The Philippines: Past and Present (volume 1 of 2)

Volume I

1914

CONTENTS

VOL. I

Chapter

I. View Point and Subject-Matter II. Was Independence Promised? III. Insurgent "Coöperation" IV. The Premeditated Insurgent Attack V. Insurgent Rule and the Wilcox-Sargent Report VI. Insurgent Rule in the Cagayan Valley VII. Insurgent Rule in the Visayas and Elsewhere VIII. Did We Destroy a Republic? IX. The Conduct of the War X. Mr. Bryan and Independence XI. The First Philippine Commission XII. The Establishment of Civil Government XIII. The Philippine Civil Service XIV. The Constabulary and Public Order XV. The Administration of Justice XVI. Health Conditions XVII. Baguio and the Benguet Road XVIII. The Coördination of Scientific Work

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOL. I

Peace and Prosperity Fort San Antonio Abad, showing the Effect of the Fire from Dewey's Fleet Felipe Buencamino The San Juan Bridge Insurgent Prisoners Typical Insurgent Trenches Inside View of Insurgent Trenches at the Bagbag River General Henry W. Lawton Feeding Filipino Refugees The First Philippine Commission The Second Philippine Commission The Return of Mr. Taft Governor-general James F. Smith with a Bontoc Igorot Escort Governor-general Forbes in the Wild Man's Country The Philippine Supreme Court An Unsanitary Well A Flowing Artesian Well An Unimproved Street in the Filipino Quarter of Manila An Improved Street in the Filipino Quarter of Manila Disinfecting by the Acre An Old-style Provincial Jail Retreat at Bilibid Prison, Manila Bilibid Prison Hospital Modern Contagious Disease Ward, San Lazaro Hospital Filipina Trained Nurses Staff of the Bontoc Hospital A Victim of Yaws before and after Treatment with Salvarsan The Culion Leper Colony Building the Benguet Road Freight Autos on the Benguet Road The Famous Zig-zag on the Benguet Road A Typical Baguio Road One of the First Benguet Government Cottages Typical Cottages at Baguio A Baguio Home The Baguio Hospital Government Centre at Baguio A Scene in the Baguio Teachers' Camp The Baguio Country Club The Bureau of Science Building, Manila The Philippine General Hospital The College of Medicine and Surgery, Manila An Old-style Schoolhouse, with Teachers and Pupils A Modern Primary School Building Old-style Central School Building Modern Central School Building Typical Scene in a Trade School An Embroidery Class Philippine Embroidery Filipino Trained Nurses A School Athletic Team Filipina Girls playing Basket-ball University Hall, Manila Bakídan In Hostile Country Travel under Difficulties Dangerous Navigation A Negrito Family and their "House" A Typical Negrito Typical Kalingas Settling a Head-hunting Feud Entertaining the Kalingas An Ifugao Family Ifugao Dancers An Ifugao Dancer Ifugao Rice Terraces

THE PHILIPPINES PAST AND PRESENT

CHAPTER I. View Point and Subject-Matter

View Point and Subject-Matter

It is customary in Latin countries for a would-be author or orator to endeavour, at the beginning of his book or his speech, to establish his status. Possibly I have become partially Latinized as the result of some eighteen years of residence in the Philippines. At all events it is my purpose to state at the outset facts which will tend to make clear my view point and at the same time briefly to outline the subject-matter which I hereinafter discuss.

As a boy I went through several of the successive stages of collector's fever from which the young commonly suffer. First it was postage stamps; then birds' nests, obtained during the winter season when no longer of use to their builders. Later I was allowed to collect eggs, and finally the birds themselves. At one time my great ambition was to become a taxidermist. My family did not actively oppose this desire but suggested that a few preliminary years in school and college might prove useful.

I eventually lost my ambition to be a taxidermist but did not lose my interest in zoölogy and botany. While a student at the University of Michigan I specialized in these subjects. I was fortunate in having as one of my instructors Professor Joseph B. Steere, then at the head of the Department of Zoölogy. Professor Steere, who had been a great traveller, at times entertained his classes with wonderfully interesting tales of adventure on the Amazon and in the Andes, Peru, Formosa, the Philippines and the Dutch Moluccas. My ambition was fired by his stories and when in the spring of 1886 he announced his intention of returning to the Philippines the following year to take up and prosecute anew zoölogical work which he had begun there in 1874, offering to take with him a limited number of his students who were to have the benefit of his knowledge of Spanish and of his wide experience as a traveller and collector, and were in turn to allow him to work up their collections after their return to the United States, I made up my mind to go.

I was then endeavouring to get through the University on an allowance of $375 per year and was in consequence not overburdened with surplus funds. I however managed to get my life insured for $1500 and to borrow $1200 on the policy, and with this rather limited sum upon which to draw purchased an outfit for a year's collecting and sailed with Doctor Steere for Manila. Two other young Americans accompanied him. One of these, Doctor Frank S. Bourns, was like myself afterwards destined to play a part in Philippine affairs which was not then dreamed of by either of us.

We spent approximately a year in the islands. Unfortunately we had neglected to provide ourselves with proper official credentials and as a result we had some embarrassing experiences. We were arrested by suspicious Spanish officials shortly after our arrival and were tried on trumped-up charges. On several subsequent occasions we narrowly escaped arrest and imprisonment.

The unfriendly attitude of certain of our Spanish acquaintances was hardly to be wondered at. They could not believe that sensible, civilized human beings would shoot tiny birds, pay for eggs the size of the tip of one's little finger more than hens' eggs were worth, undergo not a few hardships and run many risks while living in the simplest of native houses on very inadequate food, unless actuated by some hidden purpose. At different times they suspected us of looking for gold deposits, of designing to stir up trouble among the natives, or of being political spies.

When Doctor Bourns came back with the American troops in 1908 and I returned as a member of the first Philippine Commission in 1909, this last supposition became a fixed belief with many of our former Spanish acquaintances who still remained in the islands, and they frankly expressed their regret that they had not shot us while they had the chance.

Over against certain unpleasant experiences with those who could not understand us or our work I must set much kind and invaluable assistance rendered by others who could, and did.

All in all we spent a most interesting year, visiting eighteen of the more important islands.

Throughout this trip we lived in very close contact with the Filipinos, either occupying the tribunales, the municipal buildings of their towns, where they felt at liberty to call and observe us at all hours of the day and night, or actually living in their houses, which in some instances were not vacated by the owners during our occupancy.

Incidentally we saw something of several of the wild tribes, including the Tagbanuas of Palawan, the Moros of Joló, Basilan and Mindanao, and the Mangyans of Mindoro.

We experienced many very real hardships, ran not a few serious risks and ended our sojourn with six weeks of fever and starvation in the interior of Mindoro. While we would not have cut short our appointed stay by a day, we were nevertheless delighted when we could turn our faces homeward, and Doctor Bourns and I agreed that we had had quite enough of life in the Philippines.

Upon my arrival at my home in Vermont a competent physician told my family that I might not live a week. I however recuperated so rapidly that I was able to return to the University of Michigan that fall and to complete the work of my senior year. I became a member of the teaching staff of the institution before my graduation.

Little as I suspected it at the time, the tropics had fixed their strangely firm grip on me during that fateful first trip to the Far East which was destined to modify my whole subsequent life. I had firmly believed that if fortunate enough to get home I should have sense enough to stay there, but before six months had elapsed I was finding life at Ann Arbor, Michigan, decidedly prosaic, and longing to return to the Philippines and finish a piece of zoölogical work which I knew was as yet only begun.

Doctor Bourns, like myself, was eager to go back, and we set out to raise $10,000 to pay the expenses of a two-years collecting tour, in the course of which we hoped to visit regions not hitherto penetrated by any zoölogist.

Times were then getting hard, and good Doctor Angell, the president of the university, thought it a great joke that two young fellows like ourselves should attempt to raise so considerable a sum to be spent largely for our own benefit. Whenever he met me on the street he used to ask whether we had obtained that $10,000 yet, and then shake with laughter. One of the great satisfactions of my life came when, on a beautiful May morning in 1890, I was able to answer his inquiry in the affirmative.

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