later the Helena turned loose everything. From her deck the insurgents could be seen running toward the point to oppose our landing, and she was making the road hot for them and the ruin untenable. Amid the chirruping of the Maxims from her fighting-tops, the boo-o-o-m of her sixinch guns, and the thunder of her ninepounders, we leaped into the shallow water, rushed up the little rise, and scaled the ruins. But already the enemy were in full flight. The Helena's thunderous shower of lead had served to good purpose. A long chase up the grass-grown street ensued, and a running fight among the mangroves, in which one insurgent was killed and two were wounded. Gradually the popping rifles died away; the foot-race which has been run with such regularity in all parts of the Philippines ended, as usual, in favor of the Filipinos, and the “battle” was over.

At the white-walled cemetery the halt was sounded, and, after an outpost had been stationed there, we returned to the gray, dilapidated pueblo to establish quarters for the three companies of the Twenty-ninth Infantry which were to remain and pacify the island. While this was being done, the surrounding country was carefully reconnoitered and the enemy located, about three hundred strong, in the town of Mobo, seven miles to the southward. Two Filipinos who had given themselves up were sent with a letter to the local chief inviting a conference; but before any definite answer had been received, the Indiana, her expeditionary work being finished, was ready to sail, and I left without knowing whether the post encountered further resistance or not. Masbate is practically a virgin island, inhabited by a poor class of Visayans and renegade Tagalogs, whose numbers are variously estimated from ten to thirty thousand. Cattle and timber are its only products.

From Masbate we steamed along the steep, rocky shores of Ticao, a long strip of an isle almost uninhabited; and, turning sharp round the northern end of it, we headed for Sorsogon, the most southerly point of Luzon. Late in the afternoon we entered the great indent in the coast known as the Bay (it would better have been called the Gulf) of Sorsogon, with the naked, red-brown cone of Bulusan

rising out of the hills of foliage to our right, and the majestic Mayon lifting its smoking peak eight thousand feet above us to the left. A month or so earlier this volcano had been in a state of eruption, had sent streams of molten lava down its sides, lighted the country with its giant beacon, and then darkened it with smoke and ashes. Steamers passing along the coast came to an anchor, and the natives fled in all directions. As we saw it that evening it was a purple pyramid outlined sharp against a golden sunset. From the new crevice at its apex rose a funnel-shaped pillar of steam, which, after ascending a few hundred feet, was caught by an upper current and carried in a tapering, pinktinted cloud far into the west. A more perfectly shaped mountain than Mayon cannot be imagined.

Sorsogon Province is the greatest hempproducing district in the Philippines. The volcanic soil seems to be particularly favorable to the growth of the plant, and although its quality is by no means as fine as much grown elsewhere, its quantity makes it the basis for market prices. The Philippines, indeed, as a whole, are extraordinarily rich in vegetable fibers. In no matter what part, one can find a shoot, a palm, a climber, a bark of a tree, to mend one's broken cart or strengthen one's shaky carriage. There are plants which creep, like the powerful bejuco; others herbaceous, like the piña, with its silky filaments; and there are great luxuriant trees like the balibago, whose shoots carry large quantities of ordinary dark fiber, but of such strength and undoubted utility that they will surely be used industrially some time not far distant. The shrub called anabo resembles, both in its appearance and its fiber, the well-known China grass. It grows so marvelously in this country that wherever it has been planted it has, without cultivation, defeated even the persistent Philippine grass, and in a few years has invaded great tracts of land. The anabo gives fully four crops a year, and its fiber is silk-like in its fineness and softness. In the years to come some enterprising manufacturer will doubtless send to one of the great expositions a tapestry woven from the fibers of five trees that grow in wild luxuriance on the margins of the river-fibers prepared only

by a simple steeping. Cotton, too, has been a product of the Philippines since the days of the Compañia de Filipinas. During recent years the superior qualities, such as Sea Island, Carolina, Jumel, Peru, and others, have been introduced, and all have given splendid results. When a stable government is assured, and the United States wakes up to the value of these islands, they cannot but become a great center for the manufacture of textile fabrics and paper.

But the queen of the Philippine fibers, indestructible and without a substitute, is abacá or hemp, the Musa textilis of the botanists. Abacá is of the same family as the plantain and the banana, and to the ordinary observer's eye is indistinguishable from either. In southern Luzon and the Visayas it is planted up from the valleys and plains on the mountain slopes, or on flat, low hills where the soil is fertile and humid. It may be grown from the seed of the fruit, raised in a nursery, but the common method is to use strong young shoots taken from the roots of the matured plants. The ground needs no more preparation than that of clearing away the underbrush and cutting down enough trees to let in light and ventilation. The remaining trees give the amount of shade the young abacá requires. Planting is simple and extremely primitive.

As open stretches are made, holes are dug in the virgin soil and the young shoots are placed in them, by guesswork, about ten feet apart. Likewise the care of a new plantation is easy. A gradual reducing of tree-roots, and, once or twice a year, a cutting of the weeds and rank grass with a bolo, is all the work that is necessary. At the end of the third year from planting, or six months earlier if the soil be unusually rich, the first crop may be cut from the matured stalks. As these are cut down, others spring up in their place, and the roots spread, so that an old plant may have twenty or thirty stalks in all stages of growth. Thus, when once the plants have attained their full growth, the plantation is a continual produceran all-the-year-round crop. And so it continues for six or seven years, when it is advisable to replant. After cutting, the stalks are stripped one by one of the leaves of which they are formed, and then comes the work of producing the valuable fiber.

Upon a fixed frame or a movable wooden horse a scissor-like mechanism is set up. The lower part of the scissors is a strong, toothed knife, which is kept close against the upper part by means of a weight hanging from what I may call the handle. The upper part is merely a rigid piece of hardwood. The pressure, that is to say, the tightness of these two surfaces, is regulated by a pedal attached to the weight. Between the steel and the wood the long strips of leaf are entered and quickly drawn through. By this means the fleshy parts of the leaf are scraped off, and the fiber remains in the hands of the drawer. As it is pulled, the fiber is thrown over a hook or bar, and, when dried in the sun, is ready for baling and shipping. Such is the most difficult and most characteristic agricultural work in the Philippines.

In going through various hemp plantations I have often asked myself if, under these primitive conditions, with such a want of cultivation, abacá is the best-paying crop in the islands, which is saying a good deal, what will the results be when it is highly cultivated and fertilized? For since Georges Ville, the noted agriculturist, demonstrated the chemical substances which nourish plants, the benefit of suitable fertilizers is not to be doubted. It is possible, moreover, that such a measure might shorten the long term of three years between planting and the first crop. In the work of extracting the fiber, too, there is room for radical improvement. Under the present system the labor is expensive, difficult to obtain, and wasteful. One-half of the fiber which the laborer draws he takes in payment for his work. This fat recompense, which originated with the early Spanish planters of small capital, and which is out of proportion to the work done, has become a custom-a custom, however, which united action should abolish; for such high wages, instead of stimulating the workmen and making them steady laborers, rather encourages them to idleness, since in a few days they can make enough to keep themselves, fight their cocks, and gamble for a month. It must be remembered that the average Filipino neither works for the love of it nor yet for the sake of laying up riches-necessity is his only spur; and this, by nature's kindness, he feels comparatively seldom. Labor is the grand, I

may say the only, difficulty in the way of the abacá planter. In the operation of drawing, moreover, enormous quantities of the product are lost by careless handling and the coarse knife, which breaks and cuts the fibers. At every knife great piles of this valuable refuse are allowed to lie and rot. But these things will hardly be remedied until human muscles are replaced by steam, and a machine is invented to separate the fiber. Then the fifty per cent. of the product which now goes to the laborer will be saved, and the waste of this primitive system done away with. Even as things are now, however, abacá is probably the most profitable crop known. The last obtainable statistics regarding its production are those of 1897. That year the exports alone, not including the large quantity used in the islands, were as follows:

Masbate at their northern extremities, and rounded Romblon, with Marinduque on our starboard beam and the highlands of the mysterious Mindoro blue in the west. Later we ran close along the western shore of Tablas, and, toward nightfall, Panay hove in sight. All day I sat, glass in hand, scanning the shores of these "gardens of the sun "-isles, all of them, fair to the eye, fertile beyond comparison, and full of promise. of promise. Strange it seemed in these enterprising times to find such timber and such mines of agricultural wealth lying undiscovered-mapped, to be sure, but to all commercial purposes unknown.

Picturesque Guimaras, with its mushroom islets, its caves and coral cliffs, its tiny coves and waves of varied green, was beside us at noon next day, and two hours later we dropped anchor off the old fort at Iloilo. This town, which is one of the five clearance ports of the Philippines, is next in importance to Manila. Though its exports include hemp, tobacco, sibucao, pearl-shell, and piña and jusi cloths, its main commerce is sugar. As the collecting and shipping point for the sugar of Negros as well as its own product, Iloilo handles probably eighty per cent. of the archipelago's output. Previous to the wanton firing of the place by the insurrectionists, it was doubtless a finely built town, but at present its aspect is far from imposing. It is built, moreover, upon an unsightly flat, is without a water supply, it can have no harbor worthy of commenand, until considerable dredging is done, dation. The retail business of the town is almost wholly in the grasp of the Chinese, though most of the exporting and merchants, of whom there are a small colimporting is done by Scotch and English ony. Every large house in Manila has a branch at Iloilo. Notwithstanding its size and importance, Iloilo, like every other Philippine town save Manila, is destitute of hotels, restaurants, or any accommodations for the traveler. The proverbial island hospitality, however, more than atoned for this loss. Through the kindness of Mr. Fife, the British ViceConsul and manager for Smith, Bell & Co., I was entertained in true English fashion; and it must be said that, while I remained in Panay, all my comfort and pleasure were due to Mr. Fife and his associates. The colony had its club, its

tennis, its five o'clock tea, and was in many respects quite the most homelike and friendly little company I had found in the islands. A tennis tournament was in progress when I left, and I am still speculating as to the outcome, and hoping, for the sake of the "house," that Sheward was the winner.

During my stay at Iloilo I made several short trips into the neighboring country, visiting Santa Barbara, Molo, Jaro, and other towns. Jaro, especially, has a famous market for native cloth. The silky and expensive piña, the less fine jusi, gauzy hemp fabrics, embroidered pañuelas, bright-colored cotton sarongs, all woven on hand-looms in the houses of the people, were laid out under low nipa booths, while the venders sat cross-legged upon the ground. Two or three thousand people swarmed in and out among the lines of booths, haggling and jewing and asking exorbitant prices after the fashion of the Asiatic, but buying, it seemed, comparatively nothing. Such a crush as it was! Such high words and betel-spitting, and such an overpowering smell of cocoanut oil! In another part, an odorous locality, dried meat and fish were for sale, and Visayan pottery, mats, rope, and baskets. The sound of a loud voice chanting some unintelligible words drew us to the stand of a seller of shrimp-paste, who was dispensing great lumps of the stuff out of a mat container on strips of plantain leaves. Near by were women offering flat baskets full of fried grasshoppers, which I found by no means unpalatable. Tuba, not free from ants and other insects, was placed in the sun in brimming glasses to tempt purchasers; and mangoes, great luscious ovals as large as my two fists, were for sale everywhere for a shade more than half a cent apiece.

One day Mr. Miller and I hired a baroto and had a spinning sail over to Guimaras and back. The Panay baroto, like all native boats, has a dugout canoe for its foundation, though its sides are built up six or eight inches with stiff mat-work, curving outward slightly and plastered with a pitchy substance to make it watertight. Across the boat, at the bow, stern, and waist, three hardwood poles are lashed, extending on both sides from six to ten feet, and carrying at their extremities one or two large bamboos, known as

batangas. The latter serve to keep the cranky craft from turning over, and permit the use of an immense spread of sail. In a strong wind the crew perch themselves far out on the weather batangas in numbers sufficient to keep the baroto on an even keel; and this has given rise to the expression "a one-man breeze," signifying a light air, or a two, three, or four man breeze, denoting winds of increasing force. As most Filipinos prefer to sit cross-legged or upon their heels rather than upon chairs, their boats are without seats. Passengers are supposed either to squat on the narrow deck, in no place more than two feet wide, or to stand out on the batangas. The most curious part of the boat, however, is the rudder, which, instead of being square astern, is placed on the side, with the tiller pointing aft. Crude as the baroto is, with its hollow-log body and its mat sails, it is an excellent sea boat, and has marvelous sailing qualities. Guimaras is a delightful little island, almost wholly uncultivated and without a road to its name. It boasts an abundance of good water, a temperature several degrees lower than Iloilo, and several remarkable caves, one of which, though it has been entered for a mile or more, is still of unknown extent.

way.

Panay is an island of more than average wealth, and, comparatively speaking, is fairly well developed in an agricultural A few Negritos are said to exist in the mountains of the northwest, but, with this exception and a few hundred Chinese, it is peopled wholly by Visayans, whoalthough they wear the Malay sarong in place of the saya and tapis, speak a different language, and are generally, perhaps, of a milder character-cannot otherwise be distinguished from the inhabitants of Luzon. Luzon. This lack of novelty, together with the unsafe condition of the whole country except within a few miles of Iloilo-and rather determined fighting was in progress throughout the western province of Antique-decided me to give up the idea of riding over the island, and hurried me on to Cebu. This long mountain chain of an island occupies the same position in regard to hemp that Iloilo does to sugar. All of the products of the eastern Visayas-Samar, Leyte, Bohol, and other islands-are shipped from its