-9; Augusti, Basilio,
413, 424-5, 464; Weyler 417-8, 431
Grants of land, 54, 211, 592
Grapes, 320
Guadalupe church, legend of, 361
Guaranty Trust Company, 637
"Guards of Honour," the, 550
Guava fruit, 320
Guidi, Monsignor G. B., papal legate, 601
Guijo (wood), 314
Guillermo, Faustino, the bandit, 546
Gum mastic, 311; shipments of, 646
Gumapos, "Count," 103
Gutta-percha, 311
Gypsum, 334
_Hadji_, title of, 571 (footnote).
Halberdiers (Bodyguard), 232
Hale, General, 488, 490-1, 497-8
Hall, General, 488, 492
Hamabar, King, 28
Harbour-masters, Spanish, 234
Hardwoods, 312; relative strengths of, 317
Harun Narrasid, Sultan, 141, 142 (footnote)
Harty, Monsignor, J. J., 602
Headhunters, the, 124-5
Hemp, 281; various uses of, 282; extraction of, 282; experiments
in British India, 283; statistics of, 284; cultivation of, 285;
qualities of, 285; labour difficulties, 286; shipments of, 639
Hendryx, Captain, the sad fate of, 552
Heredia, Pedro de, 74
Hierarchy, the, 206
High Host stolen, the, 82
_Hindi aco patay_, the seditious play of, 554
Hindoos, the, 128
"Historical Manifest," the, 136
Histrionic art, 349
"Holy Child" of Cebú, the, 183
Homestead Law, the, 592 (footnote)
Hong-Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp., the 240, 258, 435, 637
Horses, 336
Hospitals, 54
Hughes, General, 489, 525, 528
Hurricanes, 355
Husi, 282
Ibanac tribe, the, 123
Identity document, the, 224
Igorrote tribe, the, 123
Igorrote-Chinese tribe, the, 126
Illiterates, 192, 615
Ilocos rebellion, 100
Imbog, the Moro, 129
Imports, table of values of, 639; proportionate table of Rice, 650
Imus, 372 (footnote)
Indemnity to British for Manila, 89
Independent Church, the Philippine, initiation of, 603; severance
from Rome of, 605; conflicts between Catholics and Schismatics of,
606; doctrine of, 607
Indigo, shipments of, 640-1
Indulgences granted, 56
Industries, native, 264, 347
Inquisition, the, 55, 59, 82
Insanity, 198
Insects, 339; edible, 342
Insular Government. _Vide_ Government
Intellectuals, 192
International Banking Corp., 637
Ipil (wood), 314
Iron, 332
Irreconcilables, the, 547, 553; demands of, 613
_Islas, del Poniente_, 28; _del Oriente_, 28; _Philipina_, 32; _de
los Pintados_, 34 (footnote)
Islands, the chief, 13; ancient names of, 13
Itavis tribe, the, 123
_Jábul_ dress, 147
Jalajala, 360
Japan--the Ambassador Farranda Kiemon, 64-5; Taycosama, Emperor of,
65; Catholic missions to, 64-70, 164 (footnote); the martyrs of,
66, 69, 71; Dayfusama, Emperor of, 69; Xogusama, Emperor of, 69;
To-Kogunsama, Emperor of, 70
Japanese, the, 63, 164; pre-Spanish immigration of, 166; industry of,
166; in Vigan, Malalos, Taal and Pagsanján, 166; expulsion of the,
164 (footnote); under American rule, 557
Jaramillo, General Nicolás, during the Rebellion, 374; in Zamboanga,
530; as agent for the liberation of Spanish prisoners, 540
Jaro, the See of, 515 (footnote)
Jesuits, rivalry with friars, 58; in Nagasaki, 65-7; expulsion of,
99, 206; number of, in the Islands in 1896, 206 (footnote)
_Jinrikisha_, the, 635
Joló, capture of, 139; annexation of, 140; town of, 149, 587; port of,
262; American occupation of, 571
Jomonjol Island, 27
Journalism, 106, 352, 363, 382, 412, 468, 524, 550
Jovellar, Gov.--General Joaquin, 211
Judicial statistics, Spanish, 234; American, 561, 618-19
Judicial Governors, 212
_Junta pátriotica_, the, 419
Jurado _v._ the Hong-Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp., 240
_Juramentado_, the, 146, 148, 150, 583; runs ámok, 152
Justice, of the peace, first appointed, 56; in municipalities, 225,
619; administration of, 618; provincial courts of, 619
Kalbi, Datto, 586
_Katipunan_ League, the, 364, 365 (footnote), 595; demands of the, 393
Kiemon Farranda, 64-5
"King of the Tagálogs," 105
Koxinga, threatened invasion by, 76
Kudarangan, Sultan of, 143; vanquished by General Wood, 581; cotta of,
580 (footnote), 581
Labo fort, 231
Labour, problem, 225, 286, 332-3, 611, 631; on sugar estates, 274;
"The Democratic Labour Union," 632; Consul-General Wildman quoted, 633
Lacandola, Rajah, 35-7, 51; descendants of, 35 (footnote)
Lachambre, General, 379
Lacson, Aniceto, 520
Ladrone Islands, discovery of, 27; sighted, 34; visited, 40
Laguna de Bay, 15
Lakes, 15
Lamurrec Island, King of, 42
Lanao Lake, 15
Land, grants of, 54; tenure of, 270; measure of, 271; the Homestead
Law, 592 (footnote); problem, 555, 592-3, 624-5
Lanete (wood), 314
_La Patria_ newspaper, 412
Lara, Gov.-General Manrique de, 59
Latitude of the Islands, 13
La Torre, Gov.-General, 97
Laúan (wood), 314
Lavezares, Guido de, 35 (footnote), 47
Law Spanish lawsuits, 56, 239; Spanish criminal law procedure, 241-2;
under American rule, 618-9
Lawton, General, 493, 498-500; death of, 504
Leeches, 340
Legaspi, the expedition of, 33; in Cebú, 34; death of, 36
Leon, Gov.-General Manuel de, 60
Lepers, 70, 197, 351
Letter of Anathema, 82
_Leyes de Indias_, 51
Leyte Is., rebellion in, 102; insurgency in, 547
Ligusan Lake, 15
Li-ma-hong, the Chinese corsair, 47
Limasaba, Prince of, 410
Lipa destroyed, 18
Lizares, Simon, 520
Llaneras, General, 374
Llorente, Julio, 521-2, 524
Loaisa expedition, the, 31
Loan, the first Philippine, 541 (footnote)
Local funds, 217
Locust bean, 324
Locusts, 341
Logarta, Miguel, 522, 525
Loney, Nicholas, 255
Longitude of the Islands, 13
Los Baños, 359
Losa, Diego de, 67
Löwenstein, Prince Ludwig von, 488, 510
Lucban, Vicente, 535; capture of, 545
Luga, Mateo, 525
Luna, General Antonio, 496-8; on the battlefield, 496; death of, 501
Luneta Esplanade, the, 353
Lung diseases, 197
Lúpis, 282
Lutao (Cebú) destroyed, 403
Mabini, Apolinario, 478, 486, 546
Mabolo fruit, 320
Macabebe, the, 446 (footnote)
_Macao_ (Chinese), 118
_Macacus radiata_, 177
Macao, the colony of, 81 (footnote); Spanish attempt to capture, 81
Macasin (wood), 316
Maceo, Antonio, 417
Macui, the Moro tribe of, 145
Madrecacao tree, 291
_Maestre del Campo_, 48 (footnote)
Magellan Straits discovered, 27
Maghallanes, Hernando de, 24; discovers the Straits of Magellan and
Ladrone Islands, 27; reaches Cebú Island, 27; death of, 28; monuments
to, 28
Maghayin, Bartolomé, 37
Magtan Island, 28, 403
Maguindanao Lake, 15
Maguinoó, the, 409, 411
Mahamad Alimudin, Sultan, 92, 98; vicissitudes of, 134-9
Mahometans, chap. x. _Vide_ Moros
Mail service, 262
_Maine_, American warship, 418 (footnote)
Maize, 300
Malábang fort, 131
Malahi military prison, 570
Malanao Moros, 145
Malatana tribe, the, 46
Malatapay (wood), 316
Malhou Island, 27
Malinao destroyed, 16
Malolos, Father Moïses Santos murdered at, 408; becomes the insurgent
capital, 469; Revolutionary congress convened at, 469; becomes the
new capital of Bulacan Province, 567
Malong's rebellion, "King," 103
Malvar, General Miguel, in Taal, 505; defeat and surrender of, 545
Mancono (wood), 316
Mandi, Rajahmudah Datto, in Cebú, 407; at home, 533; his daughter's
marriage, 534
Mangachapuy (wood), 316
Mango fruit, 317
Manguiancs tribe, the, 128
Manguiguin, the, 131; visits Zamboanga, 589
Mani, 303
Manila Province, 212 (footnote), 560
Manila, proclaimed capital, 36; City Council of, 36; the city walls and
fosse of, 54, 231, 343 (footnote); opened to foreigners, 256; public
buildings, 344; port works, 344; the Bay of, 345; the public lighting
of, 346; the business quarter of, 347; _La Escolta_, 347, 557; Easter
week in, 348; vehicle traffic in, 348; theatres, 349, 558; bull-ring,
350; hotels, 352, 558; the Press, 352, 468, 559; botanical gardens,
353; Luneta Esplanade, 353; dwelling-houses, 353; society in, 354;
population of, 355, 615-6; climate of, 354; earthquakes affecting,
356; dress in, 357; after 1898, 556; refrigerated meat-stores, 556;
innovations in, 557; Bilíbid jail, 557; clubs, theatres, hotels, 558;
drinking "Saloons," 559; new feast-days, 560; the municipality of,
560; as seat of Insular Government, 560; the Federal zone of, 560
Manobos, the Moro tribe of, 145
Marahui campaign, the, 144
Marble, 334
Marivéles, 345 (footnote)
Marriages, 177-81, 618
Marti, the Cuban patriot, 417
Martin, Gerónimo, 51
Martyrs, the, of Japan, 66-71; Philippine, 107
Massacre of Chinese, 93, 115-6; of other foreigners, 116
_Matamis na macapano_, 305
Matienza, Dr. Sancho, 26
Maxilom, General Arcadio, 524-6
Mayon Volcano, 16; eruption of in 1897, 17
McArthur, Maj.-General A., in the War of Independence, 489-91,
496-8; 563
Medicinal herbs, 324
Mejia, Pablo, 522; assassinated, 523
Melliza, Raymundo, 511, 514
Mendicant friars, 55
Mendoza, Father Agustin, 106
Mendoza, Luis de, 26
Merritt, General Wesley, 463, 466, 467
_Mestizo_, the, 176; character of, 182
Middlemen, 263
Midel, Isidoro, 532
Military departments, the, 569. _Vide_ Army
Military service, Spanish, 231. _Vide_ Army
Miller, General, 511 _et seq._
Mineral oil, 335
Mineral products, 326 _et seq._
Miraculous saints, 187
Mirs Bay, 419 (footnote), 427
Mixed races, 176, marriages of, 181
Mohammad Jamalul Kiram, Sultan, 141, 587-8
Molasses, 273
Molave (wood) 315
Moluccas Islands, tragic end of the Philippine expedition to, 73;
abandonment of the, 77
Money, under Spain, 244, 259; lending, 255-6, 269; 246 (footnote)
624; under America, 635-7.
Monks, the. _Vide_ Religious Orders; Friars
Monsoon region, 23
Montalón, Julian, the famous bandit, 549
Montera, General, in Cebú, 402, 521; in Zamboanga, 530 _et seq._
Montilla, José, 520
Montojo, Admiral Patricio, sword of honour presented to, 400; 419,
428, 429 (footnote)
Montoya, Gabriel, 37
Moraga, Fray Hernando de, 78
Moriones, Gov.-General Domingo, 62
_Moro Moro_, 349
Moro Province, the, 576 _et seq._; constitution of, 577; sub-division
of, under Spanish rule, 577 (footnote); municipalities, tribal wards
and districts of, 578-9; finances of, 579; armed forces in, 580;
America's policy in, 588, 591, 593; education in, 591
Moros, the, Brunei Sultanate, 29, 141, 157, 165; Dimasangeay, King
of Mindanao, 129; Adasaolan, the chief, 129; Bongso, Rajah, 130;
Rodriguez's expedition against, 130; the Manguiguin of Mindanao,
131, 589; Corcuera's expedition against, 131; Cachil Corralat, King,
133; friars take the field against, 133; Gastambide's expedition
against, 137; Claveria's and Urbiztondo's expeditions against, 139;
slaughter of British at Balambangan by, 139; Corcuera's victory over,
in Balanguigui Island, 139; population of, 140; Malcampo's expedition
against, 140; agreement with the British North Borneo Co., 141;
Harun Narrasid, Sultan, 141-2; Mohammad Jamalul Kiram, Sultan, 141,
587-8; Terrero's expedition against, 143; Arolas' expedition against,
144; Blanco's expedition against; Marahui campaign, 144; Spanish
occupation of Lake Lanao, 145; Buille's (the last Spanish punitive)
expedition against, 145; the chief tribes of, 145; dress of, 146-7,
154; physique of, 146; character, arts, weapons, trade of, 147; the
_pandita_, the _datto_, customs of, 148, 155-6; slavery among the,
151; pensions to the, 139, 140, 151, 571, 580; the _juramentado_, 146,
148, 150, 152, 583; as divers, 155; Ali, Datto, 529, 580-2; Djimbangan,
Datto, 530, 580; the _Tamagun Datto_, 532; American occupation of Joló,
571; Bates' agreement with the Sultan of Sulu, 571; engagements with
warlike _dattos_, 573-4, 581, 584-5; Lieut. Forsyth's expedition,
573; Gen. Baldwin's and Capt. Pershing's expeditions against, 574;
Gen. Wood's expeditions against, 580-1, 584; Gen. Wood's victory at
Kudarangan, 581; Major Hugh L. Scott's expedition, 584-5; capture of
Panglima Hassan, 584; Hassan escapes and Major Scott vanquishes him,
585; a _bichâra_ with Datto Ambutong, 585. _Vide_ Sulu
Morong district, 212 (footnote), 560
Mother-of-pearl shell, shipments of, 640
Moths, 340
"Mount of Gold," the, in Cavite, 114
Mountains, heights of, 13
Mules, 338
Municipal government, under Spain, 225; under America, 567. _Vide_
Government
Music, natives' passion for, 190
Nagasaki, the Jesuits in, 65-7
Names, of islands, the ancient, 13; of places, obsolete, 13, 129,
131, 560, 567; of families, 179
_Nao de Acapulco_, the, 243, 249
Nargas, Gov.-General Juan de, 60
Narra (wood), 316
Natives, the civilized. _Vide_ Filipino
Naujan Lake, 15
Navarrete, Luis de, 67
Navy, statistics of the Spanish, 233-4; the insurgent, 553
Negrito tribe, the, 120, 163
Negros Island, the development of, 255; Spaniards capitulate to the
rebels in, 520; native government in, 520
Newspapers, 106, 352, 363, 382, 412, 468, 524, 550
Nipa palm, 307
_Noli me tóngere_, 382
Notaries' offices, 54
Novales, Andrés, rebellion of, 104
Nozaleda, Archbishop, 594, 597 (footnote)
_Nuevo Dia, El_, newspaper, 524
Obando, Gov.-General José de, 134
_Obras Pias_, the, 245, 252
Occupation of Manila, by the British, 87; agreed indemnity to British
in, 89; by the Americans, 464
Officers' pay, Spanish, 280. _Vide_ Army
Oil, mineral, 335
Onayans, the Moro tribe of, 145
Opium, restrictions on the use of, 630
Orchids, 323
_Oriente, Islas del_, 28
Origin of Filipinos, 120. _Vide_ Filipino
Osmeña, Sergio, 521, 524
Otis, General E. S., in the War of Independence, 488, 490-4, 497,
502-3; 563
Otong, 519 (footnote)
Our Lady of Cagsaysay, 18, 19
Outlaws, 236 _et seq._, 517
_Pacto de sangre_, the, 28, 369
Pagbuaya, Prince, 34
Paguian Goan, the Princess, 129
Paguian Tindig, the Moro, 129
Palásan, 310
Palaúan Island, Spanish colonization of, 157; across the, 158, 160;
produce of, 160; concession to Canga-Argüelles in, 161 (footnote)
Palma brava, 308
Palma, Rafael, 524
Palmero family, the, 105
Palo Maria de playa (wood), 316
_Paloma de puñalada_, 341
Panay Island, the war in, 511-18; Araneta, General Pablo, 514, 517;
peace concluded, 518
_Pandita_, 148, 155-6
Pansipit River, 15, 37
Pangasinán, revolt in, 103
_Panguingui_, 351 (footnote)
Papal legate, Maillard de Touruon, 84-5; Chapelle, P. L., 595; Guidi,
G. B., 601; Agius, Ambrogio, 607
Papaw fruit, 318
Páran, Feliciano, revolt of, 105
Parágua Island, 157. _Vide_ Palaúan
_Parian_, the, 110
Paris Peace Commission. _Vide_ Peace of Paris
Parrado, General González, 145, 150, 572
_Paseo de los gigantes_, 134 (footnote)
_Paseo del Real Pendon_, 50
Pasig River, 15
Paterno, Maximo, 106; biographical note of, 411
Paterno, Pedro A., 106, 394; negotiates peace, 395; claims a title,
409; biographical note of, 411; pro-Spanish manifesto of, 489; becomes
President of the Revolutionary Congress, 469; capture of, 504; in
prison, 505; intervenes in the Spanish captives negotiations, 542;
as playwright, 554
_Patria, La_, newspaper, 412
Patriarch Maillard de Tournon, 84-5
Peace of Paris, of 1763, 96; of 1898, 470 _et seq._; concluded, 472;
text of the treaty, 478; ratified, 487 (footnote)
Peculations, of governors, 79-80, 212, 220-21; of other officials, 564
Pelew Islands, 41; the people of, 42
Peñaranda, Florentino, 547
Penitentiaries, 54; statistics of Spanish, 285; of San Ramon, 238
Perez Dasmariñas, Gov.-General, 56, 73
Perfumes, 325
Peso, the first introduced, 244; the Spanish-Philippine, 259; the
"Conant," 635-7
Petty-governors, 221
Philippine Assembly, the, 612, 614-5
Philippine Commission, the, 560; as legislative body, 563
Philippine Islands named, 32
"Philippines for the Filipinos," doctrine of the, 564
Piang, Datto, 529, 581
Piernavieja, Father, 203
Pilar, General Pio del, 485; capture of, 305
_Piña_ (stuff), 282
Pindan, Bernabé, 37
Pineapple, 320
_Pintados, Islas de los_, 34 (footnote)
Piracy, Moro, 132
Playa Honda, Battle of, 75
Poblete, Archbishop, 59
Polavieja, Gov.-General Camilo, 378-9
Poll-tax, 224
_Poniente, Islas del_, 28
Ponies, 336; the _surra_ epidemic, 622
Pontoon bridge, the, 349
Population, of Chinese, 118; of Moros, 140, 355, 615-6; of Visayos,
of Tagalogs, in Manila, 615; of 40 provincial towns, 616; classified
by birth, 616
Portugal and Spain, united, 72; separated, 81
Posadillo, Governor of the Carolines, murdered, 45
Potatoes, 303
Press, the, 106, 352, 363, 382, 412, 468, 524, 550, 559
_Principalia_, 222-3
Prisoners, the Spanish, 537; why detained, 539; Baron du Marais
murdered, 540; the captors' terms of release, 541
Prohibition on trade, Spain's, 248-50
Protocol of Peace, with rebels, 396; between America and Spain, 459
Provincial Government, under Spain, 213, 225; under America,
567. _Vide_ Government.
Public Works, under Spain, 218
Pudtli, Ranee, 143
_Puente de Barcas_, 98
Puerta Princesa, 157-8
_Pulajan_, the, 235, 547, 551
Quesada, Gaspar de, 26-7
_Quiapo_, 324
Quinine, 308
Rada, Martin, 51
Railway, the first, 265; in project, 627
Rain, 22
Rajah Lacandola, 35-7, 51
Rajah Soliman, 35, 51
_Rajahmudah_, the, 131
Rama, Esteban de la, 520
Raon, Gov.-General José, 62, 99
Rattan-cane, 310
_Real Compañia de Filipinas_, the 252
_Real quinto_, the, 53
_Real situado_, the, 244
Rebellion of 1896, the Tagalog--362; acts conducive to, 364; the
_Katipanan_ League, 364-5; arrests of citizens, 366; Pedro P. Rojas'
case, 366; F. L. Rojas executed, 367; first overt act of, 367; Battle
of San Juan del Monte, 368; first executions of rebels in Manila, 369;
in Cavite, 374; Bonifacio Andrés and Emilio Aguinaldo, 370; rebels
capture Imus, 372; Spanish defeat at Binacayan, 373; Spaniards at
Dalahican, 374; rebel General Llaneras, 374; Gov.-General Ramon Blanco,
377; definition of demands, 392; claim of independence, 394; treaty
of Biac-na-bató, 396, 414 (footnote); Rafael Comenge's inflammatory
speech, 400; the _Calle de Camba_ tragedy, 401; rising in Cebú, 402,
_et seq._; execution of rebels in Cebú, 405; American intervention,
417; the rebels' aspirations, 420; rebels attack the Spaniards in
Panay Island, 475; Spanish Governor of Negros Island capitulates, 476
Rebellion, of Diego de Silan, in llocos, 100; of Dagóhoy, in Bojol
Island, 101; in Leyte Island, Sámar Island, and Surigao, 102; of "King"
Málong and of Sumoroy, 103; of Andrés Novales, 104; of Apolinario de
la Cruz, 105; of Feliciano Páran, 105, 396 (footnote); in Tayabas, 105;
of Camerino, 106, 397 (footnote); of Cuesta, 106; in Negros Island, 106
Regalado, Pedro, 520
Regidor, Dr. Antonio M., biographical note of, 108 (footnote)
_Regium exequatur_, the, 85
Relics in cathedral, 57
Religion, fanaticism in, 187-9, 521, 602; shrines, 187; coercion in,
189 (footnote); freedom in, 594 and footnote; infidel tendency in,
607-8
Religious Orders, the, 199; power and influence of, 200; opinions for
and against, 201; function of the _regium morum_, 201; social origin
of, 201; as parish priests, 202; frailties of, 203; persecution by,
205; the hierarchy, 206; outcry against, 207; dates of foundation
and arrival of, 207; revenues of, 207, 209; emoluments of, 207;
training-colleges in Spain for, 209; jealousy and rivalry between,
209. _Vide_ Friars; Church
_Remontado_, the, 174, 205
_Renacimiento, El_, prosecution of, 550
Reptiles, 339
Revenue and expenditure, under Spain, 227 _et seq._, 251; curious
items of, 229; under America, 629.
Revolts in provinces. _Vide_ Rebellion
Revolutionary Government, the, 448; statutes of, 448-54; President's
message to, 454; appeal to the Powers by, 457; Malolos becomes
the capital of, 469; first Congress of, convened at Malolos, 469;
ratification of Philippine independence by, 470
Ricarte, Artemio, 546
Riccio, Vittorio, 76
Rice, measures of, 276; machinery for husking of, 277; _tiki-tiki_,
277; _Macan_ and _Paga_, yield of, 278; planting of, 279; trade in, 281
Rio de la Plata, 26
Rio Grande, de la Pampanga, 14; de Mindanao, 15
Rios, General Diego de los, 374, 474 _et seq._, 494 (footnote);
evacuates Panay, 477, 511; as agent for the liberation of Spanish
prisoners, 539
Rivalry of Church and State, 57-8. _Vide_ Church.
Rivera, General Primo de, attempts to subdue the Igorrotes, 124;
reappointed Gov.-General to suppress the Rebellion of 1896, 211, 389;
edict of concentration by, 391; reward to, for closing first period
of the Rebellion, 399; recalled to Spain, 408
Rivers, 14, 23
Rizal, Dr. Jose, 366, 381 _et .seq._; "My last Thought," poem by, 386;
the widow of, 386; public subscription to monument of, 389 (footnote);
"_Dimas alang_," 389 (footnote)
Rizal Province, 212 (footnote), 560
Roads, under Spain, 218; under America, 627
Rodas, Miguel de, 31
Rodriguez, Estevan, 131
Rojas, Pedro P., biographical note of, 366 (footnote)
Rojo, Archbishop-Governor, 62, 88, 97
Rosario, Pantaleon E. del, 524-5, 528
Russell & Sturgis, 255, 257
Sabas, Colonel, 107
Sago, 321
Sala destroyed, 18
Salas, Quintin, 516-7
Salaries, of Spanish officials, 214; of municipal officers, 560;
of American officials, 561; of mayors, 567
Salazar, Domingo, Bishop of Manila, 51, 56
Salcedo, Gov.-General Diego, 59
Salcedo, Juan, 35, 51, 212 (footnote)
Samales, the Moro tribe of, 145
Samar Island, rebellion in, 102; insurgency in, 535; slaughter of
Americans in, 536; _pulajanes_ in, 551
_Sampaguita_, 323
San Juan del Monte, Battle of, 368
San Miguel, the bandit, 546
Sanchez, Alonso, 52
_Sanctorum_ tax, 53
_Sangdugong Panaguinip_, 412
_Sangley_ (Chinese), 118
Sanitation, 198
Sanson, Melanio, 582
Sanson, Pedro, 528
Santa Clara Convent, 81
San Victores, Fray Diego de, 39
_Santo Officio_, 59
_Santones_, 189, 521
Santos, Father Moïses, murdered, 408
Sapan-wood, 312; shipments of, 646
Saps of trees, 312
Schools. _Vide_ Education.
Schück, Captain, 587 (footnote)
Schurman Commission, the, 498, 562
Scott, Major Hugh L., 583-6, 588
Scout corps, 570
Sculpture, 196
Seasons, 22
Secret Police Service, 567
Sedition, 553; seditious plays, 554; law passed, 545
Separation of Spain and Portugal, 81
Serrano, Juan R., 26, 28
Sevilla, Dr. Mariano, 596-7, 604-5
Sheep, 338
Shipping Law of 1904, the, 620
Shrines, 187
Siao (Moluccas), King of, 73-4
_Sibucao_, 312
Sibuguey, the Prince of, 131
Siguey shells, 243
Silan, Diego de, rebellion of, 100
Silva, Geromino de, 76
Silva, Gov.-General Fernando de, 76
Silva, Gov.-General Juan de, 74
Silver, imports and exports of, 647
_Simbilin_ weapon, 147
_Sinamnay_ stuff, 282
Singson, Father, 597
Sioco, 48
_Situado_, the _real_, 244
Slavery, 54, 55 (footnote), 191; among Moros, 151
Small-pox, 197
Smugglers, in Mexico, 247, 260, 262, 626
Snakes, 339
Soldiers in olden times, 231
_Solidaridud, La_, the seditionary organ, 363, 382
Soliman, Rajah, 35, 51
Solis River, 26
Somangalit, Cristóbal, 37
Spiritualists, 608
Saint Lazarus, Archipelago of, 28
State and Church feuds, 58
Statistics of trade, 639-50
Steamships introduced, 132
Stone, 334
Stotsenberg, Colonel, death of, 495
Sual port, 261
Subsidy, the Mexican, 244
Subuános, the Moro tribe of, 145-6, 155
Sugar-cane, yield of, 271; cultivation of, 272; sugar-extraction from,
278; molasses yield, 273; sugar-blends, 275; world's production of
sugar, 275
Sugar, the duty on, in America, 623; shipments of, 642-3
Sulphur, 21, 334
Sultan Mahamad Alimudin, 134; treaty with, 138
Sulu, the Sultan of, 140; the present Sultan, 141, 587-8; visits
Manila, 588; pension to him and chiefs, 151, 571, 580; titles of,
151; dress of, 153; across Sulu to Maybun, 153; produce of Sulu, 153;
official reception by, 154; the Sultanas of, 154. _Vide_ Moros
Sumoroy's rebellion, 103
Supa (wood), 316
Supreme Court, abolished, 56; re-established, 57; of Cebú, 57
Surigao, revolt in, 102
_Surra_, the disease, 622
_Suya_(Chinese), 118
Taal, volcano of, 17; town of, destroyed, 18-20, 166
Taft Commission, the, 562-3
Taft, William II., biographical note of, 562 (footnote); his policy
in the Islands, 564; appointed Secretary of War, 564; 613
Tagalog, meaning of the term, 164; character of, 171; hospitality
of, 172
Tagalog rebellion, the, 362 _et seq._ _Vide_ Rebellion of 1896
Tagbanúas tribe, the, 158; dress, customs, country of, 159
Taguban tribe, the, 146
Taguima, 129 (footnote)
Tamarind, 320
Tanaúan destroyed, 18
Tancad, the bandit, 239
_Tanga_ (edible insect), 342
Tattarassa, Sultan, 142 (footnote), 585
Taxation, of land, 625, 629; the Internal Revenue Law of 1904, 630
Taxes under Spain, 217, 224, 228
Tayabas rebellion, 105
Taycosama, Emperor of Japan, 65
Taytay fort, 231
Telegraph service, 267
Temperature, 22; of Illana Hay coast (Mindanao Is.), 157; of Zamboanga,
535
Teng-teng, Datto, 139
Theatres, 349, 558
_Tiangui_, 304 (footnote)
Tidal wave, 23
_Tiki-tiki_, 277
Timbang, Datto, 585
Timber, 312; relative strengths of, 317
_Tinaja_, 273 (footnote)
Tindalo (wood), 316
Tindig, Paguian, the Moro, 129
Tinguian tribe, the, 126
Tinio, General Manuel, 545 (footnote)
Tiruraya tribe, the, 146
Tithes to the Church, 55
Tobacco, 292; under monopoly, 293; free trade in, 296; risks of
trade in, 298; qualities and districts, 298; cigar values, 299;
_Compañia General de Tabacos_, 299; the duty on, in America, 625;
shipments of, 644
To-Kogunsama, Emperor of Japan, 70
Tonnage, 628, 647
Tordesillas, Treaty of, 25 (footnote)
Torralba, acting Gov.-General, 60; impeachment of, 79; dies a
beggar, 80
Torres, Fray Juan de, 116
Tournon, Mons. Maillard de, 84
Town Hall, 217, 226
Trade (under Spain), the early history of, 243 _et seq._; the
Mexican subsidy, 244; the _Consulado_ trading-ring, 244; the _boleta_
shipping-warrant, 244; the galleons, 245; the _Obras Pias_, 245; losses
of treasure, 246; prohibitions on, 248; penalties on free-traders,
250; the budget in 1757, 251; Spanish company failures, 252; the _Real
Compañia de Filipinas_, 252; the _Compañia Guipuzcoana de Caracas_,
252; foreign traders admitted, 255; Russell & Sturgis, 255; Nicholas
Loney, 255; Manila port opened to foreign trade, 256; first foreign
traders, 257; Banks, 258; the _Compañia General de Tabacos_, 299 (under
America), 620; effect of the war on, 621; the carrying-trade, 628;
American traders, 628; proportion of tonnage, 628; total tonnage, 647;
the new currency, 635-7; Banks, 637-8; statistical tables, 639-50;
produce shipments, 639-46; gold and silver exports and imports,
647; exchange fluctuations, 647; proportionate table of imports and
exports, 648-50
Trading Governors, 212
Tragedy of the _Calle de Camba_, 401
Travellers, regulations affecting alien, 617
Treaties made with rebels, 396 (footnote)
Treaty of Paris (1898), text of the, 478 _et seq._
Treaty, of Tordesillas, 25 (footnote), 253; of Antwerp, 72, 253;
of the "Family Compact," 72, 87; of Paris (1703), 96; with Sultan
Mahamad Alimudin, 138; of Utrecht and the Asiento Contract, 257;
of Malacañan, 396 (footnote); of Biac-na-bató, 396, 414 (footnote);
of Navotas, 397 (footnote); of Paris (1898), 472, 478
Tree-saps, 312
Trent, Council of, the, 605 (footnote)
Trepang (_balate_), 312
Trias, General Manuel, 544, 548-9
_Tribunal_, 217, 226
Tribute, 53, 224
Tuba (beverage), 304
_Talisan_, the, 235, 547; outrages by, 236, 239, 548-9
Tupas, King of Cebú, 35
Typhoons, 355
"_Ualang sugat_," the seditious play of, 554
Union of Spain and Portugal, 72
Urbiztondo, expedition against Moros by, 139
Urdaneta, Andrés de, 31, 33, 35
Utrecht, the Peace of, 257
Utto, Datto, 142
Vagrant Act, the, 568
Valenzuela, Prime Minister, banished, 83
Valenzuela, Sancho, 368; execution of, 369
Vanilla, 321
Vargas, Gov.-General Juan, impeachment of, 79
Vegetable produce, 321
Veteran civil guard, 231
Vicars, Camp, 574 (footnote)
Villa Corta, 94, 96, 98
Villalobos expedition, the, 32
Villa Fernandina, 48
Vilo, Roman, 529
Virgin of Antipolo, 267
Visayo, characteristics of the, 172
Volcano, Mayou, 16; Taal, 17
Volcano Island discovered, 32
War, the Spanish-American, 117; allocution of the Archbishop of
Madrid, 423; General Augusti's call to arms, 424; General Augusti's
proclamation, 425; volunteers reorganized, 426; the Battle of Cavite,
427; Cavite occupied, 429; Spain makes peace overtures, 458; text of
the Protocol of Peace, 459; Americans attack Manila, 462; surrender
of the city, 464; capitulation signed, 465
War of Independence, the, 484; the Philippine Republic, 486;
opening shot and Battle of Paco, 487; fight at Coloocan, 487;
fight at Gagalanging, 488; the Igorrote contingent, 488; Malabon
and Malinta captured, 489; death of Col. Egbert, 489; Santa Cruz
(Manila) in flames, 489; Battle of Marilao, 490; Malolos captured,
491; insurgent retreat to Calumpit, 492; American proclamation of
intentions, 492; Santa Cruz (La Laguna) captured, 494; Lieut. Gilmore's
expedition to Baler captured, 494; American reverse at Gingua, 495;
crossing the Bagbag River, 496; Calumpit captured, 496; burning of
S.S. _Saturnus_, 503; death of Gen. Lawton, 504; fight at Narvican,
505; capture of Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo, 507; American occupation of
Yloilo, 511-6 --of Cebú, 523--of Bojol Island, 528--of Zamboanga,
532; capture of Vicente Lucban, 545
Water-cure, 517 (footnote)
Wax, 311
Weyler, General, 417-8, 431
Wheaton, General, 488-91, 497
White ants, 340
Wild boar, 340
Wild tribes, the, percentage of in the population, 120
Wood, General Leonard, biographical note of, 576 (footnote); victory
of, at Kudarangan, 581; captures Panglima Hassan, 584
Woods, 312; relative strengths of, 317
Wright, Governor Luke E., biographical note of, 564
Xogusama, Emperor of Japan, 69
Yacal (wood), 316
Ylang-Ylang, 325
Ylígan fort, 77, 231
Yloilo, the port of, 261; native government in, 511; Gen. Miller's
expedition to, 511; the Panay insurgent army, 512; panic in, 513;
incendiarism and looting in, 515; bombardment of, 516; surrenders
of insurgent leaders, 517; general surrender at Jaro, 518; the town
of, 518
Zabálburu, Gov.-General Domingo, 42
_Zaguan_, 353
Zamboanga, the fort of, 77, 133, 233; the port of, 261-2; critical
position of the Spaniards at, 531; anarchy in, 532; American occupation
of, 532; the town of, 535
Zamora, Father Jacinto, executed, 107
Zobel, Jacobo, 367 (footnote)
Printed and Bound by Hazell, Watson and Viney, LD London and Aylesbury
NOTES
[1] "Historia General de Philipinas," Chap. I., Part I., Vol. I.,
by Juan de la Concepcion published in 14 vols., Manila, 1788.
[2] "No es necessario calificar el derecho á tales reinos ó dominios,
especialmente entre vasallos de reyes tan justos y Cathólicos y tan
obedientes hijos de la suprema autoridad apostólica con cuia facultad
han ocupado estas regiones."--_Ibid._
[3] "Dominium a possessione coepisse dicitur."--_Law maxim_.
[4] In September, 1890, a lawsuit was still pending between the
Dominican Corporation and a number of native residents in Calamba
(Laguna) who disputed the Dominicans' claim to lands in that vicinity
so long as the Corporation were unable to exhibit their title. For this
implied monastic indiscriminate acquisition of real estate several
of the best native families (some of them personally known to me)
were banished to the Island of Mindoro.
[5] According to the Spanish Hydrographic Map, it is 8,813 feet:
the Pajal and Montano Expedition (1880) made it 10,270 feet; the
Schadenberg and Koch Expedition (1882) computed it at 10,827 feet.
[6] _Vide_ pamphlet published immediately after the event by Father
Francisco Aragoneses, P.P. of Cagsaua, begging alms for the victims.
[7] "Hist. de la Prov. de Batangas," por D. Pedro Andrés de Castro
y Amadés. Inedited MS. in the Bauan Convent, Batangas.
[8] MS. exhaustive report of the eruptions of Taal Volcano in
1749 and 1754, dated December 22, 1754, compiled by Fray Francisco
Vencuchillo. Preserved in the archives of the Corporation of Saint
Augustine in Manila.
[9] Still it appears that all classes were willing to risk their lives
to save their property. They were not forcibly detained in that plight.
[10] "Hist. de la Prov. de Batangas," por Don Pedro Andrés de Castro
y Amadés. Inedited MS. in the Bauan Convent, Province of Batangas.
[11] "Hist. de Filipinas," by Dr. Gaspar de San Agustin, 2 vols. First
part published in Madrid, 1698, the second part yet inedited and
preserved in the archives of the Corporation of Saint Augustine
in Manila.
[12] P.P. of Taal from 1572 to 1575.
[13] In the same archives of the Saint Augustine Corporation in Manila
an eruption in 1641 is recorded.
[14] During the previous century jealousy had run so high between
Spain and Portugal with regard to their respective colonization and
trading rights, that the question of demarcation had to be settled by
the Pope Alexander VI., who issued a bull dated May 4, 1493, dividing
the world into two hemispheres, and decreeing that all heathen lands
discovered in the Western half, from the meridian 100 leagues W. of
Cape Verd Island, should belong to the Spaniards; in the Eastern half
to the Portuguese. The bull was adopted by both nations in the Treaty
of Tordesillas (June 7, 1494). It gave rise to many passionate debates,
as the Spaniards wrongly insisted that the Philippines and the Moluccas
came within the division allotted to them by Pontifical donation.
[15] Probably so called from the enormous number of _patos_ (ducks)
found there.
[16] The Visayos, inhabiting the central group of the Archipelago,
tattooed themselves; a cutaneous disease also disfigured the majority;
hence for many years their islands were called by the Spaniards _Islas
de los pintados_.
[17] Legaspi and Guido Lavezares, under oath, made promises of rewards
to the Lacandola family and a remission of tribute in perpetuity,
but they were not fulfilled. In the following century--year 1660--it
appears that the descendants of the Rajah Lacandola still upheld the
Spanish authority, and having become sorely impoverished thereby,
the heir of the family petitioned the Governor (Sabiniano Manrique de
Lara) to make good the honour of his first predecessors. Eventually
the Lacandolas were exempted from the payment of tribute and poll-tax
for ever, as recompense for the filching of their domains.
In 1884, when the fiscal reforms were introduced which abolished the
tribute and established in lieu thereof a document of personal identity
(_cedula personal_), for which a tax was levied, the last vestige of
privilege disappeared.
Descendants of Lacandola are still to be met with in several villages
near Manila. They do not seem to have materially profited by their
transcendent ancestry--one of them I found serving as a waiter in a
French restaurant in the capital in 1885.
[18] _Velas_, Spanish for sails.
[19] _Ladrones_, Spanish for thieves.
[20] Mr. Doane is reported to have died in Honolulu about June, 1890
[21] Guido de Lavezares deposed a Sultan in Borneo in order to
aid another to the throne, and even asked permission of King Philip
II. to conquer China, which of course was not conceded to him. _Vide_
also the history of the destruction of the Aztec (Mexican) and Incas
(Peruvian) dynasties by the Spaniards, in W. H. Prescott's "Conquest
of Mexico" and "Conquest of Peru."
[22] _Maestre de Campo_ (obsolete grade) about equivalent to the modern
General of Brigade. This officer was practically the military governor.
[23] According to Juan de la Concepcion, in his "Hist. Gen. de
Philipinas," Vol. I., p. 431, Li-ma-hong made his escape by cutting
a canal for his ships to pass through, but this would appear to be
highly improbable under the circumstances.
[24] Some authors assert that only Soliman rebelled.
[25] Domingo Salazar, the first Bishop of Manila, took possession in
1581. He and one companion were the only Dominicans in the Islands
until 1587.
[26] Bondage in the Philippines was apparently not so necessary for
the interests of the Church as it was in Cuba, where a commission of
friars, appointed soon after the discovery of the Island, to deliberate
on the policy of partially permitting slavery there, reported "that
the Indians would not labour without compulsion and that, unless they
laboured, they could not be brought into communication with the whites,
nor be converted to Christianity." _Vide_ W. H. Prescott's Hist. of
the Conquest of Mexico," tom. II., Chap, i., p. 104, ed. 1878.
[27] "Hist. Gen. de Philipinas," by Juan de la Concepcion, Vol. III.,
Chap, ix., p. 365, published at Manila, 1788.
[28] "Long live the Church," "Long live our King Philip V."
[29] Now the suburb of Paco. Between 1606 and 1608, owing to a rising
of the Japanese settlers, their dwellings in Dilao were sacked and
the settlement burnt.
[30] Portugal was forcibly annexed to the Spanish Crown from 1581
to 1640.
[31] Philip II.'s persecution of religious apostates during the
"Wars of the Flanders" was due as much to the fact that Protestantism
was becoming a political force, threatening Spain's dominion, as to
Catholic sentiment.
[32] Religious intolerance in Spain was confirmed in 1822 by the New
Penal Code of that date; the text reads thus: "Todo él que conspirase
directamente y de hecho á establecer otra religion en las Españas, ó á
que la Nacion Española deje de profesar la religion Apostolica Romana
es traidor y sufrirá la pena de muerte." Articulo 227 del Código Penal
presentado á las Cortes en 22 de Abril de 1821 y sancionado en 1822."
[33] "Hist. Gen. de Philipinas," by Juan de la Concepeion Vol. III.,
Chap. viii.
[34] This hospital was rebuilt with a legacy left by the Gov.-General
Don Manuel de Leon in 1677. It was afterwards subsidized by the
Government, and was under the care of the Franciscan friars up to
the close of the Spanish dominion.
[35] From this date the Molucca Islands were definitely evacuated and
abandoned by the Spaniards, although as many men and as much material
and money had been employed in garrisons and conveyance of subsidies
there as in the whole Philippine Colony up to that period.
[36] "Hist. Gen. de Philipinas," by Juan de la Concepcion, Vol. VII.,
p. 48, published at Manila, 1788.
[37] Macao is held by the Portuguese since 1557. During the Union
of Spain and Portugal (1581-1640), the Dutch made two unsuccessful
attempts to seize it (1622 and 1627). This colony was the great
European-Chinese emporium prior to Hong-Kong (1841), and paid crown
rent to China up to 1848.
[38] Zúñiga's History, Vol II., Chap xii., English translation,
published in London, 1814.
[39] Crónica de los P. P. Dominicos, Vol. IV., pp. 637 to 650,
edition of Rivadenayra, published in Madrid.
[40] This money constituted the Manila merchants' specie remittances
from Acapulco, together with the Mexican subsidy to support the
administration of this Colony, which was merely a dependency of Mexico
up to the second decade of last century (_vide_ Chap. xv.).
[41] Vicissitudes of Sultan Mahamad Alimudin (_vide_ Chap. x.).
[42] So tenacious was the opposition of the Austin friars, both in
Manila and the provinces, that the British appear to have regarded
them as their special foes.
From the archives of Bauan Convent, Province of Batangas, I have taken
the following notes, viz.:--The Austin friars lost P 238,000 and 15
convents. Six of their estates were despoiled. The troops killed were
300 Spaniards, 500 Pampanga natives, and 300 Tagálog natives. Besides
the Austin friars from the galleon _Trinidad_, who were made prisoners
and shipped to Bombay, 10 of their Order were killed in battle and
19 were captured and exiled to India and Europe.
[43] The prominent men in this movement were the brothers Palmero,
maternal uncles of the well-known Spanish soldier-politician, General
Marcelo Azcárraga.
Born in 1832 in Manila, General Marcelo Azcárraga was the son of
José Azcárraga, a Biscayan Spaniard, and his creole wife Dr. Maria
Palmero. José Azcárraga was a bookseller, established in the
_Escolta_ (Binondo), in a building (burnt down in October, 1885) on
the site where stood the General Post Office up to June, 1904. In
the fire of 1885 the first MS. of the first edition of this work
was consumed, and had to be re-written. José Azcárraga had several
sons and daughters. His second son, Marcelo, first studied law at
St. Thomas' University, and then entered the Nautical School, where
he gained the first prize in mathematics. Sent to Spain to continue
his studies, he entered the Military School, and in three years' time
obtained the rank of Captain. For his services against the O'Donnell
revolutionary movement (1854) in Madrid, he was promoted to Major. At
the age of twenty-three he obtained the Cross of San Fernando (with
pension). Having served Spain with distinction in several important
missions to Mexico, Cuba, and Sto. Domingo, he returned to Cuba and
espoused the daughter of the great banker, Fesser, who gave him a
fortune of £20,000 on the day of his marriage. In the year of Isabella
II.'s deposition (1868) he returned to Spain, promoted the Bourbon
restoration, and became Lieut.-General on the proclamation of Alfonso
XII. (1875). He then became successively M.P., Senator by election,
and life Senator. He was Minister of War under Cánovas del Castillo,
on whose assassination (Aug. 8, 1897) he became Prime Minister of
the Interim Government specially charged to keep order until after
the unpopular marriage of the Princess of Asturias. After several
Ministerial changes he again took the leadership of the Government,
was lately President of the Senate, and on his retirement, at the age
of seventy-two, he received the _Toison de Oro_ (Golden Fleece)--the
most elevated Order in Spain. On his mother's side he descends from the
Philippine creole family of the Conde de Lizárraga, and is uncle to the
Conde de Albay, better known in Philippine society as Señor Govantes.
[44] It was practically a secret branch of the _Junta General de
Reformas_ authorized to discuss reforms, and created by the Colonial
Minister Becerra during the governor-generalship of General La Torre
in the time of the Provisional Government in Spain which succeeded
the deposed Queen Isabella II.
[45] He was the grandfather of one of the most conspicuous surviving
generals of the Tagálog Rebellion (1896) and the War of Independence
(1899).
[46] José Maria Basa was the son of Matias Basa, a builder and
contractor by trade, who made a contract with the Spanish Government
to fill up the stream which branched from the Pasig River and crossed
the _Escolta_ (Manila), where now stands the street called _Calle
de San Jacinto_. In consideration of this work he was permitted to
build houses on the reclaimed land, provided he made a thoroughfare
where the former bed of the rivulet existed. This undertaking made
his fortune. His son, José Maria, had several trading schemes,
the most prosperous of which was his distillery at Trozo (Manila),
which brought him large profits, and was a flourishing concern
in 1872. On being amnestied, he established himself in Hong-Kong,
where he is still living with his family in easy circumstances and
highly respected. His unbounded hospitality to all who know him, and
especially to his countrymen, has justly earned for him in Hong-Kong
the title of the "Father of the Filipinos."
Dr. Antonio Maria Regidor y Jurado, a young lawyer, was arrested
and banished to the Ladrone Islands, whence he afterwards escaped to
Hong-Kong in a foreign vessel, disguised as a priest. From that Colony
he found his way to France, where he intended to settle, but eventually
established himself in London, where he still holds a high position
as a Spanish consulting lawyer. By his marriage with an Irish lady,
he has a son and several charming daughters, his well-appointed home
being the rendezvous of all the best class of Filipinos who visit
the British metropolis.
[47] "Hist. Gen. de Philipinas," by Juan de la Concepcion, Vol. IV.,
p. 53. Published in Manila, 1788.
[48] Ibid., Vol. V., p. 429.
[49] About two per thousand of the resident Chinese were _not_
originally coolies.
[50] General Wong Yung Ho, accompanied by a Chinese Justice of the
High Court, visited Australia in the middle of the year 1887. In a
newspaper of that Colony, it was reported that after these persons
had been courteously entertained and shown the local institutions and
industries, they had the effrontery to protest against the State Laws,
and asked for a repeal of the "poll tax"--considered there the only
check upon a Chinese coolie inundation!
[51] Just before the naval engagement of Playa Honda between Dutch
and Spanish ships (_vide_ p. 75) the Dutch intercepted Chinese junks
on the way to Manila, bringing, amongst their cargoes of food, as
many as 12,000 capons.
[52] Since about the year 1885, this system, which entailed severe
losses, gradually fell into disuse, and business on _cash terms_
became more general.
[53] In old writings, laws, and documents, and in ordinary parlance up
to the evacuation by the Spaniards in 1898, the inhabitants of these
Islands (civilized or uncivilized) were almost invariably referred
to as _Indios, Indigenas, Naturales, Mestizos, Españoles-Filipinos_,
etc., the term "Filipino" being seldom used. The Revolution of 1896
generalized the appellation "Filipino" now in common use.
Throughout this work, "Filipino" is taken as the substantive and
"Philippine" as the adjective, that being the correct English form.
The Americans, however, use "Filipino" both substantively and
adjectivally.
[54] For an exhaustive treatise on this subject the
reader is recommended to peruse A. R. Wallace's "The Malay
Archipelago." Published in London, 1869.
[55] The _Ibanacs_ are the ordinary domesticated natives inhabiting
the extreme north of Luzon and the banks of the Rio Grande de Cagayán
for some miles up. Some of them have almost black skins. I found them
very manageable.
[56] According to Father Pedro Murillo, the ancient name of Basílan
was Taguima, so called from a river there of that name.
[57] Mahometanism appears to have been introduced into the Islands
of Borneo and Mindanao by Arabian missionary prophets.
[58] It was called the _Fuerza del Pilar_, and is now the American
Moro Province military headquarters and head quartermaster's office
and dépòt. The image of Our Lady in a niche in the north wall is much
revered by Catholics.
[59] _Paseo de los gigantes_, the custom still existing in Spain of
introducing giant figures into popular festivities, reminding one of
Guy Fawkes.
[60] The Sultan complained that he had not been treated in Manila
with dignity equal to his rank and quality, and that he had constantly
been under guard of soldiers in his residence (this was explained to
be a guard-of-honour).
[61] Cholera has considerably reduced the population. In 1902 this
disease carried off about 10 per cent.
[62] Brûnei signifies, in pure Malay, the _whole_ of Borneo Island.
[63] The Sultan told me years afterwards that his uncle's nomination by
the Spaniards troubled him very little, as he was always recognized
by his people as their sovereign. In the end intrigues were made
against Datto Harun Narrasid, who agreed to accept his nephew's vassal
sultanate of Parágua, where he died, and was succeeded by his son,
Sultan Tattarassa, whom I met in Joló in 1904.
[64] Cottabato is derived from _Cotta_, a fort, and _Bató_, stone.
[65] By Royal Order of June, 1890, Brig.-General Arolas was appointed
Governor of Mindanao. He died in Valencia (Spain) May, 1899.
[66] According to Sonnerat, Sulu Island produced elephants!--_vide_
"Voyages aux Indes et à la Chine," Vol. III., Chap. x. I have not
seen the above statement confirmed in any writing. Certainly there
is no such animal in these islands at the present day.
[67] This building was destroyed by Colonel Arolas, April 15, 1887
(_vide_ p. 144).
[68] A few outposts had recently been established by Royal Decree. They
were all under the command of a captain, _vide_ Chap. xiii.
[69] There is another tribe in Palaúan Island called _Batacs_,
with Papuan noses, curly hair, and very dark skin. Their origin is
a mystery.
[70] Alfred Marche calls this the _Tragulus ranchil_, and says it is
also to be found in Malacca, Cochin China, and Pulo Condor (_vide_
"Luçon et Palaouan," par A. Marche. Paris, 1887).
[71] By Royal Order of August 20, 1888, a concession of 12,000
to 14,000 hectares of land in Palaúan was granted to Felipe
Canga-Argüelles y Villalba, ex-Governor of Puerta Princesa, for the
term of 20 years.
He could work mines, cut timber, and till the land so conceded under
the law called "Ley de Colonias Agrícolas," of September 4, 1884,
which was little more than an extension to the Philippines of the
Peninsula forest and agricultural law of June 3, 1868 (_vide Gaceta de
Madrid_ of September 29, 1888). It appears, however, from the Colonial
Minister's despatch No. 515, to the Gov.-General of the Colony, dated
May 24, 1890, that the concessionaire had endeavoured to associate
himself with foreigners for the working of the concession. I myself had
received from him several letters on the subject. The wording of the
despatch shows that suspicion was entertained of an eventual intention
to declare territorial independence in Palaúan. The Government,
wishing to avoid the possibility of embroilment with a foreign nation,
unfortunately felt constrained to impose such restrictions upon the
concessionaire as to render his enterprise valueless.
[72] We have several modern instances of similar volcanic disturbances
creating and demolishing land surface, on an infinitely lesser
scale--e.g., the disappearance of Krakatoa and the entire town and
busy port of Anger in 1883; the eruption which swallowed up the whole
inhabited Japanese island Torii Shima; the appearance of an entirely
new island, Nii Shima (about lat. 25° N.), within the past twelve
months; and, within the historical period, the apparition of the
Kurile Islands.
[73] _Vide_ Chap. v. By way of retaliation for the expulsion of Spanish
missionaries from Japan in the l7th century, all the male Japanese
above ten years of age were ordered to leave their settlements up the
Lake. Under this order over 20,000 of them were expelled from the
Colony. There was a Japanese temple existing (though not in use as
such) in the suburbs of Manila up to last century, when Gov.-General
Norzagaray (1857-60) had it destroyed.
[74] The Spaniards must have been quite cognisant of these rites,
seeing that the Moorish invasion of Spain lasted nearly eight
centuries, namely from the year 711 up to 1492--only a couple of
decades before Legaspi's generation.
[75] Based on this tradition, Don José Carvajal has written a very
interesting play entitled _Ligaya_. It was produced at the National
Theatre, Manila, in 1904.
[76] Possibly the people of Tondo (Manila) learnt from the Chinese
the art of preparing that canine delicacy called _Cúbang-aso_.
[77] Consequent on the American advent, wages steadily rose
proportionately to the increased cost of everything. But when,
later on, wages far exceeded the native's needs, he demanded more
and actually went on strike to obtain it!
[78] With regard to this characteristic among the Chinese, Sir John
Bowring (late Governor of Hong-Kong) affirms that the Chinese respect
their writings and traditions, whilst they do not believe a lie to
be a fault, and in some of their classical works it is especially
recommended, in order to cheat and confuse foreign intruders (_vide_
"A Visit to the Philippine Islands," by Sir John Bowring, LL.D.,
F.R.S. Manila, 1876 Spanish edition, p. 176).
[79] See the Army Regulations for the advantages granted to military
men who married Philippine-born women (_vide_also p. 53).
[80] _Catapúsan_ signifies in native dialect the gathering of friends,
which terminates the festival connected with any event or ceremony,
whether it be a wedding, a funeral, a baptism, or an election of
local authorities, etc. The festivities after a burial last nine
days, and on the last day of wailing, drinking, praying, and eating,
the meeting is called the _Catapúsan_.
[81] "Historia de Nuestra Señora La Virgen de Antipolo," by
M. Romero. Published in Manila, 1886.
[82] He became a prelate twenty-one years afterwards, having been
ordained Bishop of Nueva Segovia in 1671.
[83] A decree issued by Don Juan de Ozaeta, a magistrate of the Supreme
Court, in his general visit of inspection to the provinces, dated May
26, 1696, enacts the following, viz.:--"That Chinese half-castes and
headmen shall be compelled to go to church and attend Divine Service,
and act according to the customs established in the villages." The
penalty for an infraction of this mandate by a male was "20 lashes in
the public highway and two months' labour in the Royal Rope Walk (in
Taal), or in the Galleys of Cavite." If the delinquent was a female,
the chastisement was "one month of public penance in the church." The
_Alcalde_ or Governor of the Province who did not promptly inflict
the punishment was to be mulcted in the sum of "P200, to be paid to
the Royal Treasury."
[84] _Diario de Manila_, Saturday, July 28, 1888.
[85] _Vide p._ 54. According to Concepcion, there were headmen at the
time of the Conquest who had as many as 300 slaves, and as a property
they ranked next in value to gold (_vide_ "Hist. Gen. de Philipinas,"
by Juan de la Concepcion, published in Manila in 1788, in 14 volumes).
[86] _Vide_ "Recopilacion de las Leyes de Indias," Ley V. xiii.,
lib. i.
[87] Referring to Leprosy, the _Charity Record_, London, December
15, 1898, says:--"Reliable estimates place the number of lepers in
India, China, and Japan at 1,000,000. About 500,000 probably would
be a correct estimate for India only, although the official number
is less, owing to the many who from being hidden, or homeless, or
from other causes, escape enumeration."
[88] Navarrete's "Coleccion de los Viajes y Descubrimientos," tom. II.,
Nos. 12, 18. Madrid, 1825.
[89] In the turbulent ages, centuries ago, it was not an uncommon
thing for a prince or nobleman to secure his domain against seizure
or conquest by transferring it nominally to the Pope, from whom he
thenceforth held it as a papal fief.
[90] Under the Spanish Government, the See of Manila comprised the
provinces of Bulacan, Pampanga, Zambales, Cavite, La Laguna, Bataán,
Island of Mindoro, and part of Tárlac. The other part of Tárlac was in
the See of Nueva Segovia, which had (in 1896) ecclesiastical control
over 997,629 Christians and 172,383 pagans. The See of Jaro is the
one most recently created (1867).
[91] The Royal Decree setting forth the execution of this Brief was
printed in Madrid in 1773. This politic-religious Order was banished
from Portugal and Spain in 1767. In Madrid, on the night of March 31,
the Royal Edict was read to the members of the Company of Jesus, who
were allowed time to pack up their most necessary chattels and leave
for the coast, where they were hurriedly embarked for Rome. The same
Order was suppressed for ever in France in 1764.
[92] At the date of the Tagálog Rebellion (1896) the Jesuits in the
Islands were as follows: In Manila, 24 priests, 25 lay brothers, and
13 teachers; in Mindanao, 62 priests and 43 lay brothers, making a
total of 167 individuals. They were not allowed to possess real estate.
[93] _Vide_ "Catálogo de los Religiosos de N.S.P. San
Agustin." Published in Manila, 1864.
[94] The Augustinian Order was founded in the 4th century; the
Franciscan in 1210 and confirmed by Papal Bull in 1223; the Dominican
in 1261; the Recoleto in 1602; the Benedictine in 530; the Capuchin
in 1209 and the Paulist in 1625.
[95] For any further expense this might incur, 3 per cent, was deducted
from the parish priests' emoluments.
[96] "Recopilacion de las Leyes de Indias."--Ley 46, tit. 14, lib. 1°,
forbids priests and members of any religious body to take part in
matters of Civil Government.
[97] In the early days of Mexican conquest, the conquered land was
apportioned to the warriors under the name of _Repartimentos_, but
such divisions included the absolute possession of the natives as
slaves (_vide_ "La vida y escritos del P. Fray Bartolomé de las Casas,
Obispo de Chiapa," by Antonio Maria Fabié, Colonial Minister in the
Cánovas Cabinet of 1890 Madrid).
[98] Juan Salcedo, Legaspi's grandson (_vide_ Chaps. ii. and iv.) was
rewarded with several _Encomiendas_ in the Ilocos provinces, on the
west coast of Luzon, where he levied a tribute on the natives whom
he subdued.
[99] Changed afterwards to Manila Province; now called Rizal Province
(Mórong district incorporated therein) since the American occupation.
[100] "Noticias de Filipinas," by Don Eusebio Mazorca. Inedited
MS. dated 1840, in the Archives of Bauan Convent, Province of Batangas.
[101] The text reads thus:--"Para ser jefe de Provincia en estas Islas
no se requiere carrera, conocimientos ni servicios determinados, todos
son aptos y admisibles.... Es cosa bastante comun ver á un peluquero
ó lacayo de un gobernador, á un marinero y á un desertor transformado
de repente en Alcalde-Mayor, sub-delegado y Capitan á guerra de una
provincia populosa, sin otro consejero que su rudo entendimiento,
ni mas guia que sus pasiones." Tomás de Comyn was an employee of
the "_Real Compañia de Filipinas_" (q.v.), and subsequently Spanish
Consul-General in Lisbon.
[102] Transferred to Bais in January, 1889, in consequence of the
rise of brigandage in the S.E. of Negros Island.
The brigands, under the leadership of a native named Camartin and
another, who declared themselves prophets, plundered the planters
along that coast, and committed such notorious crimes that troops had
to be despatched there under the command of the famous Lieut.-Colonel
Villa-Abrille. The Gov.-General Valeriano Weyler went to the Visayas
Islands and personally directed the operations.
[103] From January 1, 1889, the Government Financial year was made
concurrent with the year of the Calendar.
[104] The text reads thus:--"Cada Jefe de Provincia es un verdadero
Sultan y cuando acaba su administracion solo se habla en la Capital
de los miles de pesos que sacó _limpios_ de su alcaldia."--"Noticias
de Filipinas," by Don Eusebio Mazorca. Inedited MS. dated 1840. In
the archives of Bauan Convent, Province of Batangas.
[105] The text reads thus:--"Cobrando el Alcalde en palay el tributo,
solo abona al indio dos reales plata por caban; introduce en cajas
reales su importe en metalico y vende despues el palay en seis,
ocho y a veces mas reales fuertes plata cada caban y le resulta con
esta sencilla operacion un doscientos ó trescientos por ciento de
ganancia.... Ahora recientito está acusado el Ministro Interventor de
Zamboanga por el Gobernador de aquella plaza de habérse utilizado aquel
de 15,000 á 16,000 pesos solo con el trocatinte de la medida.... Se
cuenta al mismo interventor á que me refiero 50,000 á 60,000 pesos
cuando el sueldo de su empleo--oficial 2° de la Contaduria--es de
540 pesos al año."--_Ibid_.
[106] The Audit Office was suppressed and revived, and again suppressed
on January 1, 1889.
[107] There was also a tenth class _gratis_ for the clergy, army
and navy forces, and convicts, and a "_privileged_" class _gratis_
for petty-governors and their wives, Barangay chiefs and their wives,
and Barangay chiefs' assistants, called "primogénito" (primogénito
means first born--perhaps it was anticipated that he Would "assist"
his father in his gratuitous government service).
[108] This was not included in Army Estimates, but in Civil
Government. Officers from Captain (inclusive) upwards "In expectation
of Service" and "In excess of Active Service requirements," received
only four-fifths of ordinary pay.
[109] In 1888 the "King's Regiment" was divided into two regiments,
under new denominations, viz.:--"Castillo, No. 1" (April 3), and
"España, No. 1" (June 18).
[110] This gentleman is at present residing in the county of Essex,
England.
[111] Under British law, a litigant is not allowed to bring and
conduct an action _in formá pauperis_ until it is proved that he is
not worth £5 after his debts are paid; and, moreover, he must obtain
a certificate from a barrister that he has _good cause of action_.
[112] According to Zúñiga ("Hist. de Philipinas"), the ancient
inhabitants of Luzon Island had a kind of shell-money--the _Siguey_
shell. _Siguey_ shells are so plentiful at the present day that they
are used by children to play at _Sunca_.
[113] _Situado_ is not literally "Subsidy," but it was tantamount
to that.
[114] The values of shipments by law established were little regarded.
[115] The _Obras Pias_ (i.e., Pious Works) funds were legacies
left exclusively by Spaniards, chiefly pious persons, for separate
beneficent objects. Two-thirds of the capital were to be lent at
interest, to stimulate trade abroad, and one-third was to be a reserve
against possible losses. When the accumulated interest on the original
capital had reached a certain amount, it was to be applied to the
payment of masses for the repose of the donors' souls.
The peculations of the Gov.-General Pedro Manuel de Arandia (1754-59)
permitted him to amass a fortune of a quarter of a million pesos in
less than five years' service, which sum he left to pious works. On the
secession of Mexico (in 1819) the Government took over the _Obras Pias_
funds, to control their administration. There is reason to believe
that many of the donations were the fruits of the corrupt practices
of high officials, the legacies being for their benefit hereafter.
The funds were severally administered by the four boards of San
Francisco, Santo Domingo, the Recoletos and Santa Isabel, controlled
by one general board of management. In 1850 the Spanish Government,
in the exercise of its right (_Real patronato_) to intervene in all
ecclesiastical administrative affairs, ordered these funds to be
transferred to a banking establishment entitled the "Banco Español
de Isabel II.," more generally known as the "Banco Español-Filipino"
(q.v.). The _Obras Pias_ funds constituted the original capital of
this bank. The board, presided over by the Archbishop, still continued
to control the manipulation of these funds by the bank, the income
derived from the original capital having to be paid out in accordance
with the wills of the several founders of the fund. Up to the close
of Spanish rule, money was lent out of this fund on mortgages in and
near Manila, at six per cent. interest per annum.
[116] It happened at this date that the dues, etc., equalled 17 per
cent. on the anticipated 1,000,000 pesos, but they were not computed
by percentage. The Royal Dues were a fixed sum since about the year
1625, so that when the legal value of the shipments was much less,
the dues and other expenses represented a much higher percentage. The
charges were as follows, viz.:--
Royal Dues. P160,000
Port Dues at Acapulco. 2,000
Disbursements paid in Manila on the ship's departure. 7,500
Port and Anchorage Dues on arrival in Philippines. 500
P170,000
[117] "La Libertad del comercio de Filipinas," by Manuel Azcárraga.
[118] Mr. John B. Butler, who was born in 1800, resided many years
in Manila, and married a native wife. He died on October 4, 1855, in
London, whence his mortal remains were brought to Manila in 1860, at
the instance of his widow, and interred in Saint Augustine's Church,
near an altar on the left side of the nave. The site is marked by a
marble inscribed slab.
[119] The Peace of Utrecht, signed in 1713, settled the succession of
Philip, the French Dauphin, to the Spanish throne, whilst among the
concessions which England gained for herself under this treaty was a
convention with Spain, known as the _Asiento_ contract. This gave the
British the right to send one shipload of merchandise yearly to the
Spanish colonies of America. Nevertheless, many ships went instead of
one. An armed contest ensued (1739-42), and although the Spaniards
lost several galleons in naval combats undertaken by Admiral Vernon
and Commodore Anson, the British losses were not inconsiderable.
So prejudicial to the vital interests of Spain was the abuse of
the ceded right held to be that the earliest efforts of the first
new Cabinet under Ferdinand VI. were engaged in a revision of the
commercial differences between that country and England. England
was persuaded to relinquish the _Asiento_ contract in exchange for
advantages of greater consideration in another direction.
About a century ago England took over from Spain Nootka Sound,
a station on the Pacific coast, where a nourishing fur trade was
carried on by British settlers. The cession was accorded under a solemn
promise not to trade thence with the Spanish colonies of South America.
[120] For example: _vide_ "Memoria leida por el Secretario de la Cámara
de Comercio de Manila, Don F. de P. Rodoreda, en 28 de Marzo de 1890,"
p. 6 (published in Manila by Diaz Puertas y Compañia).
It remarks: "Jurado Mercantil--El expediente siguió la penosa
perigrinacion de nuestro pesado y complicado engranaje administrativo
y llevaba ya muy cerca de dos años empleados en solo recorrer dos de
los muchos Centros consultivos á que debía ser sometido, etc."
[121] The following is an extract from the text of the preamble to
a Decree, dated March 19, 1886, relative to the organization of the
Philippine Exhibition held in Madrid, signed by the Colonial Minister,
Don German Gamazo:
"Con él se logrará que la gran masa de numerario que sale de
la Metrópoli para adquirir en paises extranjeros algodon, azúcar,
cacao, tabaco y otros productos vaya á nuestras posesiones de Oceania
_donde comerciantes extranjeros los acaparan con daño evidente de
los intereses materiales del pais."_
[122] (1) The "Hong-Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation,"
incorporated in 1867. Position on June 30, 1905: Capital all paid up,
$10,000,000 (Mex.): sterling reserve, £1,000,000; silver reserve,
$8,500,000 (Mex.); reserve liability of proprietors, $10,000,000
(Mex.). (2) The "Chartered Bank of India, Australia, and China,"
incorporated in 1853. Position on December 31, 1904: Capital all
paid up, £800,000; reserve fund, £875,000; reserve liability of
proprietors, £800,000.
[123] "Banco Español-Filipino." Position on June 30, 1905: Capital,
P1,500,000; reserve fund, P900,000. It has a branch in Yloilo.
[124] Chop dollars are those defaced by private Chinese marks.
[125] Yloilo had its "Gremio de Comerciantes" (Board of Trade),
constituted by Philippine General-Government Decree of September 5,
1884, and Manila had Chamber of Commerce. Since the Revolution Yloilo
has also a Chamber of Commerce, and Manila several of different
nationalities.
[126] _Vide Board of Trade Journal_ (British) for February and April,
1891.
[127] Manila to Yap, 1,160 miles. Yap to Ponapé, 1,270 miles. Ponapé
to Apra, 880 miles.
[128] "Vd cuidado de regatear," was the invitation to haggle.
[129] Weaving was taught to the natives by a Spanish priest about
the year 1595.
[130] The extra delay was quite a year, and the cause having become
common talk among the natives in the neighbourhood, many of them
suggested that an evil spirit prevented the foundations of the bridge
being built. They proposed to propitiate him by throwing live children
into the river; consequently many mothers migrated with their infants
until they heard that the difficulty was overcome.
[131] The sale of Alcohol was a Government monopoly until
1862. Molasses is sold by the _Tinaja_, an earthenware jar measuring
19 inches in height and 17 1/2 inches at the maximum diameter; it
contains 16 _gantas_ (liquid measure) = say 11 gallons.
[132] British patents for paper-making from sugar-cane fibre were
granted to Berry in 1838, Johnson in 1855, Jullion in 1855, Ruck and
Touche (conjointly) in 1856, and Hook in 1857.
[133] Since about the year 1885 a weed has been observed to germinate
spontaneously around the roots of the sugar-cane in the Laguna
Province. The natives have given it the name of _Bulaclac ng tubo_
(Sugar-cane flower). It destroys the saccharine properties of the
cane. The bitter juice of this weed has been found to be a useful
palliative for certain diseases.
[134] Extract from a letter dated September 29, 1885, from
H. Strachan, Esq., Superintendent, Government Experimental Farm,
Hyderabad, Sindh--and Extract from a letter dated February 13, 1886,
from A. Stormont, Esq., Superintendent, Government Experimental Farm,
Khandesh (_vide_ "The Tropical Agriculturist," Colombo, June 1, 1886,
p. 876 _et seq_.).
[135] The extremely fine muslin of delicate texture known in the
Philippines as _Piña_ is made _exclusively_ of pine-apple _leaf_
fibre. When these fibres are woven together with the slender filament
drawn from the edges of the hemp petiole, the manufactured article
is called _Husi_.
[136] A British patent for Manila hemp-paper was granted to Newton
in 1852.
[137] A large proportion of the product sent from Maúban to Manila
as marketable hemp is really a wild hemp-fibre locally known by the
name of _Alinsanay_. It is a worthless, brittle filament which has
all the external appearance of marketable hemp. A sample of it broke
as easily as silk thread between my fingers. Its maximum strength is
calculated to be one-fourth of hemp fibre.
[138] _Vide_ Instructions _re_ Contraband from the Treasury
Superintendent, Juan Manuel de la Matta, to the "Intendente de Visayas"
in 1843.
[139] _Instruccion General para la Direccion, Administracion y
Intervencion de las Rentas Estancadas_, 1849.
[140] Licensed depôts for the sale of monopolized goods.
[141] "Hist. de Filipinas," by Gaspar de San Agustin. MS. in the
Convento de San Agustin, Manila. The date of the introduction of
cacao into these Islands is confirmed by Juan de la Concepcion in his
"Hist. General de Philipinas," Vol. IX. p. 150. Published in 14 vols.,
Manila, 1788.
[142] The word chocolate is derived from the Mexican word
_chocolatl_. The Mexicans, at the time of the conquest, used
cacao-beans as money. The grandees of the Aztec Court ate chocolate
made of the ground bean mixed with Indian corn and rocou (_vide_
W. H. Prescott's "Hist. of the Conquest of Mexico").
Chocolate was first used in Spain in 1520; in Italy in 1606; in
England in 1657, and in Germany in 1700.
[143] _Tiangui_, from the Mexican word _Tianguez_, signifies "small
market."
[144] Spanish, _Carroza_; Tagálog, _Hila_ or _Parágus_; Visaya,
_Cángas_ or _Dagandan_.
[145] British patents for papermaking from cocoanut fibre were granted
to Newton in 1852, and to Holt and Forster in 1854. A process for
making paper from the cocoanut kernel was patented by Draper in 1854.
[146] _Vide The Tropical Agriculturist_, Colombo, August 2, 1886.
[147] Not to be confounded with _Bangá_,--Tagálog for a terra-cotta
water-pot.
[148] This company was formed in Hong-Kong and incorporated May 16,
1889, with a capital of P300,000 divided into 6,000 P50 shares, to take
over and work the prosperous business of Mr. H. G. Brown. Its success
continued under the three years' able management of Mr. Brown. During
that period it paid an average yearly dividend of 8-1/3%, and in
1890 its shares were freely dealt in on the Hong-Kong market at 50%
premium. On the retirement of Mr. Brown in March, 1891, the company
gradually dwindled down to a complete wreck in 1894. It is still
(year 1905) in liquidation.
[149] "Timber and Timber Trees," by Thomas Laslett (Timber Inspector
to the Admiralty). London, 1875.
[150] The same writer also makes the following interesting remark:--"Y
tal vez de aquí viene el olor (brea) como empireumatico muy notable de
los excrementos en este tiempo!" _Vide_ "Flora de Filipinos," by Father
Manuel Blanco, Vol. I., p. 228. Published in Manila in 4 vols., 1879.
[151] Clavigero's "Storia Antica del Messico."
[152] British patents for paper-making from banana fibre were granted
to Berry in 1838; Lilly in 1854; Jullion in 1855; Burke in 1855;
and Hook in 1857. In these Islands a cloth is woven from this fibre.
[153] To express juice from the small species of lemon, the fruit
should be cut from the stalk end downwards. If cut otherwise the
juice will not flow freely.
[154] "Flora de Filipinas," by Father Manuel Blanco. Published in
Manila by the Augustine Order in 4 vols., 1879.
[155] For more ample details _vide_ "Rápida descripcion de la Isla
de Cebú," by Enrique Abella y Casariega. Published by Royal Order in
Madrid, 1886.
[156] Monsieur Jean Labedan, who had been the original proprietor of
the "Restaurant de Paris" in La Escolta, Manila.
[157] "Hist. de la Provincia de Batangas," por D. Pedro Andrés de
Castro y Amadés, 1790. Inedited MS. in the archives of Bauan Convent
(Batangas).
[158] "A Visit to the Philippine Islands," by Sir John Bowring,
Spanish translation, p. 67. Manila, 1876.
[159] An effective cure for a centipede bite is a plaster of garlic
mashed until the juice flows. The plaster must be renewed every hour.
[160] A good dish can be made of the rice-birds, known locally as
_Maya_ (_Munia oryzivora_, Bonap.; _Estrelda amandava_, Gray) and
the _Bato-Bató_ and _Punay_ pigeons (_Ptilinopus roseicollis_, Gray).
[161] According to Edouard Verreux, cited by Paul de la Gironnière
in his "Aventures d'un gentilhomme Breton aux Iles Philippines,"
p. 394 (Paris 1857), there were at that date 172 classified birds in
this Archipelago.
[162] The city walls were undoubtedly a great safeguard for the
Spaniards against the frequent threats of the Mindanao and Sulu pirates
who ventured into the Bay of Manila up to within 58 years ago. Also,
for more than a century, they were any day subject to hostilities from
the Portuguese, whilst the aggressive foreign policy of the mother
country during the 17th century exposed them to reprisals by the Dutch
fleets, which in 1643 threatened the city of Manila. Formerly the
drawbridges were raised, and the city was closed and under sentinels
from 11 o'clock p.m. until 4 o'clock a.m. It continued so until 1852,
when, in consequence of the earthquake of that year, it was decreed
that the city should thenceforth remain open night and day. The
walled city was officially styled the _Plaza de Manila_, its last
Spanish military governor being General Rizzo, who left for Europe in
December, 1898. The most modern drawbridge entrance was the _Puerta
de Isabel II_, (1861), facing the Pasig River.
[163] The Cathedral has been destroyed four times by fire and
earthquake, and rebuilt by successive archbishops.
[164] _Marivéles_.--Much historical interest is attached to this
place. It was the chief port of the _Jurisdiction of Marivéles_
under the old territorial division which comprised the island now
called Corregidor. Marivéles is now included in the Province of Bataán.
The first Spanish missionary who attempted to domesticate the natives
of the Marivéles coast was stoned by them, and died in Manila
in consequence. An insubordinate Archbishop was once banished to
Marivéles. Through the narrow channel between this port and Corregidor
Island, known as _Boca chica_, came swarms of Asiatic trading-junks
every spring for over two centuries. Forming the extreme point of
Manila Bay, here was naturally the watchguard for the safety of the
capital. It was the point whence could be descried the movements of
foreign enemies--Dutch, British, Mahometan, Chinese, etc.; it was the
last refuge for ships about to venture from the Islands to foreign
parts. Yet, with all these antecedents, it is, to-day, one of the
poorest and most primitive villages of the Colony. From its aspect
one could almost imagine it to be at the furthermost extremity of
the Archipelago. Its ancient name was _Camaya_, and how it came to
be called Marivéles is accounted for in the following interesting
legend:--About the beginning of the 17th century one of the Mexican
galleons brought to Manila a family named Vélez, whose daughter was
called Maria. When she was 17 years of age this girl took the veil
in Santa Clara Convent (_vide_ p. 81), and there responded to the
attentions of a Franciscan monk, who fell so desperately in love
with her that they determined to elope to Camaya and wait there for
the galleon which was to leave for Mexico in the following July. The
girl, disguised in a monk's habit, fled from her convent, and the
lovers arrived safely in Camaya in a hired canoe, tired out after the
sea-passage under a scorching sun. The next day they went out to meet
the galleon, which, however, had delayed her sailing. In the meantime
the elopement had caused great scandal in Manila. A proclamation was
published by the town-crier calling upon the inhabitants to give
up the culprits, under severe penalties for disobedience. Nothing
resulted, until the matter oozed out through a native who was aware
of their departure. Then an alderman of the city set out in a prahu
in pursuit of the amorous fugitives, accompanied by a notary and a
dozen arquebusiers. After searching in vain all over the island now
called Corregidor, they went to Camaya, and there found the young lady,
Maria, on the beach in a most pitiable condition, with her dress torn
to shreds, and by her side the holy friar, wearied and bleeding from
the wounds he had received whilst fighting with the savage natives
who disputed his possession of the fair maiden. The search-party
found there a canoe, in which the friar was conveyed to Manila in
custody, whilst the girl was taken charge of by the alderman in the
prahu. From Manila the sinful priest was sent to teach religion and
morality to the Visaya tribes; the romantic nun was sent back to the
City of Mexico to suffer perpetual reclusion in a convent.
From these events, it is said, arose the names of _Corregidor_
(Alderman) Island, which lies between the rocks known as _Fraile_
(Friar) and _Monja_ (Nun), whilst the lovers' refuge thenceforth took
the name of _Marivéles_ (Maria Vélez).
Ships arriving from foreign or Philippine infected ports were
quarantined off Marivéles, under Spanish regulations. During the
great cholera epidemic of 1882 a Lazaretto was established here.
[165] The _abacus_ consists of a frame with a number of parallel
wires on which counting-beads are strung. It is in common use in China.
[166] _Escolta_ (meaning Escort), the principal thoroughfare in the
business quarter (Binondo), is said to have been so named during the
British occupation (1762-63), when the British Commander-in-Chief
passed through it daily with his escort.
[167] On the site of this last bridge the _Puente de Barcas_ (Pontoon
Bridge) existed from 1632 to 1863, when it was destroyed by the great
earthquake of that year. The new stone bridge was opened in 1875,
and called the _Puente de España_.
[168] The burthen of a native play in the provinces was almost
invariably founded on the contests between the Mahometans of the
South and the Christian natives under Spanish dominion.
The Spaniards, in attaching the denomination of _Moros_ to the
Mahometans of Sulu, associated them in name with the Mahometan
Moors who held sway over a large part of Hispania for over seven
centuries (711-1492). A "_Moro Moro"_ performance is usually a
drama--occasionally a melodrama--in which the native actors, clad in
all the glittering finery of Mahometan nobility and Christian chivalry,
assemble in battle array before the Mahometan princesses, to settle
their disputes under the combined inspirations of love and religious
persuasion. The princesses, one after the other, pining under the
dictates of the heart in defiance of their creed, leave their fate
to be sealed by the outcome of deadly combat between the contending
factions. Armed to the teeth, the cavaliers of the respective parties
march to and fro, haranguing each other in monotonous tones. After a
long-winded, wearisome challenge, they brandish their weapons and meet
in a series of single combats which merge in a general _mêlée_ as the
princes are vanquished and the hand of the disputed enchantress is won.
The dialogue is in the idiom of the district where the performance
is given, and the whole play (lasting from four to six nights) is
brief compared with Chinese melodrama, which often extends to a month
of nights.
Judged from the standard of European histrionism, the plot is weak
from the sameness and repetition of the theme. The declamation
is unnatural, and void of vigour and emphasis. The same tone is
maintained from beginning to end, whether it be in expression of
expostulatory defiance, love, joy, or despair. But the masses were
intensely amused; thus the full object was achieved. They seemed
never to tire of gazing at the situations created and applauding
vociferously the feigned defeat of their traditional arch-foes.
[169] The favourite game of the Tagálogs is _Panguingui_--of the
Chinese _Chapdiki_.
[170] The Government House, located in the city, which was thrown down
in the earthquake of 1863, has not been rebuilt. Its reconstruction
was only commenced by the Spaniards in 1895. The Gov.-General
therefore resided after 1863 at his suburban palace at Malacañan,
on the river-side.
[171] "Aventures d'un gentilhomme Breton aux Iles Philippines,"
par Paul de la Gironnière. Paris, 1875.
[172] _Vide_ "Terremotos de Nueva Vizcaya en 1881," by Enrique Abella
y Casariega Published in Madrid.
[173] The _Katipunan League_ and _Freemasonry_ were not identical
institutions. There were many Freemasons who were leaguers, but
not _because_ they were Freemasons, as also there were thousands
of leaguers who knew nothing of Freemasonry. There is little doubt
that Freemasonry suggested the bare idea of that other secret society
called _Katipunan_, whose signs and symbols were of masonic design,
but whose aims were totally different. It is probable, too, that the
liberty which Freemasons enjoyed to meet in secret session was taken
advantage of by the leaguers. There were risings in the Islands
long before the introduction of Freemasonry. This secret society
was introduced into the Colony a little before the year 1850. In
1893 the first lodges of the Spanish Grand Orient were opened,
and there were never more than 16 lodges of this Order up to the
evacuation by the Spaniards. Each lodge had about 30 members, or,
say, a total of 500. The Spanish deputy, Dr. Miguel Morayta, in his
speech in the Spanish Congress in April, 1904, stated that General
Ramon Blanco's reply to Father Mariano Gil (the discoverer of the
_Katipunan_) was that the identity of Freemasonry with _Katipunan_
"existed only in the brains of the friars and fanatical Spaniards."
[174] By intermarriage and blood relationship Don Pedro P. Rojas is
allied with several of the best Manila families. His grandfather,
Don Domingo Rojas, a prominent citizen in his time, having become a
victim of intrigue, was confined in the Fortress of Santiago, under
sentence of death. The day prior to that fixed for his execution, he
was visited by a friend, and the next morning when the executioner
entered his cell, Don Domingo was found in a dying condition,
apparently from the effect of poison. Don Domingo had a son José and
a daughter Marguerita. On their father's death, they and José's son,
the present Don Pedro P. Rojas, went to Spain, where Doña Marguerita
espoused a Spaniard, Don Antonio de Ayala, and Don José obtained from
the Spanish Government a declaration stating that whereas Don Domingo
had been unjustly condemned to capital punishment, the Gov.-General
was ordered to refund, out of his own pocket, to the Rojas family
the costs of the trial. The Rojas and Ayala families then returned
to the Philippines, where Don Antonio de Ayala made a considerable
fortune in business and had two daughters, one of whom, Doña Cármen,
married Don Pedro P. Rojas, and the other wedded Don Jacobo Zobel, an
apothecary of large means and of German descent. Don Pedro P. Rojas,
who was born in 1848, has two sons and two daughters. The three
families belonged to the _élite_ of Manila society, whilst the Rojas
and the Ayalas acquired a just reputation both for their enterprising
spirit, which largely benefited the Colony, and for their charitable
philanthropy towards all classes.
[175] _Aguinaldo_ is the Spanish for Christmas-box.
[176] Part of a conversation which I had with Emilio Aguinaldo at
his house at Cauit (Cavite Viejo) on July 26, 1904.
[177] _Cauit_ signifies, in Tagálog, Fish-hook.
[178] _Sungay_ signifies, in Tagálog, Deer.
[179] _Imus_. The history of this place is interesting. In the 18th
century a banished Spaniard of distinguished family settled there
and supplied water to the natives for irrigation purposes. Some years
afterwards, on the death of his wife, this gentleman returned to Spain
and left the place in charge of a friar, Francisco de Santiago. As
the owner never claimed the property, it fell definitely into
the possession of the friars. A church was erected there at the
people's expense. Later on the friar in charge extorted from the
natives material and labour, without payment, for the building of
a manor-house, but he was poisoned soon after it was finished. His
successor was still bolder, and allowed escaped criminals to take
sanctuary in his church to show his superiority to the civil law. After
innumerable disputes and troubles with the natives, it developed
into a fine property, comprising 27,500 acres of arable land, which
the Recoletos claimed as theirs and rented it out to the natives. Its
possession was the cause of the important risings of Páran and Camerino
(_vide_ pp. 105, 106) and many other minor disturbances.
[180] "Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas," por el Dr. Antonio de Morga,
anotada por José Rizal. Published in Paris by Garnier frères, 1890.
[181] "El Filibusterismo (continuacion del 'Noli me
tángere')." Published in Ghent by F. Meyer-Van Loo, 1891.
[182] Father Mariano Gil died in Spain in the spring of 1904.
[183] Rizal's brother and sister were keeping (in 1904) the "_Dimas
Alang_" restaurant, 62, _Calle Sacristia_, Binondo (Manila). It is
so named after the pseudonym under which their distinguished brother
often wrote patriotic articles.
One of the ten annual official holidays, or feast days, appointed by
the Civil Commission is "Rizal Day," December 30.
The P2 banknote of the new Philippine currency bears a vignette of
Dr. Rizal.
The Manila Province of Spanish times is now called Rizal Province and
with it is incorporated what was formerly the Mórong District. Probably
one-third of the towns of the colony have either a _Plaza de Rizal_,
or a _Calle de Rizal_; it is about as general as the _Piazza di
Vittorio Emanuele_ throughout Italy.
A public subscription was open for about three years to defray
the cost of a Rizal monument to be erected on the Luneta Esplanade
(Ins. Gov. Act No. 243). By March 7, 1905, a total of P103,753.89
had been collected, including the sum of P30,000 voted by the Insular
Government.
One is led to wonder what _róle_ in Philippine affairs Rizal would
have assumed had he outlived the rebellion.
[184] It is alleged that this copy was removed from the archives
about April, 1898, for the defence of a certain general in Madrid.
[185] _Biac-na-bató _signifies, in Tagalog, Split Stone.
This was the third time, during the 19th century, that the Spanish
Gov.-General had been constrained to conclude a treaty with native
rebels. In 1835 a certain Feliciano Paran raised the standard of
revolt against the friars' claim to the Imus estate (Cavite), and
after many fruitless attempts to suppress him, and much bloodshed,
the _Treaty of Malacañan_ was signed by the rebel chief and the
Gov.-General. Paran was then appointed Colonel of Militia with the
monthly pay of P50. He lived peacefully in _Calle San Marcelino_,
Manila, until a fresh outbreak (led by another) occurred, when the
Spaniards made this a pretext to seize Paran and deport him to the
Ladrone Islands (_vide_ p. 105).
In 1870, during the command of General La Torre, a certain
Camerino held the Province of Cavite for a long time against the
Spaniards. Camerino's plan was to remain in ambush whilst the
rank-and-file of the Spaniards advanced, and then pick off the
officers. So many of them were killed that influence was brought
to bear on the General, who consented to sign the _Treaty of
Navotas_. Camerino was appointed Colonel of Militia and lived in Trozo
(Manila) until the Cavite rising in 1872, when he and six others were
executed for their past deeds (_vide_ p. 106).
[186] The original of the above document was read in public session
of Congress in Madrid, on June 16, 1898, by the Deputy Señor Muro.
[187] _Vide_ Pedro A. Paterno's allusion to this at p. 399.
[188] Manuel Godoy, of obscure family, was originally a common soldier
in the Guards. He became field-marshal, Duke of Alcudía, Grandee of
Spain, Councillor of State, and Cavalier of the Golden Fleece. For his
intervention in the Peace of Basilea he received the title of Principe
de la Paz. Baldomero Espartero was a successful general, who brought
the first Carlist war to a close and concluded the Treaty of Vergara
(1839), for which (in 1840) he was granted the titles of Duque de la
Victoria and Principe de Vergara.
[189] This steamer came into Manila flying the French ensign, and
painted to resemble one of the Russian Volunteer Fleet, to avoid
capture on the way.
[190] The precise terms of the treaty or agreement made between
the representative of the Philippine Government and the rebel
chiefs are hitherto enveloped in mystery; but even though all the
personal testimony referred to in this chapter were impugned, there
is convincing circumstantial evidence that Emilio Aguinaldo and
his followers received a very considerable amount of money from the
Philippine Treasury _conditionally_. In the Suit No. 6 of 1899 in the
Supreme Court of Hong-Kong, T. Sandico and others _versus_ R. Wildman
(all the original filed documents of which I have examined), sworn
evidence was given to show that $200,000 Mexican of the sum received
by Aguinaldo was deposited in his name in the Chartered Bank of India,
Australia and China. It is not feasible to suppose that this sum was
paid to or accepted by Aguinaldo _unconditionally_.
[191] On February 15, 1898, the U.S. man-of-war _Maine_, whilst lying
in the harbour of Havana, was, accidentally or intentionally, blown
up, causing the death of 266 of her crew. Public opinion in America
attributed the disaster to Spanish malice. The Spaniards indignantly
repudiated this charge and invited an official inquest. Again, at the
Conference of December 6, 1898, the Spanish Commissioners of the Peace
Commission at Paris proposed an additional article to the treaty "to
appoint an International Commission to be entrusted with investigating
the causes of, and responsibility for, the _Maine_ catastrophe,"
but the proposal was rejected by the American Commissioners.
[192] Mirs Bay has _since_ become British, being included in the
extended Kowloon Concession on the mainland of China opposite
Hong-Kong.
[193] The distance from Corregidor Island to Manila City is 27 miles.
[194] In July, 1904, I saw five rusty hulls--remnant of the Spanish
fleet--afloat in Cavite harbour.
[195] Admiral Patricio Montojo, born in 1831, entered the navy at the
age of 14. After the Battle of Cavite he left for Europe in October,
1898, and was committed to prison, March 3, 1899, pending the trial
by court-martial which condemned him to compulsory retirement from
the service. He died in 1902, aged 71 years.
[196] _Vide_ Senate Document No. 62, Part II., 55th Congress, 3rd
Session, pp. 350-6. Published by the Government Printing Office,
Washington, 1899.
[197] The _Macabebes_ who came so conspicuously into prominence
during the Rebellion of 1896 are the inhabitants of the town of
Macabebe and its dependent wards, situated in Lower Pampanga, near
the Hagonoy River. They are the only Filipinos who have persistently
and systematically opposed the revolutionary faction of their own free
will, without bribe or extraneous influence. No one seems to be able to
explain exactly why they should have adopted this course. They aided
the Spaniards against the rebels, and also the Americans against the
insurgents. All I have been able to learn of them in the locality is
that they keep exclusively to themselves, and have little sympathy
for, and no cordial intercourse with, the natives of other towns,
either in their own province or elsewhere. A generation ago the
Macabebes had a bad reputation for their petty piratical depredations
around the north shore of Manila Bay and the several mouths of the
Hagonoy River, and it is possible that their exclusiveness results
from their consciousness of having been shunned by the more reputable
inhabitants. The total population of Macabebe is about 14,000.
[198] The finding of the court says: "Pasará á la seccion de reserva
del Estado Mayor General del Ejército con incapacidad para obtener
destinos y sin figurar en la escala de los de dicha categoria." Signed
by Canuto Garcia de Polavieja, dated April 28, 1899, and published
in the _Gaceta de Madrid_.
[199] It seems almost incredible that, even at this crisis, the
Spaniards still counted on native auxiliaries to fight against their
own kith and kin.
[200] _Vide_ Senate Document No. 62, Part II., 55th Congress,
3rd Session, p. 282. Published by the Government Printing Office,
Washington, 1899.
[201] Captain T. Bentley Mott, A.D.C to General Merritt, writing in
_Scribner's Magazine_ (December, 1898) says: "Neither the fleet nor
the army was, at this time, ready for a general engagement. The army
did not have, all told, enough ammunition for more than _one day_
of hard fighting, and only a part of this was in the camp." Admiral
Dewey had then been in possession of Manila bay and port three months
and 12 days.
[202] _Vide_ Senate Document No. 62, Part II., 55th Congress, 3rd
Session, p. 491.
[203] "The Spanish Commander-in-Chief fled from the city shortly
before it was attacked." Senate Document 62, Part II., 55th Congress,
3rd Session, p. 146.
[204] Barasoain is another parish, but it is only separated from
Malolos by a bridged river. It is only five minutes' walk from Malolos
Church to Barasoain Church. Since the American advent the two parishes
have been united.
[205] For want of space I am obliged to omit the summary of all the
debates in the Revolutionary Congress of 1898, printed reports of
which I have before me.
[206] _Vide_ Senate Document No. 62, Part II., 55th Congress,
3rd Session, p. 371. Published by the Government Printing Office,
Washington, 1899.
[207] _Vide_ Senate Document No. 62, Part I. of the 55th Congress, 3rd
Session. Published by the Government Printing Office, Washington, 1899.
[208] The Treaty was ratified by the Senate by 57 votes to 27 on
February 6, 1899.
[209] The Paco church was an ancient, imposing building; to-day there
is not a stone left to show that it ever existed, and the plot is
perfectly bare.
[210] General Diego de los Rios was remaining in Manila to negotiate
with the insurgents the liberation of the Spanish prisoners (_vide_
p. 477).
[211] The decree says:--"Seeing that the Spanish garrison in Baler,
consisting of a handful of men, isolated, without hope of succour,
is, by its valour and constant heroism worthy of universal admiration,
and in view of its defence, comparable only with the legendary valour
of the sons of the Cid and of Pelayo, I render homage to military
virtues, and, interpreting the sentiments of the Philippine Republic,
on the proposal of my Secretary of War, and in agreement with my
Council of State, I hereby decree as follows, viz.:--That the said
forces shall no longer be considered our prisoners, but our friends,
and consequently the necessary passes shall be furnished them enabling
them to return to their country. Given in Tárlac on the 30th of June,
1899. The President of the Republic,--_Emilio Aguinaldo_."
[212] After the war I visited this former insurgent stronghold. Of
the ancient church three walls and a quarter of the roof were left
standing. There was nothing inside but shrubs, which had grown up to
3 feet high. In front of the church ruins stood an ironical emblem
of the insurgents' power in the shape of an antiquated Spanish
cannon on carriage, with the nozzle broken off. Judging from the
numerous newly-erected dwellings in this little town, I surmise that
three-fourths of it must have been destroyed during the war.
[213] A Chinese half-caste Pampango. I knew him intimately as a
planter. He was deported to and died a prisoner in the Island of Guam
in 1901.
[214] In 1905 one of the wealthiest men in the Colony was arrested and
brought to trial on the charge of having paid, or caused to be paid,
the sum of P 20 to an outlaw in Batangas Province. After putting the
accused to a deal of expense and annoyance, the Government suddenly
withdrew from the case, leaving the public in doubt as to the justice
or injustice of the arraignment.
[215] A very intelligent man who was appointed Civil Governor of La
Laguna Province when the war terminated.
[216] Early in 1905 the Court of Nueva Ecija passed sentence of
imprisonment for life on this man for murder.
[217] Raymundo Melliza, a Visayan lawyer, who afterwards became
Provincial Governor of Yloilo, is the son of Cornelio Melliza, of Molo,
a man much respected both by natives and foreigners.
[218] A verbal statement made to me by ex-insurgent General Pablo
Araneta, which I took down in writing at the time of the interview.
[219] When I asked ex-General Pablo Araneta the same question he
naïvely explained to me that it was thought if the Americans came
ashore and found the town in ruins they would relinquish their
undertaking!
[220] The See of Jaro was created in 1867. The town was already rich
with its trade in _piña_ and _jusi_ (_vide_ p. 283, footnote). Up to
1876 Yloilo town was merely a group of houses built for commercial
convenience.
[221] _Vide_ p. 169. _Castila_ in the North; _Cachila_ in the South;
signifying European, and said to be derived from the Spaniards'
war-cry of _Viva Castilla!_
[222] "Water-cure" was a method adopted by the Americans. Water was
poured down the throat of the victim until the stomach was distended to
the full; then it was pressed out again and the operation repeated. The
pretext for this mode of torture was to extort confession; but it
was quite inefficacious; because the victim was usually disposed to
say anything, true or false, for his own salvation. The "water-cure"
operation, in vogue for awhile all over the Islands, proved fatal in
many cases. It is now a penal offence (Phil. Com. Act 619, Sec. 2).
[223] Otong in olden times was a place of importance when the galleons
put in there on their way to and from Mexico, taking the longer route
in order to avoid the strong currents of the San Bernardino Straits.
Under the old territorial division, the Jurisdiction of Otong
comprised all Panay Island (except a strip of land all along the
north coast--formerly Panay Province, now called Cápis) and a point
here and there on the almost unexplored Negros coast. Galleons were
sometimes built at Otong, which was on several occasions attacked by
the Dutch. Yloilo at that time was an insignificant fishing-village.
[224] A half-caste Chinese family of large means and local influence.
[225] Esteban de la Rama is of the family of the late Isidro de la
Rama, a well-known prosperous and enterprising Yloilo merchant. Pedro
Regalado, personally known to me, is the son of my late friend José
Regalado, at one time a wealthy middleman, who, however, lost his
fortune in adverse speculations. Pedro Regalado and I were, at one
time, together in Hong-Kong, where he learnt English. On the entry
of the American troops into Yloilo he was imprisoned on a charge
of disaffection, but shortly released and appointed a government
interpreter.
[226] The protest contained the following significant clauses, viz:
(1) "Ceder á tal exigencia en vista de la superioridad de las armas
Americanas. (2) No tener poder, ni la provincia ni todos los habitantes
juntos, de ejecutar actas como esta, prohibidas por el Presidente de
la República, Señor Emilio Aguinaldo."--Extracts taken by myself from
the official copy of the protest.
[227] The approximate number of prisoners was as follows, viz:--
Military Officers (including Gen. Leopoldo Garcia Peña) 200
Military Regular troops 8,000
Civil Servants and private Civilians and families 560
Ecclesiastics and Nuns (including Bishop Hévia
Campomanes, of the diocese of Nueva Segovia 400
Total in long captivity, about 9,160
Taken prisoners and released voluntarily, or through
personal influences, or escaped from the camps--about 1,840
Approximate Grand Total 11,000
[228] Baron Honoré Fréderic Adhemar Bourgeois du Marais, a Frenchman of
noble birth and noble sentiments, was the son of Viscount Bourgeois du
Marais. Born at Bourg Port, in the Algerian province of Constantina,
in 1882 he left Europe with a party of gentlemen colonists in the
s.s. _Nouvelle Bretagne_, intending to settle in Port Breton, in
Australasia. The vessel having put into Manila, she was detained
for debt, but escaped from port in the teeth of a hurricane. A
Spanish gunboat went in pursuit and brought her back, and Baron Du
Marais decided to remain in the Philippines. For several years he
was associated with his countryman M. Daillard in the development
of the Jalajala Estate (_vide_ p. 360). On M. Daillard's decease
he became the representative of the "Compañia Tabacalera" at their
vast estate of Santa Lucia (Tárlac), which prospered under his able
management. His wonderful tact in the handling of natives secured their
attachment to him. After fifteen years' absence from home he went to
Europe to recruit his health, returning to the Islands in November,
1898. After the ill-fated mission of humanity referred to above, his
body lay hidden in the jungle for nearly two years, until November,
1900, when it was discovered and brought to Manila for interment
at the Paco cemetery. The funeral, which took place on November 25,
was one of the most imposing ceremonies of the kind ever witnessed in
Manila. Monsignor Chapelle officiated at the _Requiem_ mass celebrated
at the Cathedral in the presence of the chief American authorities,
the French and Spanish Consuls-General and representatives of the
foreign residents, Chambers of Commerce, the Army and Navy, the Clubs,
the Press, and every important collectivity. The cortége was, moreover,
escorted by a large body of troops to the last resting-place of this
gallant hero.
[229] By Royal Decree of June, 1897, a _Philippine Loan_ was
authorized, secured on Custom-house revenue and general guarantee of
Spain. The Loan was for 200 millions of pesetas in hypothecary bonds
of the Philippine Treasury, bearing 6 per cent, interest, redeemable
at par in 40 years.
Series A. 250,000 Bonds of 500 pts. = 125 millions
Series B. 750,000 Bonds of 100 pts. = 75 millions
First issue of 100 millions A at 92 per cent. was made on July 15,
1897.
[230] Born at Aliaga (Nueva Ecija) June 17, 1877, he raised a troop
of rebels in his native town and joined General Llaneras. Appointed
colonel in June, 1897, he was one of the chiefs who retired to
Hong-Kong after the alleged Treaty of Biac-na-bató. He returned to
the Islands with Aguinaldo, and became a general officer at the age
of twenty-three years.
[231] At one time Cornelio Felizardo had an American in his gang. This
degenerate, Luis A. Unselt, was fortunately captured and sentenced,
on April 6, 1904, to twenty-five years' imprisonment as a deserter
from the constabulary and bandit.
Previous to this event, the piracy of Johnston and Hermann in the
southern islands caused much sensation at the time.
In September, 1905, it was rumoured that, in order to escape capture,
Cornelio Felizardo had committed suicide.
One can judge of the ferocity of these men by Clause 3 of what Julian
Montalón calls his Law No. 9. Dated April 10, 1904, it says:--
"The Filipino who serves the American Government as scout,
constabulary or secret-service man, who does not sympathize with
his native country, shall, if caught, immediately suffer the
penalty of having the tendons of his feet cut, and the fingers
of both hands crushed."
There were many cases of cutting off the lips; two victims of this
atrocity were brought to Manila in 1905, during _El Renacimiento_
trial (_vide_ p. 550).
[232] This establishment was put up for sale by tender in 1904. The
prospectus stated as follows:--
Revenue for one year gold $332,194.17
Disbursements for one year 198,338.93
Profit $133,855.24
Reserve price one million dollars gold. Conditions of payment
one-third cash, and two-thirds in three annual payments with six per
cent. interest per annum guaranteed by mortgage on the building and
plant or other acceptable security. It was not stated whether the
sale included a monopoly of army supply.
[233] _Sampaloc_ signifies _Tamarind_ in Tagálog.
[234] The first Philippine club was opened on November 6, 1898.
[235] The _carromata_ is a two-wheeled spring vehicle with a light
roof to keep off the sun and rain. In Spanish times it was commonly
used by the natives in Manila and by all classes in the provinces,
being a light, strong, and useful conveyance.
[236] _Vide_ "Official Roster of the Officers and Employees in the
Civil Service in the Philippine Islands." Manila, Bureau of Public
Printing, 1904.
[237] Independent Offices, i.e., not under control of a Civil
Commission Secretary.
[238] Under the "Cooper Bill," which came into operation on March 20,
1905, the Insular Government was authorized to increase the salaries
of the Chief Justice and the associated judges to $10,500 and $10,000
gold respectively. Under the same Act, judges of First Instance can
be called upon to serve in the Supreme Court when needed to form a
quorum, for which service they are allowed ten pesos per day besides
their travelling expenses from and to the place of their permanent
appointments. By Philippine Commission Act No. 1,314, the salaries
of the Chief Justice and associate judges were fixed at $10,000 each.
[239] "Report of the Philippine Commission, 1900." Published by the
Government Printing Office, Washington, 1901.
[240] Mr. William H. Taft, the first Civil Governor of the Philippines,
was born at Cincinnati (Ohio) on September 15, 1857. His father was
a jurist of repute, diplomat, and member of the Cabinet. After his
preparatory schooling in his native town, W. H. Taft graduated at
Yale University in 1878, studied law at Cincinnati and was called
to the bar in 1880. Since then he held several legal appointments
up to the year 1900, when he became a district judge, which post he
resigned on being commissioned to the Philippine Islands.
[241] _Vide_ Senate Document No. 331, Part I., 57th Congress,
1st Session.
[242] Mr. Luke E. Wright, the second Civil Governor and first
Gov.-General of the Philippines, was born in Tennessee in 1847, the
son of Judge Archibald Wright. At the age of sixteen he took arms in
the Confederate interest in the War of Secession. Called to the bar
in 1868, he became a partner in his father's firm and held several
important legal appointments. At the age of twenty-four he became
Attorney-General, and held this post for eight years. A Democrat in
politics, he is a strong character, as generous and courteous as he
is personally courageous.
[243] "Should we wish the Filipino people to judge of Americans by the
drunken, truculent American loafers who infest the small towns of the
Islands, living on the fruits of the labour of Filipino women, and who
give us more trouble than any other element in the Islands? Should we
wish the Filipino people to judge of American standards of honesty
by reading the humiliating list of American official and unofficial
defaulters in these Islands?"--_Extract from Governor W. H. Taft's
speech at the Union Reading College, Manila, in 1903, quoted in_
"Population of the Philippines," _Bulletin I, p. 9. Published by the
Bureau of the Census, 1904_.
[244] From a statement kindly furnished to me by the Adjutant-General,
Colonel W. A. Simpson (Manila).
[245] A "contract" Surgeon or Dental Surgeon is a civilian who comes
to the Islands on a three-years' contract. He is only temporarily an
Army officer.
General Officers' pay is as follows; viz.:--
Lieut.-General, Active Service $11,000; retired $8,250 gold.
Maj.-General, Active Service $7,500; retired $5,625 gold.
Brig.-General, Active Service $5,500; retired $4,125 gold.
The monthly pay of a private serving in the Islands is $15.60 gold.
[246] _Hadji_ signifies Knight, a title which any Mahometan can assume
after having made the pilgrimage to Mecca.
[247] The Americans occupied and the Spaniards evacuated Joló on May
20, 1899.
[248] _Vide_ Report of the Secretary of War for 1902, p. 18.
[249] Camp Vicars is said to have an elevation of 2,000 feet above
the sea. Lake Lanao is reputed to be 1,500 feet above sea-level.
[250] _Vide_ Captain J. J. Pershing's Report to the Adjutant-General
in Manila, dated Camp Vicars, Mindanao, May 15, 1903.
[251] _Vide_ Brig.-General Sumner's Report to the Adjutant-General
in Manila, dated Zamboanga, Mindanao, June 13, 1903.
[252] Maj.-General Leonard Wood, born October 9, 1860, was a doctor
of medicine by profession. On the outbreak of war with Spain he
was appointed Colonel of the First Volunteer Cavalry in Cuba, with
Mr. Roosevelt (now the United States President) as Lieut.-Colonel. At
the close of the war he was promoted to Brig.-General, and on December
13, 1899, received the appointment of Military Governor of Cuba,
which he held until the government of that island was transferred to
Señor Palma Estrada, the first President of the Cuban Republic. To
his brilliant reputation for statesmanship gained in the Antilles,
General Wood has now added the fame of a successful organizer of the
Southern Philippines. Beloved by his subordinates, his large-hearted
geniality wins him the admiration of all who know him, and even the
respect of the savage whom he had to coerce.
[253] _Mindanao_, the name of this southern island, signifies "Man
of the Lake."
[254] The limits and area of that portion of the Island under civil
government are defined in Philippine Commission Acts Nos. 127 and 128,
amended by Act No. 787. It is approximately all that land north of 8°
N. lat. and east of 123° 34' E. long.
[255] Under the above-cited Act No. 787, any military officer, from the
commander of the district downwards, holding concurrent civil office
in the province receives his army pay, plus 20 per cent, of the same
as remuneration for his civil service. The combined emolument of a
major-general as military commander and provincial governor would,
therefore, be $9,000 gold.
[256] Under Spanish rule the Moro country was divided thus:--Seven
districts, namely, Zamboanga, Misámis, Surigao, Davao, Cottabato,
Basílan, and Lanao, all under the Gov.-General of Mindanao. Joló was
ruled independently of Mindanao under another governor.
[257] Up to June 30, 1904, there was a total of 12 municipalities
organized.
[258] Philippine Commission Act No. 787, Section 13, Clause II,
provides that the Moro Government is to "vest in their local or tribe
rulers as nearly as possible the same authority over the people as
they now exercise." Clause L: "To enact laws for the abolition of
slavery, and the suppression of all slave-hunting and slave trade."
[259] From a statement kindly furnished to me by the Military and
Provincial Governor, Maj.-General Leonard Wood, June, 1904.
[260] At Malábang about 500, at Párang-Párang 205, and at Joló 744.
[261] _Kudarangan Cotta _was situated on the north bank of the Rio
Grande. Datto Piang's fort stands at the junction of this river and the
Bacat River. Fort Reina Regente, established in this neighbourhood,
was the most inland Spanish stronghold in Mindanao, and was at one
period in Spanish times garrisoned by 800 to 1,000 convict troops
(_disciplinarios_).
[262] _Panglima_ signifies General, or Chief of Warriors.
[263] The father of Mr. J. Schück was a German sea captain, who got
into trouble with the Spaniards because he traded directly with the
Sultan of Sulu. His ship and all he possessed were seized, and Captain
Schück decided to settle in the Island under the protection of the
Sultan. He took a Mora wife, became a very prosperous planter, and the
Spaniards were eventually only too glad to cultivate his friendship. He
died in 1887, leaving three sons; one is the gentleman mentioned above,
another is the military interpreter, and the third manages the fine
property and trading interests of the family. Mr. J. Schück's two
sisters-in-law are Moras.
[264] _Vide_ Legislative Council Act No. 51, relative to the Pearl
Fisheries, in which the Sultan claims hereditary right. Also "Annual
Report of Maj.-General George W. Davis, 1903," containing Colonel
W. M. Wallace's report to the Adjutant-General to the effect that
at Cagayán de Joló, on May 21, 1903, he gave instructions that the
Sultan's emissaries were not to be allowed to collect the customary
P5 per capita of tribute.
[265] _Vide_ Report of the Moro Province for the fiscal year ending
June 30, 1904.
[266] Under the _Homestead Law_, 39.54 acres of Government land
may be acquired by any citizen of the Philippine Islands or of the
United States, and 2,530 acres by a corporation. The grant or sale
of such land is subject to occupancy and cultivation of the acreage
for a period of not less than five years, and during that period the
purchaser or grantee cannot alienate or encumber the land or the title
thereto. Six consecutive months' absence from the land, during the
above period of five years, cancels the grant. The land granted under
this Act cannot be seized for debt contracted prior to the grant. Many
applications have already been made for land under this Act.
[267] "No teacher or other person shall teach or criticize the doctrine
of any Church, religious sect, or denomination, or shall attempt to
influence the pupils for or against any Church or religious sect in
any public school established under this Act. If any teacher shall
intentionally violate this section, he or she shall, after due hearing,
be dismissed from the public service. _Provided, however_, that it
shall be lawful for the priest, or minister of any church established
in the town where a public school is situated ... to teach religion
for one half an hour three times a week in the school building to
those public school pupils whose parents or guardians desire it,"
etc.--Section 16 of the Public School Act, No. 74.
[268] Placido Louis Chapelle, Archbishop of New Orleans, was born
in France in 1842, and, at the age of seventeen years, emigrated to
America, where he entered the priesthood. In 1894 he received the
mitre of Santa Fé, and in 1897 that of New Orleans. In 1898 he was
appointed Apostolic Delegate to Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippine
Islands. His mission ended, he returned to New Orleans, where he died
of yellow fever in August, 1905.
[269] _Vide_ Senate Document No. 190, p. 62, 56th Congress, 2nd
Session.
[270] _Ibid_., p. 221.
[271] At the outbreak of the Rebellion (1896) the total number of
friars of the four Orders of Dominicans, Agustinians, Recoletos,
and Franciscans in these Islands was 1,105, of whom about 40 were
killed by the rebels. There were, moreover, 86 Jesuit priests, 81
Jesuit lay brothers and teachers, 10 Benedictines, and 49 Paulists;
but all these were outside the "friar question."
[272] _Vide_ Senate Document No. 190, p. 2, 56th Congress, 2nd Session.
[273] Bernardino Nozaleda, a native of Asturias, Spain, of rustic
parentage, was originally a professor in Manila, where he became
Archbishop in 1889. In 1903 he was nominated for the archbishopric of
Valencia, Spain, but the citizens absolutely refused to receive him,
because of evil report concerning him.
[274] In May, 1904, Father Singson was appointed by His Holiness
Domestic Prelate of the Pope, with the title of Monsignore.
[275] Report of the Secretary of War for 1902, p. 234. Published
in Washington.
[276] I was in Italy during the whole of the negotiations. The Italian
clerical press alluded to the outcome as a diplomatic victory for
the Vatican.
[277] The Franciscan Order is not allowed by its rules to possess any
property. It therefore had no agricultural lands, and no other property
than dwelling-houses for members, two convents, and two infirmaries.
[278] _Vide_ Senate Document No. 112, p. 27, 56th Congress, 2nd
Session; and Senate Document No. 331, p. 180 of Part I., 57th Congress,
1st Session. Published by the Government Printing Office, Washington.
[279] _Vide_ speech of Gov.-General (then styled Civil Governor)
Luke E. Wright on assuming office on February 1, 1904. Reported in
the _Manila Official Gazette_, Vol. II., No. 5, dated February 3, 1904.
[280] This condition was termed "frailuno." In its application to the
European it simply denoted "partisan of the regular clergy." Its
popular signification when applied to the native was a total
relinquishment of, or incapacity for, independent appreciation of
the friars' dicta in mundane matters.
[281] Since the Treaty of Paris (1898) the Spanish friars are
foreigners in these Islands. The Philippine clergy oppose a foreign
monopoly of their Church. They declare themselves competent to
undertake the cure of souls, and claim the fulfilment of the Council
of Trent decrees which prohibit the regular clergy to hold benefices,
except on two conditions, viz.:--(1) as missionaries to non-Christians,
(2) as temporary parish priests in christian communities where
qualified secular clergy cannot be found to take their places. The
crux of the whole question is the competency or incompetency of
the Philippine clergy. The Aglipayans allege that Pope Leo XIII.,
in the last years of his pontificate, issued a bull declaring the
Filipinos to be incompetent for the cure of souls. They strongly resent
this. Whether the bull exists or not, the unfitness of the Philippine
clergy to take the place of the regular clergy was suggested by the
Holy See in 1902 (_vide_ p. 599).
The Council of Trent was the 18th oecumenical council of the Church,
assembled at Trent, a town in the Austrian Tyrol, and sat, with
certain interruptions, from December 13, 1545, until December 4,
1563. Nearly every point of doubt or dispute within the Catholic
Church was discussed at this Council. Its decrees were confirmed and
published by Pope Pius IV. in 1564 by papal decree, being a brief
summary of the doctrines known as the Profession of the Tridentine
Faith, commonly called also the Creed of Pius IV.
[282] Monsignor Ambrogio Agius, born on September 17, 1856,
of a distinguished Maltese family, entered on his novitiate at
the Benedictine Monastery of Ramsgate, England, on September 8,
1871. Having finished his studies of philosophy and theology in Rome,
he was ordained as priest on October 16, 1881, in the Cathedral of
Santo Scolastico at Subiaco. He then returned to England, but in
1895 he was called to Rome, where for nine years he held several
ecclesiastical offices. His ability was observed by Pope Leo XIII.,
and by his successor Pius X., who raised Ambrogio Agius to the dignity
of titular Archbishop of Palmyra and appointed him Apostolic Delegate
to the Philippine Islands in the year 1904, in succession to the late
Monsignor Giovanni Guidi.
[283] The Census Report of 1903 shows the Civilized male population
twenty-one years of age and over to be as follows: of Superior
Education 50,140, Literate 489,609, and Illiterate 1,137,776.
[284] _Vide Official Gazette_, Vol. II., No. 4, dated January 27, 1904.
[285] Under the Act of Congress which authorized the taking of
the census, dated July 1, 1902. it is provided (Section (6) that a
Philippine Assembly shall be created two years after the publication of
the Census Report. This publication, complete in four volumes, having
been issued on March 27, 1905, the following day the Gov.-General at
Manila notified by proclamation that "in case a condition of general
and complete peace, with recognition of the authority of the United
States, shall have continued in the territory of these Islands, not
inhabited by Moros or non-christian tribes, and such facts shall have
been certified to the President by the Philippine Commission, the
President, upon being satisfied thereof, shall direct the Philippine
Commission to call, and the Commission shall call, a general election
for the choice of delegates to a popular assembly of the people of
the said territory in the Philippine Islands, which shall be known as
the _Philippine Assembly_, and which provides also that after the said
Assembly shall have been convened and organized, all the legislative
power heretofore conferred on the Philippine Commission in that
part of these Islands not inhabited by Moros or other non-christian
tribes shall be vested in a Legislature consisting of two Houses--the
Philippine Commission and the Philippine Assembly. In witness whereof
(etc., etc.) this 28th day of March, 1905."
[286] At Báguio, in the mountain region of the Benguet district, at an
altitude of about 5,000 feet, the Insular Government has established
a health-resort for the recreation of the members of the Civil
Commission. The air is pure, and the temperature so low (max. 78°,
min. 46° Fahr.) that pine-forests exist in the neighbourhood, and
potatoes (which are well known all over the Islands for many years
past) are cultivated there. The distance from Manila to Báguio, in
a straight line, would be about 130 miles. By this route--that is
to say, by railway to Dagúpan, 120 miles, and then by the 55-mile
road (opened in the spring of 1905)--the travelling distance is 175
miles. The new road runs through a country half uninhabited, and leads
to (commercially) nowhere. The amount originally appropriated for the
making of this 55-mile road was $75,000 gold (Philippine Commission
Act No. 61). Up to January, 1905, $2,400,000 gold had been expended
on its construction. It is curious to note that this sum includes
$366,260 gold taken from the Congressional Relief Fund (_vide_
p. 621). A further appropriation of $17,500 gold has been made for its
improvement, with the prospect of large sums being yet needed for this
undertaking, which is of no benefit whatever to the Filipinos. They
need no sanatorium, and Europeans have lived in the Islands, up to 30
years, without one. The word _Báguio_ in Tagálog signifies Hurricane.
[287] _Vide_ "Population of the Philippines," Bulletin 1, published by
the Department of Commerce and Labour. Bureau of the Census, 1904,
Washington. Census taken in 1903 under the direction of General
J. P. Sanger, U.S. Army.
[288] There are four separate official returns, each showing different
figures.
[289] _Vide_ "Population of the Philippines," Bulletin 1, published
by the Department of Commerce and Labour. Bureau of the Census,
1904, Washington.
[290] Under the provisions of Articles XII., XIII. and XIV.,
Immigration Regulations for the Philippine Islands of June 7, 1899.
[291] _Vide_, Report of the Municipal Board of Manila for the fiscal
year ending June 30, 1904, p. 32.
[292] Report on the Commerce of the Philippine Islands, prepared in
the Bureau of Insular Affairs, War Department, Washington, 1903.
[293] The Japanese Government is making an effort to produce cane
sugar in Formosa sufficient for Japan's consumption.
[294] "Ever since the occupation of these Islands by the American army,
four years ago, the price of labour has steadily increased.... It is
needless to say that every industry will be profoundly affected by
this." _Vide_ Notes in "Monthly Summary of Commerce of the Philippine
Islands," May, 1903. Prepared in the Bureau of Insular Affairs,
War Department, Washington.
[295] _Vide_ statement of Governor W. H. Taft before the U.S. Senate,
January 31, 1902, in Senate Document No. 331, Part I., 57th Congress,
1st Session, p. 258.
[296] _Vide_ Report of the Moro Province for the fiscal year ending
June 30, 1904, p. 27.
[297] In the years 1888-97 the circulation of Mexican and
Spanish-Philippine dollars (pesos) was computed at about 36,000,000.
[298] The "International Banking Corporation": Capital paid up,
£820,000; reserve fund, £820,000. The "Guaranty Trust Company":
Capital, reserves, and undivided profits, about $7,500,000 gold.
[299] Shipments to Hong-Kong are often goods in transit for United
States.
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