Introduction

We continue to feature selections from the book Philippine Saga by Marius John, a Thomasite. His accounts are a fascinating and vivid glimpse into the past of the town of Baao and places in Bicol in the early 1900’s. Chapter 12 is about how he starts a school in Baao. In Chapter 13, he describes life in Baao, including parts of nearby Iriga and Nabua.

Chapter 12: Starting a School

THE FIRST INTRODUCTION from the provincial superintendent was to arrange with the presidente for a schoolhouse. Baldomero Imperial was not as enthusiastic about public schools as Colonel Ocampo at Nabua was. This seemed in line with the perversity attributed to the citizens of Baao by the people of Nabua and the Americans in Nueva Caceras who had no high opinion of the town in which I was destined to teach school.

“You’ll have trouble there,” the Americans had said seriously and somewhat apprehensively. “That town is the worst in the Islands.”

Captain George Curry, who was one of the first American volunteers to penetrate this province with his company, and who was its first governor, but at this time was manager of the Camarines Mercantile Company in Nueva Caceres, said that a bad faction was in power there. I learned from him that a great feud shook the town like an earthquake. One faction was headed by Baldomero Imperial, the presidente, the other, by Señor Sanchez, the former chief executive and a wealthy hemp plantation owner. Captain Curry, who later became governor of New Mexico, was of the opinion that the Sanchez crowd was working for the best interest of the people, and that the Imperial faction consisted of politicians of the worst order.

I had learned that the Ocampos already had done everything in their power to establish the schools in their town without delay, but when I spoke to Presidente Imperial about a schoolhouse, he politely said:

“Si, mañana.” (Yes, tomorrow.)

I soon discovered that this was indeed the Land of Mañana. They promised everything you asked for — tomorrow. Superintendent Atkinson said, “The Filipino never says no, and he never does si.” In other words, they politely agreed to your requests, but too often did nothing about them. Long years of repression had no doubt been largely responsible for this attitude. It took me some time to learn the ways of the people of Baao. Every time I met the presidente I asked him for a schoolhouse, and every time he said:

“Si, mañana.”

Days were slipping by. I was comfortably located in my house on the main street, Hospicio was functioning satisfactorily, as a good muchacho should, the presidente had moved to a larger house on the banks of the arroyo opposite the plaza, but no schoolhouse had been prepared.

One day I met him on the street.

“Where is that schoolhouse?” I demanded.

“Schools don’t amount to anything,” he replied.

“Here,” I said to myself, “is that perversity cropping out.’

Later, when I began to gain the confidence of the people, I was given the reason for this attitude. The schools they had seen under the old regime had not impressed them favorably. The children had only come to learn the catechism in Latin, of which they did not understand a word. The main function of the school- master had seemed to be to give them a sound thrashing at regular intervals, and then to send them home.

Children would run away to hide in the swamp or in the mountains rather than attend school. The Filipinos, at least those bitterly anti-Spanish, had also reasoned that under the old order the priests were spies informing the government of their acts, and through them they had sought favor or were committed to punishment. They saw no priests among the Americans who were there. Surely the new rulers must have some system of espionage on the people they had come to govern, and when they heard that schoolteachers were to be sent from America, they decided they were to take the place of the priests and were come no doubt to keep them under their heel, as the Spaniards had done. Had I known this at the time I perhaps would have worked a little differently with the presidente.

“I want a schoolhouse, and I want it right away,” I shouted at him.

“Bien,” he said good-naturedly. “Mañana.”

“Well, see that I get it tomorrow,” I stormed. I met him on the street next day.

“Where is that schoolhouse?” I asked again. “Mañana,” came the old reply.

“I have had enough of this tomorrow business,” I exploded.

I seized him by the shoulder and shook him until his teeth rattled. I have never seen a man more surprised, nor more dumbfounded. Here he was, the august presidente of the town of Baao, the lord over eight thousand people, and treated to this indignity on the public streets by an ordinary schoolteacher. Then I saw a deep respect begin to dawn in his eyes.

“The convent is partly vacant,” he said. “I will have it put in order immediately. I will round up the children, too, and send them to school.”

He put the room of the convent in order that same afternoon. I learned that he could move with dispatch when he realized it was incumbent upon him to do so.

In arriving at the plaza from my house, I crossed over the stone Spanish bridge spanning the arroyo that ambled pleasantly through the village under massive rows of ancient trees. There were two buildings that had fallen into disrepair on the banks of the stream, one on either side of the main street, which could have been prepared for schoolhouses, but as the government had been using the convents for quartering the American soldiers, I decided that one of the large rooms at the rear which Presidente Imperial designated would serve my purpose, at least for the present.

Part of a troop of American Negro cavalry was stationed in the front of the convent, but the rooms between would be ample separation from the army men. After I crossed the arroyo as I came from my home, I passed an adobe wall along the plaza, and just inside this wall stood a high wooden tower with bells. Beyond was an adobe church, and next to it, both facing the plaza, was the white convent trimmed in blue.

Here about a dozen boys gathered the following morning. They did not come with any great assurance, remembering too well the schools of the old regime. They brought paper pamphlets containing the catechism, sat on the floor and began to shout the Latin words, each trying to say them louder than the other, making more noise than the rats and snakes and lizards chasing about in the attic overhead.

It seemed as if the teachers had come too soon. We had nothing with which to work, no textbooks, slates, blackboards, pencils or paper. It was not an easy task to get them to study quietly; in fact, it seemed as if it just could not be done. They had no thought of learning anything beyond rehearsing the catechism over and over, and when I tried to stop them, they attempted to show off their English by repeating profanity they had learned from the soldiers. Even the elders seemed to know everything filthy the American language contained. No whip could stop them. What was a whip? They had felt its sting too often in days gone by. The American soldiers had taught them these words, their fathers and mothers — the mothers more profusely than the men — were repeating them constantly, and should not the children follow in the footsteps of their elders who were held in deep reverence in the Philippines?

We did not remain in the convent long. Orders came from Manila to turn all church property back to the original authority; neither school nor soldier could be quartered there in the future. I reported this to the presidente who immediately repaired one of the buildings by the arroyo, where we moved in a few days. Attendance was increasing. It was no longer necessary to teach the children without blackboard or textbook. supply of primers, arithmetics, geographies, slates, blackboards, tablets, pencils and desks had been shipped into Baao via the river and a canal cut through the swamp.

Shortly after this the children of the better element began to attend school, among them the presidente’s little son, Jose. Each was given a primer, slate and pencil for study and work at home, and the school desks with seats that turned up were as much of an attraction as the illustrated first readers. Only boys came, and it was a long time before the girls could be induced to attend. Girls and boys had never been placed together in. To the same room, but finally the other building by the arroyo was repaired and made available for the señoritas.

As yet I had been unable to check the profanity among the children. Some of them wanted to show off their knowledge of the American language; with others it was a natural perversity. One day one of the larger boys started to swear like a river pirate. I called him to my desk, suddenly remembering a treatment applied to my own penchant for swearing when a small boy to the horror of a maiden Quaker aunt. She washed my mouth out with soap. It did not cure me. I only learned to be a little more careful where I did my swearing; but her method might be worth a trial now.

“Go home, Pablo,” I said, “and bring me a cake of soap and a basin of water.”

Little dreaming of what was in store, Pablo went home for the soap and water. When he returned, I stood him up before the school.

“Now wash your mouth out,” I ordered. “It’s dirty.” Pablo began to bawl.

“No, no, no!” he shrieked.

“Do you want me to wash it out for you?” I asked. “No-O-O-O-O!” he begged between convulsive sobs. “Very well, then. Wash it out yourself.”

Pablo washed his mouth, half-heartedly.

“Come!” I said. “Wash it out better than that. Use plenty of soap. It is still dirty.”

Pablo cried the rest of the afternoon, feeling that he had been disgraced forever.

When the children first began to come to school, they would go home meekly and quietly after it was closed for the day, but already, whether it was a new sense of freedom or that they had lost much of their awe of the American schoolmaster, they stopped afterwards for games, and too frequently for a good old fist fight, just like the boys in almost any school back home. On this night there were no games and no fights. As soon as school was out those children made a bee line for home as fast as their little brown legs could carry them. Jose Imperial was no exception. In a few minutes I saw the presidente come from his house, striking the steps with his cane, and he headed straight for the schoolhouse. Jose trotted beside him.

“He looks as if there was fire in his eye,” I said to myself. “Evidently he does not approve of the soap business.”

He stamped into the schoolhouse.

“Jose has told me, “He said.

Then he sank down at one of the desks and began to laugh. I have never seen a Filipino laugh so heartily as he on that sunshiny afternoon. It seemed as if he could not stop. Finally, he said with tears in his eyes:

“That’s the best thing I ever heard of. That’s better than the whip.”

All the eight thousand people of Baao surely heard of what happened that afternoon within an hour after the school closed for the day. When I went out to the marketplace that evening hundreds of people stared at me with amused eyes and a new interest. Captain Pedro Badong, who had a little tienda on the far corner of the plaza, where we often sat in bamboo armchairs in the evening watching the flaring torches on the plaza and the fireflies in the huge trees by the arroyo, called me as I threaded my way among the marketers.

“Come over here, maestro.”

He motioned to the bamboo armchair.

“What are these words blinkety-blink and blankety- blank which we learned from the soldiers?”

“We don’t use them in the best society back home,” I told him.

He called to his little son.

“Martin, don’t let me hear you use any of those words again.”

Thus, on one afternoon Baao was cured of American profanity, not only the children, but their elders, at least when I was around.

Captain Badong had once been the headman of Baao in the days when the chief executive was called capitan instead of presidente. That was some years before under the Spanish regime. That was in the year the great fire swept away a large portion of the fine homes of the wealthy hemp and copra men south of the arroyo; also the large adobe tribunal. Somehow the convent and the church had been spared. Badong’s little son, Martin, was one of the brightest boys in school, brighter even, and much browner than Jose Imperial.

The entire attitude of the people had changed toward the schools. Children who in the old days had run to hide in the swamp to escape the beatings at school, now ran away from home to attend school. Only those whose parents could not afford to buy clothes for them still remained away. Great swarms of them, brown and naked, played in the streets at dusk, children whose mothers were ashamed to send them to school without camisa or pantalones.

Native teachers were added to the school. Two bright young men, Vitaliano Buena and Florencio Babylonia, were selected as my assistants, and like my own salary theirs too came from the Insular government. This meant additional work, since both of them were to be taught the day before what they were to give out the following day. They learned rapidly, and finally the presidente’s niece, Felicia Fajarda, joined the staff of native teachers. The boys were taught in one building, the girls in the other across the street. The boys seemed to be much brighter than the girls, who were not dull but shy. Further repairs were required on the stone building where the girls were taught. I used this as an excuse for putting them together in one school. From that time the señoritas seemed to lose their shyness in a desire to outdo the boys. They were not separated after that, but when the repairs were finished on the stone building it became the primary school, while the wooden structure we had occupied first was used for the more advanced pupils.

The most disturbing element during school hours was the bells in the crude wooden tower standing by the plaza wall. They began to clamor long before school started in the morning. They clanged on throughout the forenoon session, rending the air with their harsh reverberations. Natives’ eyes shone when those bells rang, but to the American maestro they spoke of jangling street cars, fire engines and screeching freight trains. They rang him from his slumber in the morning. On fiesta days, at weddings, funerals and christenings they resounded against the mountain side to upset the peace of those who came from the United States.

I complained about those bells one day to Colonel Ocampo when I was over in Nabua.

“Ah, maestro,” he said, “you should be grateful. Someday, a few months, a year, perhaps, or two, you will return to your own softer chimes; but here am I, born with the love of music in my heart, and I am condemned to listen always to those harsh inharmonies.”

But what could we do but let them ring!

One day Ed. Williams down in Albay received a letter from Walter Gilkyson. It read something like this: “Thank the Lord, a tornado came along and blew my schoolhouse away. If your kids were as dumb as mine, you’d be singing His praises, too, if your schoolhouse were blown away.

“Once a month without fail the bandits swoop down from the hills and ransack the town. The old chieftain always places a guard on my house so his men will not mistake and rob it, too. I don’t know whether this is because of wholesome fear of a representative of the United States or a respect for the great institution of learning. Perhaps it may be that even a bandit chieftain cannot be discourteous to a guest of these hospitable islands.”

Apparently, they had respect for the public schoolteachers up in the Tagal country, which was not shown to the soldiers of Uncle Sam. At least I could not say that the children in the schools of Baao were dumb, especially those of the better families — the sons and daughters of the ilustrados. They were exceptionally bright on anything they could memorize or imitate, but a little slower on that which they had to reason out for themselves. If one of the boys was slow in answering, the others beat an impatient tattoo on the floor with their feet, and if he answered incorrectly, they chorused:

“Oh, my!”

We did not use the translation method, even though I had a fair knowledge of Spanish which would have passed among those children in Baao. I soon learned that if you gave a child two words to remember he did not remember either of them, and when his own native dialect was added, it was too much for him. Only English was permitted in the school. If they could not say what they had in mind in English, they were en- joined to remain silent until they could.

On one occasion I asked a boy if he knew what a dog was.

“Yes,” he replied. “I am-dog.”

“Are you a dog?” I asked.

“No, I am — dog.”

Finally, it dawned on me that he was translating the English word dog into Bicol, which is ayam.

“And what is your name for cat?” I asked. “Opuss.” “Opuss!” (Editors’ note: The author may have misheard. The Bikol word for cat is actually “ikos.”)

That was a surprise! O pussy cat, pussy cat! Did you spring from the Camarines?

But in using the object lessons, pointing out an object and giving the English word, they made rapid strides in learning the language. I either showed them a picture, the object itself, or the action, then had them repeat the word and indicate the meaning. If it was jump, we jumped, and it took the monotony out of the school work.

One day Presidente Imperial said to me:

“The Americans have done more for us in four years than the Spaniards in four hundred.”

He no longer said the schools did not amount to anything.

Even the provincial superintendent had to admit that something was being accomplished in Baao. He had no use for me because I had been a soldier. He was thoroughly convinced that a soldier was unfit to teach school. Perhaps that is why he had assigned me to Baao, the town with the bad reputation. When he sent the deputy superintendent out on a tour of inspection, he said:

“I expect you to find things in an awful mess in Baao. That soldier teacher is there, and you can guess the rest.”

“It’s surprising,” said the deputy as he was leaving Baao. “They know more English here than in any town I have visited yet.”

I do not mention this as a boast, but I was convinced that I had struck upon a method that was more effective than attempted translations. Others were frantically learning Spanish to teach by the latter method. Perhaps my slight knowledge of the language, learned before I came, helped also, as it enabled me to get closer to the more cultured Filipinos and to talk things out to some extent.

Chapter 13: Life in Baao

SHORTLY AFTER my arrival in Baao I began to waste away. I seemed to shrivel on the Filipino diet, which was famed for its variety. One day they had rice and fish; the next, fish and rice. The rice was cooked dry and eaten like bread. My tongue was dry and clung a walking to the roof of my mouth. I turned into skeleton of mere skin and bones. My clothes hung about me like an ill-fitting linen sack, until I was the image of “Sir” Isaac Newton at the Bautista hospital as he had appeared in reflection in the concavity of the polished spoon. I was convinced that all I needed was a change of food. It was twenty-four miles to George Curry’s fancy grocery in Nueva Caceres, and since the plague had carried off the native ponies, the only way to get there was to walk or go by canoe via canal and river. The small stock I had brought with me quickly disappeared. There was nothing in Baao, except the same tasteless vegetables they sold in the market in the torchlight. The few soldiers still there when I arrived had been withdrawn, and not an officer or private, white or black, remained in town. A company was quartered in Iriga, where they still kept a quantity of commissaries for the soldiers in the surrounding district. One Saturday I went over to Iriga and called on the lieutenant temporarily in command to request something from the army store.

“It’s strictly against regulations to sell anything from our supplies,” the lieutenant informed me.

“I can’t help it,” I said. “I must have something. You can see that I am nothing but a skeleton. All I need is some good old American food.”

“Well,” he laughed, “there are times when regulations can be broken without hurting the conscience. Go over and pick out what you want and pay the quartermaster.”

A carabao cart was rounded up, and I returned to Baao well stocked in flour, sugar and canned goods, among them a case of tomatoes. All I wanted was those tomatoes. I craved them. I began to fill out immediately. They were responsible for my recovery, I was convinced at the time, but perhaps the knowledge of having American food in the house, even if it was canned, was what sent me back to normal; and the flour and refined sugar helped a lot to make a meal seem more like home.

Horspicio was quick to learn, more so than one who had been taught native or Spanish cooking, and in a short time he could make biscuits and cook as we had been taught in the army, until American officials went miles out of their way to put their feet beneath my table. Perhaps, but I am not so sure about that, this may have been the reason the deputy superintendent gave such a favorable report on the progress of the schools of Baao. Horspicio became a good marketer. He learned the American taste and began to find various foods to add to the variety of the meals — gulay and camotes, native vegetables and wild sweet potatoes, stringier and not so tasty as those raised at home, but they added variety to the stores from the Iriga commissary.

I had not been long in Baao before the presidente came to see me.

“It is not good to stay alone,” he said. “Why don’t you go over and pick out one of the Sanchez girls to come to live with you? If she doesn’t want to come, see me. I’ll bring her.”

I was more surprised that he should have selected one of the Sanchez girls than over the proposal itself. Apparently the presidente bore no hard feelings against el Señor Sanchez, although he was the leader of the opposng faction, or it may have been his native courtesy in selecting what he considered the most suitable señorita in town. The plantation owner, who lived in a house by the midtown arroyo, had three daughters of the Spanish type, the prettiest girls I had seen in the Philippines, at least they seemed pretty after the long separation from American girls. I had called at the Sanchez home on one or two occasions, and was amused to see the three, when they saw me coming, run for the whisk broom to tidy up the house, and then rush off to do a belittle hurried primping.

“Thank you, Señor Presidente,” I said. “But I shall have to decline.”

“Very well,” he replied, not in the least offended.

Just before this a teacher in a town farther south had taken unto himself a Filipina querida. The superintendent hurried down, when he learned of it, to compel him to marry her. The Insular government had issued a proclamation that any American living with a Filipina woman would be considered married by state decree without further ceremony and would not be permitted to return to the States. He must remain in the Islands to take care of his family. Many soldiers hoping to slip off quietly were chagrined to find a Filipina clinging to their necks before they embarked.

“No, no, my darling boy,” said Uncle Sam to each squirming nephew, “you can’t go home. You have a family to support here.”

The Filipino standard of morals was different from the American. It was considered proper to live with a woman to whom you were not married, provided it was done openly and for a stipulated length of time, but to stay with one clandestinely was an outrage that would have caused the woman to be run out of town.

Yet strange things happened. A young Filipino mestizo asked me one day to go with him for a little walk.

“I have something to show you, maestro,” he said.

At the far end of town, we came to a small native house. A Filipino, one of the darkest I have ever seen, was tenderly holding a child in his arms.

“Look, maestro,” said my companion. “See how dark the man is. Look at the child, it is as white as you are. It has red hair. Now look over there. That is the mother squatting by the adobe stove. She is darker than her man. She, of course, knows better, but her husband thinks he has performed a prodigy. But, maestro, the mother used to be laundrywoman for a red-headed lieutenant who was here before you came.”

There is more than one red-headed mestizo in the towns throughout the Philippines today.

Weddings were occasions of great festivity in Baao. They generally celebrated them for a week. They had sumptuous dinners with delicacies from the Manila tiendas, and there was music and dancing. On such occasions they sent for me. I was the guest of honor, placed before the Señor Presidente himself and before the native padre, who now occupied the convent. was first, the presidente second, the padre third.

Then the elders would come around and proudly tell me that the groom was their cousin and the bride their niece, or vice versa, the whole story being that they had married and intermarried for so many generations in Baao that nearly everyone of importance was related in some way to everyone else in their class.

They danced all the dances on the Spanish calendar — the rigoletto, the fandango, the jig, the bolero and the rigadon. There was a dance indulged in by the fathers and mothers, but shockingly improper for the younger dancers. The men locked their arms, swung their señoras upon their shoulders and circled about the floor in a wild, rollicking, hilarious dance with the women shrieking with laughter. They insisted that I learn the native dances, and the presidente’s mother, Señora Patricia Imperial y Fajarda, white-haired, and as intelligent as any woman I have met anywhere, clapped her hands as she watched me, and cried:

“Росо а росо,

Levanta el coco.”

Little by little raise the coco. In other words, I took it, you could lift your head when you had mastered the dance.

They were tremendously curious to know about American customs, literature, dances and songs.

The social center was the marketplace in the evening. Most of Baao could be found there. The natives began to gather with their trays of little wares late in the afternoon, and when darkness stole down over the mountain, five thousand people had assembled there, some to sell, others to buy, and still others to gossip. I often went to sit in Capitan Pedro Badong’s easy bam- boo armchair on the upper corner of the plaza. The dark adobe church frowned down on the marketplace, and the convent gleamed white and blue in the moonlight. Back of them rose the mountain and the roaring jungle. To the right loomed the blackened abobe walls of the ruined tribunal. A few miles to the south Mount Iriga, an extinct volcano, turned its dark back upon us. On the other side was its sunken crater, in the heart of it, the town of Buhi and Buhi Lake. Still farther south we could see Volcano Mayon and the white streamer that hung from the top of its perfect cone. Beyond us the swamp stretched to the horizon.

Rich and poor mingled on the plaza. Sometimes Presidente Imperial or his councilmen came over to chat beneath the nipa awning of Capitan Badong’s tienda.

In the early evening swarms of naked children played on the streets beyond the market. Those who went to school often could be seen playing with them. The schoolchildren even at playtime were always neatly clad. If I, or any of the elders of the town, walked along the street, they left their play to run out to say a respectful “good evening” or its Bicol equivalent, while the unclad ones kept on playing. We could hear their merry laughter from the plaza, then as the night shadows deepened the children disappeared, and the strange call of some night bird far away in the jungle floated down to our ears.

Sometimes Negritos came from the mountain to trade in the market. Kinky-haired, black and diminutive, they seemed to be harmless undeveloped dwarfs, despite a thousand tales of ferocity told of them by soldier and native. They lived in little lodges back in the mountains, but it is said they never returned to an abode where someone had passed away. They did not live in groups, for all of their huts that I have seen in the hills were solitary dwellings.

There were no Igorots in this section. They were located in the hills of Northern Luzon, still farther north than Pangasinan in the region of Baguio, where the summer capital of the Philippines is located, and beyond.

After nine o’clock the marketers became thinner in numbers. Some had sold all their wares, others had bought what they needed, and the women had gone home to prepare the evening meal. That was the one big meal of the day, which was generally served at about ten o’clock at night. They did little marketing beyond their requirements for dinner and for a late breakfast the following morning. They had no refrigerators, and food did not keep. Few of them had any protection against the ants and other insects that came into the houses.

Their custom of eating their meals at these unusual hours compelled me to change the hours at school. In the beginning we followed the American rule, with school opening at nine o’clock, but mothers complained that their children could not learn well then because they were so hungry when they came home at noon. To meet this condition school began at seven in the morning, which enabled the children to go home for ten o’clock breakfast. The afternoon session began at two-thirty, leaving them a long siesta hour in the middle of the day.

The natives were amazed at the regularity with which the American teachers went to school. They could not quite understand this application to duty, especially when the season was hot.

Señor Buena, the councilman from my own barrio, or ward, often stood at his window when I passed by on my way to the afternoon session.

Finally, he said to me:

“Day after day I watched from my window. I said, ‘It is hot today. Surely the maestro will not go to the school this afternoon.’ But always, without fail, you went by at the same hour. It is difficult to comprehend such regularity and such devotion to our little child- ren.”

“That is the way we were taught,” I told him.

“We thought you came here as spies for your government,” Capitan Badong said to me one evening. “It is still difficult for me to believe otherwise.”

“No,” I assured him. “We are only here to teach your children.’

“But do you not make reports about us to your rulers?”

“No, our only reports are on the progress of the schools.”

“It is remarkable! Remarkable! Do you see the ruins of the old tribunal over there? Once I was capitan of Baao. I ruled the town from the yonder building. One day the Spaniards arrested me, me, Capitan Pedro Badong, and I was locked in a cell in that same municipal building. There was intrigue, suspicion, fear, constant fear, in those days. We were watched continually. You do not even keep a soldier here with an ear open for conspiracy. I am amazed.”

“Why should we?” I asked him. “Suspicion leads to conspiracy.”

“It is amazing!” He shook his head as if he did not comprehend.

Sometimes I went on excursions with the natives into the coconut groves. There were acres of them. Some of the trees reached skyward one hundred feet or more; others more recently planted had not grown over twenty-five feet in height, but they were already bearing coconuts. It was always pleasant, cool and shady in the groves, a delightful spot for a midday picnic. On occasions I went with them into the mountains where there were hundreds of hectares of hemp. Hemp is the male banana plant, its strength running into fiber instead of fruit. Often a dwarf bunch of bananas grows on the plants. It takes three years after planting to attain full size and strength before the hemp can be harvested. Then the plants bear three crops a year, so prolific are they in this fertile soil, shooting up in four months to two or three times the height of a man. The outer bark is thrown away, and the second bark, which is peeled off after the first, contains the strong fiber from which rope, twine and cloth are made. The inner bark is drawn through a knifelike comb and shredded, then baled and packed away to the rope factories of Manila. Some of the plants more carefully cultivated produce a finer fiber, which is often used instead of piña, the fiber of the pineapple plant, for the manufacture of artificial silk, prized especially in the Philippines for camisas, both for men and women.

“It is a peculiar thing about hemp,” the presidente told me. “It will not grow save under the shade of another tree. That is why it is cultivated for the most part in the fertile mountain soil.”

Abaca, or hemp, was always grown in the mountains in this part of Luzon, as far as my own observation carried me; yet I have seen photographs of hemp plantations in the Islands that were not shaded by other trees.

Monkeys scolded us from the branches of giant trees that towered overhead. They seemed to resent our intrusion into their domain. They were not much bigger than a large cat. One day a young monkey came too close to the plantation house. A workman chased it up a tree. It ran out on a branch not over fifteen feet from the ground, swung around and turned up his nose at the native who had followed him, as much as to say:

“Come out here and get me, if you dare.”

It was a small branch and would not have supported a man, which the monkey seemed to realize. The hemp man clipped the limb with his bolo, so that it hung downward, one end touching the ground. The monkey clung to the middle of the limb just beyond the native’s reach from above and my own from beneath, a surprised and dumbfounded creature. looked up and down, up and down, open-mouthed. It stared in amazement at me below, then up at the other fellow. We finally caught it. The next morning Vitaliano Buena, one of the native teachers, brought over to my house a plate of monkey meat.

“It’s delicious,” he told me.

No doubt it was, but somehow, I could not persuade myself to try it.

A Portuguese was staying with me at the time, who felt the same way about monkey meat.

Aside from this man, who was only in Baao a short while, no other white man lived there after the soldiers were removed, except a brief period when two army deserters were in town. I did not trust them, and they were quickly picked up by the Constabulary at the governor’s orders.

A family by the name of Donaldson — no relation to Miss Donaldson in Nabua — had charge of the schools in Iriga, and sometimes we spent the weekend there, and sometimes we rode out with the Constabulary officers on to Buhi, a town of about five thousand population built in the sunken crater of Mount Iriga. Riding out on horseback to Buhi, it seemed as if we were passing over a large hollow drum, as if the road ran across a rocky shell that covered some vast subterranean cavern. Beyond the mountains of Baao and Iriga was Mount Isarog, the largest in Southern Luzon. Down its side plunged a mighty cataract, twice as high as Niagara, so the soldiers declared; but of course, not so wide.

I determined to explore some of that country when vacation came, although we had too many vacations in Baao. We celebrated all of the important American holidays, and there were innumerable native and Spanish fiestas, which were strictly observed, so that between the floods in the rainy season and the feast days there were long periods when no children turned up at school.

There were the patron saints of every barrio, for the town itself, for the province, and during all those times, except the latter when the people went to Nueva Caceres, the bells clanged incessantly.

The header image features a winning entry to the student art competition held during the Kamuy-an Festival which is celebrated in Baao as thanksgiving for a bountiful harvest and God’s blessings (photography: Audrey Agtarap, Baao Historical and Cultural Society). 

About the author

Marius John was named Adopted Father of Baao during a special session of the municipal council on February 15, 1941. During the session, excerpts from Mr. John’s book were read after which the resolution of respect, gratitude and appreciation was passed. This was during the term of Mayor Luis G. Dato.

Born in Sterling, Illinois, where his father was a publisher of the Sterling Gazette, Mr. John graduated from the George School in Newtown, Pennsylvania, studied at Stanford University and graduated from the Sterling Business College. He was in the staff of the Salt Lake Tribune, served as Editor of the Orlando Sentinel, and contributed articles to various magazines and newspapers. He was a member of the Associated Arts of Brooklyn and various writers’ clubs.

About Philippine Saga

The book “Philippine Saga” was published in April 1941 by Sterling Gazette, a publication owned by the author’s father in Sterling, Illinois. Only rare copies of the book exist. Thus, it was propitious for Bella M. Nacario, an active member of the Baao Historical and Cultural Society, to have found a copy for sale on the internet.

We thank Father Fruto Ramirez, SJ, also of BHCS, for providing us with a copy of this book which he had scanned, printed and bounded for limited distribution.