The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes Part 32

[9] The European mail reaches Manila through Singapore and Hongkong. Singapore is about equidistant from the other two places. Letters therefore could be received in the Philippines as soon as in China, if they were sent direct from Singapore. In that case, however, a steamer communication with that port must be established, and the traffic is not yet sufficiently developed to bear the double expense. According to the report of the English Consul (May, 1870), there is, besides the Government steamer, a private packet running between Hongkong and Manila. The number of pa.s.sengers it conveyed to China amounted, in 1868, to 441 Europeans and 3,048 Chinese; total, 3,489. The numbers carried the other way were 330 Europeans and 4,664 Chinese; in all, 4,994. The fare is $80 for Europeans and $20 for Chinamen.

[10] Zuniga, Mavers, I, 225.

[11] Dr. Pedro Pelaez, in temporary charge of the diocese and dying in the cathedral, was the foremost Filipino victim. Funds raised in Spain for relief never reached the sufferers, but not till the end of Spanish rule was it safe to comment on this in the Philippines.--C.

[12] Zuniga, XVIII, M. Velarde, p. 139.

[13] Captain Salmon, Goch., S. 33.

[14] The opening of this port proved so advantageous that I intended to have given a few interesting details of its trade in a separate chapter, chiefly gathered from the verbal and written remarks of the English Vice-Consul, the late Mr. N. Loney, and from other consular reports.

[15] In 1868, 112 foreign vessels, to the aggregate of 74,054 tons, and Spanish s.h.i.+ps to the aggregate of 26,762 tons, entered the port of Manila. Nearly all the first came in ballast, but left with cargoes. The latter both came and left in freight. (English Consul's Report, 1869.)

[16] In 1868 the total exports amounted to $14,013,108; of this England alone accounted for $4,857,000, and the whole of the rest of Europe for only $102,477. The first amount does not include the tobacco duty paid to Spain by the colony, $3,169,144. (English Consul's Report, 1869.)

[17] La Perouse said that Manila was perhaps the most fortunately situated city in the world.

[18] Sapan or Sibucao, Caesalpinia Sapan. Pernambuco or Brazil wood, to which the empire of Brazil owes its name, comes from the Caesalpinia echinat and the Caesalpinia Braziliensis. (The oldest maps of America remark of Brazil: "Its only useful product is Brazil (wood).") The sapan of the Philippines is richer in dye stuff than all other eastern asiatic woods, but it ranks below the Brazilian sapan. It has, nowadays, lost its reputation, owing to its being often stupidly cut down too early. It is sent especially to China, where it is used for dyeing or printing in red. The stuff is first macerated with alum, and then for a finish dipped in a weak alcoholic solution of alkali. The reddish brown tint so frequently met with in the clothes of the poorer Chinese is produced from sapan.

[19] Large quant.i.ties of small mussel sh.e.l.ls (Cypraea moneta) were sent at this period to Siam, where they are still used as money.

[20] Berghaus' Geo. hydrogr. Memoir.

[21] Manila was first founded in 1571, but as early as 1565, Urdaneta, Legaspi's pilot, had found the way back through the Pacific Ocean while he was seeking in the higher northern lat.i.tudes for a favorable north-west wind. Strictly speaking, however, Urdaneta was not the first to make use of the return pa.s.sage, for one of Legaspi's five vessels, under the command of Don Alonso de Arellano, which had on board as pilot Lope Martin, a mulatto, separated itself from the fleet after they had reached the Islands, and returned to New Spain on a northern course, in order to claim the promised reward for the discovery. Don Alonso was disappointed, however, by the speedy return of Urdaneta.

[22] Kottenkamp I., 1594.

[23] At first the maximum value of the imports only was limited, and the Manila merchants were not over scrupulous in making false statements as to their worth; to put an end to these malpractices a limit was placed to the amount of silver exported. According to Mas, however, the silver illegally exported amounted to six or eight times the prescribed limit.

[24] La Perouse mentions a French firm (Sebis), that, in 1787, had been for many years established in Manila.

[25] R. c.o.c.ks to Thomas Wilson (Calendar of State Papers, India, No. 823) .... "The English will obtain a trade in China, so they bring not in any padres (as they term them), which the Chinese cannot abide to hear of, because heretofore they came in such swarms, and are always begging without shame."

[26] As late as 1857 some old decrees, pa.s.sed against the establishment of foreigners, were renewed. A royal ordinance of 1844 prohibits the admission of strangers into the interior of the colony under any pretext whatsoever.

[27] Vide Pinkerton.

[28] Each packet was 5 2 1/2 1 1/2 = 18.75 Spanish cubic feet. St. Croix.

[29] Vide Comyn's comercio exterior.

[30] The obras pias were pious legacies which usually stipulated that two-thirds of their value should be advanced at interest for the furtherance of maritime commercial undertakings until the premiums, which for a voyage to Acapulco amounted to 50, to China 25, and to India 35 per cent., had increased the original capital to a certain amount. The interest of the whole was then to be devoted to ma.s.ses for the founders, or to other pious and benevolent purposes. A third was generally kept as a reserve fund to cover possible losses. The government long since appropriated these reserve funds as compulsory loans, "but they are still considered as existing."

When the trade with Acapulco came to an end, the princ.i.p.als could no longer be laid out according to the intentions of the founders, and they were lent out at interest in other ways. By a royal ordinance of November 3, 1854, a junta was appointed to administer the property of the . The total capital of the five endowments (in reality only four, for one of them no longer possessed anything) amounted to nearly a million of dollars. The profits from the loans were distributed according to the amounts of the original capital, which, however, no longer existed in cash, as the government had disposed of them.

[31] Vide Thevenot.

[32] According to Morga, between the fourteenth and fifteenth.

[33] Vide De Guignes, Pinkerton XI, and Anson X.

[34] Vide Anson.

[35] Randolph's History of California.

[36] In Morga's time, the galleons took seventy days to the Ladrone Islands, from ten to twelve from thence to Cape Espiritu Santo, and eight more to Manila.

[37] A very good description of these voyages may be found in the 10th chapter of Anson's work, which also contains a copy of a sea map, captured in the Cavadonga, displaying the proper track of the galleons to and from Acapulco.

[38] De Guignes.

[39] The officer in command of the expedition, to whom the t.i.tle of general was given, had always a captain under his orders, and his share in the gain of each trip amounted to $40,000. The pilot was content with $20,000. The first lieutenant (master) was ent.i.tled to 9 per cent on the sale of the cargo, and pocketed from this and from the profits of his own private ventures upwards of $350,000. (Vide Arenas.)

[40] The value of the cargoes Anson captured amounted to $1,313,000, besides 35,682 ounces of fine silver and cochineal. While England and Spain were at peace, Drake plundered the latter to the extent of at least one and a half million of dollars. Thomas Candish burnt the rich cargo of the Santa Anna, as he had no room for it on board his own vessel.

[41] For instance, in 1786 the San Andres, which had a cargo on board valued at a couple of millions, found no market for it in Acapulco; the same thing happened in 1787 to the San Jose, and a second time in 1789 to the San Andres.

[42] In 1855 its population consisted of 586 European Spaniards, 1,378 Creoles, 6,323 Malay Filipinos and mestizos, 332 Chinamen, 2 Hamburgers, 1 Portuguese, and 1 Negro.

[43] The earthquake of 1863 destroyed the old bridge. It is intended, however, to restore it; the supporting pillars are ready, and the superinc.u.mbent iron structure is shortly expected from Europe (April, 1872).--The central span, damaged in the high water of 1914, was temporarily replaced with a wooden structure and plans have been prepared for a new bridge, permitting s.h.i.+ps to pa.s.s and to be used also by the railway, nearer the river mouth.--C.

[44] Roescher's Colonies.

[45] A brief description of a nipa house, accompanying an ill.u.s.tration, is here omitted.--C.

[46] The following figures will give an idea of the contents of the newspapers. I do not allude to the Bulletin Official, which is reserved for official announcements, and contains little else of any importance. The number lying before me of the Comercio (Nov. 29, 1858), a paper that appears six times a week, consists of four pages, the printed portion in each of which is 11 inches by 17; the whole, therefore, contains 748 square inches of printed matter. They are distributed as follows:--

t.i.tle, 27 1/2 sq. in.; an essay on the population of Spain, taken from a book, 102 1/2 sq. in.; under the heading "News from Europe,"

an article, quoted from the Annals of La Caridad, upon the increase of charity and Catholic instruction in France, 40 1/2 sq. in.; Part I, of a treatise on Art and its Origin (a series of truisms), 70 sq. in.; extracts from the official sheet, 20 1/2 sq. in.; a few ancient anecdotes, 59 sq. in. Religious portion (this is divided into two parts--official and unofficial). The first contains the saints for the different days of the year, etc., and the announcements of religious festivals; the second advertises a forthcoming splendid procession, and contains the first half of a sermon preached three years before, on the anniversary of the same festival, 99 sq. in., besides an instalment of an old novel, 154, and advertis.e.m.e.nts, 175 sq. in.; total, 748 sq. in. In the last years, however, the newspapers sometimes have contained serious essays, but of late these appear extremely seldom.

[47] Vide Pigafetta.

[48] c.o.c.k-fighting is not alluded to in the "Ordinances of good government," collected by Hurtado Corcuera in the middle of the seventeenth century. In 1779 c.o.c.k-fights were taxed for the first time. In 1781 the government farmed the right of entrance to the galleras (derived from gallo, rooster) for the yearly sum of $14,798. In 1863 the receipts from the galleras figured in the budget for $106,000.

A special decree of 100 clauses was issued in Madrid on the 21st of March, 1861, for the regulation of c.o.c.k-fights. The 1st clause declares that since c.o.c.k-fights are a source of revenue to the State, they shall only take place in arenas licensed by the Government. The 6th restricts them to Sundays and holidays; the 7th, from the conclusion of high ma.s.s to sunset. The 12th forbids more than $50 to be staked on one contest. The 38th decrees that each c.o.c.k shall carry but one weapon, and that on its left spur. By the 52nd the fight is to be considered over when one or both c.o.c.ks are dead, or when one shows the white feather. In the London Daily News of the 30th June, 1869, I find it reported that five men were sentenced at Leeds to two months' hard labor for setting six c.o.c.ks to fight one another with iron spurs. From this it appears that this once favorite spectacle is no longer permitted in England.

[49] The raw materials of these adventures were supplied by a French planter, M. de la Gironiere, but their literary parent is avowedly Alexander Dumas.

[50] Botanical gardens do not seem to prosper under Spanish auspices. Chamisso complains that, in his day, there were no traces left of the botanical gardens founded at Cavite by the learned Cuellar. The gardens at Madrid, even, are in a sorry plight; its hothouses are almost empty. The grounds which were laid out at great expense by a wealthy and patriotic Spaniard at Orotava (Teneriffe), a spot whose climate has been of the greatest service to invalids, are rapidly going to decay. Every year a considerable sum is appropriated to it in the national budget, but scarcely a fraction of it ever reaches Orotava. When I was there in 1867, the gardener had received no salary for twenty-two months, all the workmen were dismissed, and even the indispensable water supply had been cut off.

[51] For a proof of this vide the Berlin Ethnographical Museum, Nos. 294-295.

[52] Bertillon (Acclimatement et Acclimatation, Dict. Encycl. des Science, Medicales) ascribes the capacity of the Spaniards for acclimatization in tropical countries to the large admixture of Syrian and African blood which flows in their veins. The ancient Iberians appear to have reached Spain from Chaldea across Africa; the Phoenicians and Carthaginians had flouris.h.i.+ng colonies in the peninsula, and, in later times, the Moors possessed a large portion of the country for a century, and ruled with great splendor, a state of things leading to a mixture of race. Thus Spanish blood has three distinct times been abundantly crossed with that of Africa. The warm climate of the peninsula must also largely contribute to render its inhabitants fit for life in the tropics. The pure Indo-European race has never succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng itself on the southern sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean, much less in the arid soil of the tropics.

In Martinique, where from eight to nine thousand whites live on the proceeds of the toil of 125,000 of the colored race, the population is diminis.h.i.+ng instead of increasing. The French creoles seem to have lost the power of maintaining themselves, in proportion to the existing means of subsistence, and of multiplying. Families which do not from time to time fortify themselves with a strain of fresh European blood, die out in from three to four generations. The same thing happens in the English, but not in the Spanish Antilles, although the climate and the natural surroundings are the same. According to Ramon de la Sagra, the death-rate is smaller among the creoles, and greater among the natives, than it is in Spain; the mortality among the garrison, however, is considerable. The same writer states that the real acclimatization of the Spanish race takes place by selection; the unfit die, and the others thrive.

[53] An unnecessary line is here omitted.--C.

[54] Depons, speaking of the means employed in America to obtain the same end, says, "I am convinced that it is impossible to engraft the Christian religion on the Indian mind without mixing up their own inclinations and customs with those of Christianity; this has been even carried so far, that at one time theologians raised the question, whether it was lawful to eat human flesh? But the most singular part of the proceeding is, that the question was decided in favor of the anthropophagi."