The Story of the Philippines. Murat Halstead

in one hand, and a few handkerchiefs in another, their skirts streaming in grace and defiance before the rising gale, they sang hosannas, and there were attitudes both of triumph and despair as the fair followers, dashed with spray, gave up the chase, passionately kissing their hands god-speed and good-by. This was going to the Indies through the Golden Gate!

      A breakage of dishes, that sounded as though the ship were going to pieces, belied the prophesy that beyond the bar there was to be no moaning; and the Pacific would not be pacified. However, the reputation of the ocean was good enough to go to sleep on, but the berths squirmed in sympathy with the twisting and plunging ship. It was not a "sound of revelry by night," to which the wakeful listened through the dismal hours, and in the morning there was a high sea—grand rollers crowned with frothy lace, long black slopes rising and smiting like waves of liquid iron.

      The Pacific was an average North Atlantic, and it was explained by the tale that the peaceful part of this ocean is away down South where the earth is most rotund, and the trade winds blow on so serenely that they lull the navigators into dreams of peace that induce a state of making haste slowly and a willingness to forget and be forgotten, whether—

      Of those who husbanded the golden grain

       Or those who flung it to the winds like rain,

      The gulls are not our snowy birds of the Atlantic. We are lonesome out here, and the Albatross sweeps beside us, hooded like a cobra, an evil creature trying to hoodoo us, with owlish eyes set in a frame like ghastly spectacle glasses.

      General Merritt's blue eyes shone like diamonds through the stormy experiences while the young staff officers curled up as the scientists did on the floor, and smiled a sort of sickly smile! The highest compliment that can be paid them is that the group of officers and gentlemen surrounding the commander of the expedition to the Philippines, express his own character.

      It was funny to find that the private soldiers were better served with food than the General and his staff. There was reform, so as to even up the matter of rations, but the General was not anxious and solicitous for better food. His idea of the correct supper after a hard day's service is a goodly sized sliced onion with salt, meat broiled on two sticks, hard tack, a tin cup of coffee, for luxuries a baked potato, a pipe of tobacco, a nip of whisky, a roll in a blanket and a sleep until the next day's duties are announced by the bugle.

      As the gentlemen of the staff got their sea legs, and flavored the narration of their experiences with humor, I found myself in a cloudy state and mentioned a small matter to the brigadier surgeon, who whipped out a thermometer and took my temperature, and that man of science gave me no peace night or day, and drove me from the ship into Paradise—that is to say I was ordered to stay at Honolulu. Through a window of the Queen's hospital I saw lumps of tawny gold that were pomegranates shaking in the breeze, another tree glowed with dates, and a broad, vividly green hedge was rich with scarlet colors. I was duly examined by physicians, who were thorough as German specialists. I had, in the course of a few hours, a nap, a dish of broth, a glass of milk, a glass of ice water and an egg nog. That broth flowed like balm to the right spot. It was chicken broth. When I guzzled the egg nog I would have bet ten to one on beating that fever in a week, and the next morning about 4:30, when there was competitive crowing by a hundred roosters, I was glad of the concert, for it gave assurance of a supply of chickens to keep up the broth and the eggs that disguised the whiskey.

      Two days later I gave up the egg nog because it was too good for me. I knew I did not deserve anything so nice, and suspected it was a beneficence associated with a cloud on my brow. I had the approval of the hospital physician as to egg nog, and he cut off a lot of dainties sent by the Honolulu ladies, who must have imagined that I was one of the heroes of the war. Their mission is to make heroes happy. I was detained under the royal palms, and other palms that were planted by the missionaries, four weeks, and got away on the ship Peru with Major-General Otis, and when we had gone on for a fortnight, as far as from the Baltic to Lake Erie, we saw some rocks that once were Spanish property.

      As we left Honolulu the air was already a-glitter with Star Spangled Banners. There are three great points to be remembered as to the annexation of Hawaii:

      1. There is not to be a continuance of the slavery of Asiatics in the new possession.

      2. "Manhood suffrage" is not to be extended to Asiatics, often actually as under strictly conventional constitutional construction.

      3. The archipelago is to be a United States territory, but not a State of the United States. Ex-President Harrison says in his most interesting book: "This Country of Ours," which should be one of our national school books:

      "Out of the habit of dealing with the public domain has come the common thought that all territory that we acquire must, when sufficiently populous, be erected into States. But why may we not take account of the quality of the people as well as of their numbers, if future acquisitions should make it proper to do so? A territorial form of government is not so inadequate that it might not serve for an indefinite time."

      It is to be remarked of the Hawaiian Islands that they did not possess the original riches of timber that distinguished the West Indies, especially Cuba, where Columbus found four varieties of oranges. One of the features of Hawaiian forestry is the Royal Palm, but it was not indigenous to the islands. The oldest of the stately royalists is not of forty years' growth, and yet they add surprising grace to many scenes, and each year will increase their height and enhance their beauty.

      Hawaiians will be saved from extinction by miscegenation. There will be no harm done these feeble people by the shelter of the flag of the great republic. The old superstitions prevail among them to an extent greater than is generally understood. I had the privilege of visiting an American home, the background of which was a rugged mountain that looked like a gigantic picture setting forth the features of a volcanic world. Far up the steep is a cave in which the bones of many of the old savages were deposited in the days of civil war and inhuman sacrifices. The entrance was long ago—in the days the Hawaii people describe as "Before the Missionaries." The hole going to the holy cavern was closed, but there is still pious watching over the place of bones, and if there are climbers of the mountain not to be trusted with the solemn secrets of ancient times, they are stalked by furtive watchmen of the consecrated bones, and no doubt the ever alert sentinels would resist violation of the sepulchre in the rocks; and the natives are careful to scatter their special knowledge that the spot is haunted by supernatural shapes and powers. The Americans living in the midst of these mysteries are rather proud of the ghosts they never see, but have to put up with the haunting guard still ministering to the gods that dwelt in the shrines where the shadows of extinct volcanoes fall, long before the masterful missionaries planted their first steps in the high places.

      After twenty-two days' steaming from San Francisco—Queen's Hospital time not counted—we were directly south of China's Yellow Sea, and within a few hours of sighting the isle of Luzon.

      Only at Honolulu, all the way from San Francisco, was there a sail or a smoke not of a vessel of the Philippine expedition. All the long days and nights the eye swept the horizon for companionship, finding only that of our associates in adventure, and very little of them. Even the birds seem to shrink from the heart of the watery world spread between America and Asia; and the monsters of the deep are absent. One day, about a thousand miles from California, a story spread of a porpoise at play, but the lonely creature passed astern like a bubble. Bryant sang of the water fowl that flew from zone to zone, guided in certain flight on the long way over which our steps are led aright, but the Pacific zones are too broad for even winged wanderers. The fish that swarm on our coast do not seem to find home life or sporting places in this enormous sea. Only the flying fish disturb the silky scene and flutter with silver wings over the sparkling laces that glisten where the winds blow gently, and woo the billows to cast aside the terrors of other climes and match the sky of blue and gold in beauty; but, unlike the stars, the waves do not differ in glory, and the spread of their splendor, when they seem to roll over a conquered universe, appeals to the imagination with the solemn suggestion not that order rules but that old chaos settles in solemn peace. The days terminate on this abyss in marvelous glories. The glowing spectacle is not in the west alone, but the gorgeous conflagration of the palaces we build in dreams