THE PHILIPPINES.*

Mn. JAGOR visited the Philippine Islands in 1859, and his travels extended into late in 1860. In other latitudes and any but a Spanish dependency, the minute, careful, and comprehensive account he gives us of the beautiful archipelago, which combines all that is most delightful to the imagination with terrible physi- cal conditions, would be considered out of date ; in the case of most of our own colonies, such an interval would turn the book into ancient history. No doubt everything goes on now in the Philippines just as everything went on fifteen years ago, except that Manilla was almost completely destroyed (in 1863) by the tenth great earthquake of which details are recorded,—little ones, which only ruin villages, don't count,—and we may take Mr. Jagor's record of his observation and exploration for an actual picture of the islands, which have hitherto been chiefly known to us in connection with one of the time-honoured symbols of the flirtation-opportunities of long sea voyages from the uttermost ends of the earth. To give or to receive "a Philippine" at first sight of the low-lying coast first discovered by Magellan used to be an event of travel. Perhaps the custom exists no longer. We do not call to mind any previous work of travel which deals at all with the interior of the Philippines, or that any other writer has given us a notion of the lavish natural beauties and treasures of the richly-endowed island-kingdom. In the present instance, the writer supplements his personal obser- vation by carefully acquired information from official and scientific sources, and gives us a volume which deserves the highest praise for its completeness, its arrangement, its interest, and its modesty. For the latter quality, rare among travellers out of beaten tracks, the book is, indeed, too conspicuous ; the simplicity of the per- sonal narrative almost touches self-effacement so that the colour 7 47ee Philippine Islands. By F. Jager. London: Chapman and HalL

suffers, and the tone is sometimes dry. We should have enjoyed the book more, and not trusted it less, if Mr. Jager had been more communicative; it has suffered in the sense of freshness from its fifteen years' suppression. We feel that the writer has cut out old stories, as they would seem to him, which would have been acceptable to us.

The thoroughness of this work renders it very valuable. It will no doubt find many readers, as ill-informed on the sub-

jects which it treats as we were, who will agree with us

that few books of travel can compare with it for fullness and clearness of information. Having read Mr. Jagor, we know the Philippines, as we know Portugal, having read Mr.

Latouche, or Ashantee, having read Major Butler. He is not enthusiastic, but he describes the islands as wonderfully beautiful and fertile ; and we can readily believe them even superior to his description, when we find that their pro-

sperity and happiness have survived such a system as that pur- sued towards them by Spain. The history of the relations between the Philippines and Spain before and after the loss of Mexico, which reduced the value of the islands so materially ; of the long- persisted-in effort to isolate the colony, of the adventurers who were sent to prey upon it, of the forcing of Spanish goods upon

the commerce of the archipelago—most of them things totally un- suited to the needs and the customs of the people—of the recent concessions, which still leave shameful abuses in full operation, in

a discreditable one as regards the past, and does not inspire much hope for the future ; but under all its hard facts there are some pleasant things, and a happy enough life for the people is discerned, in a land where pressure from above, impulse from within, and every stimulus from the outside are wanting. On the whole, one likes the people, both colonists and Indians, of whom Mr. Jagor says The native of the Philippines is an interesting study of a type of mankind existing in the easiest natural condi- tions." The natives got off well from the first, when the Spaniards abolished the arbitrary rule of their chiefs, and did away with slavery. They have been misgoverned and cheated, kept in ignorance, and "exploited," but they have never had any of the cruelties to endure which make the records of colonisation blots upon the history of every country which has colonies. Their islands had no dangerous dower of gold, jewels, or spice ; and cruelties such as were practised in the American mining districts, or in the manufactures of Quito, never occurred in the Philippines. It is wonderfully pleasant to read about a country, fallen into the hands of a European power, whose native population is not disappearing, but, on the contrary, re- markably happy. The Indians pay only one tax, known as the

" Tributo," of a dollar a year for each individual, and each man has to give forty days' labour to the State, an obligation from which he may be released on payment of three dollars. A separate chapter upon the taxation of the islands contains very interesting details. When the natives feel inclined to work, they can always command good wages, and rice is cheap. The foreign settlers are not very well off, even without counting the earthquakes, for life with their requirements is both dull and dear. Manilla—

we suppose the description applies to its present aspect—is not a charming city, and its social customs seem rather narrow :-

"The city proper of Manilla, inhabited by Spaniards, Creoles, the natives directly connected with them, and Chinese, lies, surrounded by walls and wide ditches, on the southern bank of the Pasig, looking to- wards the sea. It is a hot, dried-up place, full of monasteries, convents, barracks, and government buildings. It reminds the beholder of a Spanish provincial town, and is, next to Goa, the oldest city in the Indies. Foreigners reside on the northern bank of the river ; in Binondo, the head-quarters of wholesale and retail commerce Very little intercourse exists between the inhabitants of Manilla and Binondo. Life in the city proper is not very pleasant ; pride, envy, place-hunting, and caste-hatred are the order of the day ; the Spaniards consider themselves superior to the Creoles, who, in their turn, reproach the former with having come to the colony for the sake of filling their pockets. This state of things is to be found in all Spanish colonies, and is chiefly caused by the colonial policy of Madrid, which always does its best to sow discord between the different races and classes of its foreign possessions, under the idea that their union would imperil the sway of the mother-country. In Manilla the state of things was rendered worse by the fact that the planter-class, whose large landed possessions always give it a strong interest in the country, was entirely wanting. At the present day, however, the increasing demand for the produce of the colony seems to be bringing about a pleasant change in this respect There is nothing like the same amount of sociability amongst the foreigners in Binondo as that which prevails in English and Dutch colonies, and scarcely any intercourse at all with the Spaniards, who look upon the gains of the latter as so many robberies committed upon themselves. Living is more expensive than at Batavia or Singapore. The houses, though generally spacious, are gloomy, ugly, and badly ventilated for such climates."

These houses are strange structures. They are built on props, on account of the damp, formed of the ever-useful and ubiquitous

bamboo, which is to the Philippine islander almost what the seal is to the Greenlander, or the reindeer to the Lapp, and so lightly put together that the weight of some of them, furniture and all, does

not exceed 200 lbs. The window-panes are formed of thin oyster- shells, a device we have not read of elsewhere. The houses must be convenient for earthquakes, though the description hardly .sounds more substantial, as to property, than Dick Swiveller's desideratum,—" even an umbrella, you know—in case of fire !" The dwellers in the cities have few amusements, and fewer books —but that deprivation we, perhaps, overrate—they have very bad water to drink, the feeblest of newspapers to read, and the suburban promenades must be eminently unpleasant, as the canals which surround the towns are stagnant drains. The natives in the interior are much better off. The magnificent climate, indeed, all enjoy in common, but only the townspeople are hampered with the cares of life. Out of the towns, clothing is

almost superfluous, and practically reduced to its simplest forms ; 4 the whole place' does not get burned down, as the towns do— to be sure, they are .built up again with rapidity which beats Chicago ;—the cocoa-palm supplies meat, drink, and every material for the construction of the natives' houses, and the manufacture of every article in use among them ; the want of roads is not felt, for the islands are as well supplied with water-ways by nature as Holland is by art ; cock-fighting and betel-chewing are universal pastimes, and life is transacted with the minimum of effort. Here is a picture of ease, of the true dolce far niente, which, Mr. Jagor says, "only blossoms under the shade of palm-trees ":— " One trip across the Pasig gives a foretaste of life in the interior of the country. Low wooden cabins and bamboo huts, surmounted with green foliage and blossoming flowers, are picturesquely grouped with areca palms, and tall, feather-headed bamboos, upon its banks. Some- times the enclosures run down into the stream itself, some of them being duck-grounds, and others bathing-places. The shore is fringed with canoes, nets, rafts, and fishing apparatus. Heavily-laden boats float clown the stream, and small canoes ply from back to back between the groups of bathers The river-side is a pretty sight when the men, women, and children are bathing and frolicking in the shade of he palm trees ; when the young girls are filling their water-vessels, large bamboos which they carry on their shoulders, or jars, which they bear on their heads ; and when the boys are standing upright on the broad backs of the buffalos, and riding triumphantly into the water. Sometimes a native may be seen floating down the stream fast asleep on a heap of cocoa-nuts. If the nuts run ashore, the sleeper rouses him- self, pushes himself off with a long bamboo, and contentedly relapses into slumber, as his eccentric craft regains the current of the river. One • cut of the priming-knife easily detaches sufficient of the husk of the nuts to allow of their being fastened together; in this way a kind of wreath is formed which encircles and holds together the loose nuts piled ,up in the middle."

The social condition of the natives leaves much to be desired in point of morality. They are kindly, gentle, friendly to strangers, not mercenary, but not to be trusted as carriers—a characteristic of which Mr. Jagor had some costly experience— pretty generally educated, so far as education goes in the islands,

and very obedient to their priests, who are in many instances pure Indians. Mr. Jagor profited largelyby the amenableness of the people to the orders of their pastors, and was hospitably entertained in all the villages by the clergy. Every pueblo has its school, but no wonder, when the Government can get a school- master for two dollars a month, "and find himself," as the ser- vants say, in board and lodging. With all the help which the hearty good-will he met with could afford, the traveller must have had some hard times during his eighteen months of alternate -travel, and sojourn in the remote regions of so strange a land, and among every class of its inhabitants. He makes so light of the risks he ran, and of the difficulties and fatigue he had to encounter and endure in his very thorough researches—he has really fouille -the Philippines with the penetrating scrutiny of an agent from

the Rue Jerusalem—that the reader is likely to make light of them also, and to find, only on consideration, that Mr. Jagor in- curred no small danger, and sustained more than one serious mis- fortune during his travels, to say nothing of the inconveniences -which beset his way. He lost the greater part of the collection -of specimens of natural history which he had made with much care and trouble, and tells the story thus, as characteristic of the place and the people :—

"Being compelled by the continuous rain (at Legaspi) to dry my collec- tions in two ovens before packing them, I found that my servant had .burned the greater part, so that the remains found a place in a roomy chest which I purchased for a dollar at an auction. This unfortunately lacked a lid, to procure which I was obliged, in the first place, to liberate a carpenter who had been imprisoned for a small debt ; secondly, to advance money for the purchase of a board and the redemption of his tools out of pawn, and even then the work, when it was begun, was several times broken off because previous claims of violent creditors had to be discharged by labour. In five days the lid was completed, at the cost of three dollars. It did not last long, however, for in Manilla

rhad to get it replaced by a new one."

The most exciting portion of the traveller's own story is to be found in chapter xviii., in which he relates his ascent of the Yriga and Marazaga, and his narrow escape of capture by the remorseless pirates who were there established upon several small islands, and made raids upon the small merchant sailing ships by whose means communication between the larger islands is main- tained. These pirates are Moors, and the crews of the ships hold them in very reasonable dread, for their cruelties are horrible. In a note to this chapter, Mr. Jagor says, "According to my latest accounts, piracy (it seems to have been checked for a while) is again on the increase."•

Tobacco, of course, figures largely in this book, and furnishes the writer with a serious charge against the Spanish Government. We have not space for extracts on this subject, but we refer our readers to chapter xxiv. for a full description of what seems to us to be the most wanton and self-destructive policy we have ever heard of.

In all its departments Mr. Jagor's book is most interesting and satisfactory. Into the geography, meteorology, and natural history of the Philippines he enters very fully, and in the latter section we find much that is entirely novel. "In scarcely any other region," says the author, "can the lover of natural history find a larger store of unexplored treasures, and the expenses of a visit would be easily covered by the sale of the collections which might be accumulated." Always supposing the collector's servant does not burn them as rubbish ! Such a contretemps apart, however, Mr. Jagor's records justify his assertion. We have followed with ever-growing pleasure his descriptions of animal and plant life in the Philippines.