MALAY LIFE I2T TEE PHILIPPINES. 



459 



the cockpit too frequently proves the first step 

 in an Avernian descent leading down to prison 

 and crime. Here we ha7e in truth before us the 

 Malay " turf," though Malay civilization has not 

 yet widened enough to include within its circle 

 " welchers " and their kin, nor, I think, ever will. 

 Self-respect, a feeling hardly ever absent from 

 the national character, would alone suffice to for- 

 bid it. The same self-respect displays itself too, 

 even on occasions like the present, when, if ever, 

 it might be supposed weak or wanting, in other 

 ways. Look round the crowded circles, where 

 several hundreds of half-naked spectators of every 

 age are closely packed "together in the broiling 

 afternoon heat, and acted on by all the combined 

 influences of gambling, emulation, and the sport 

 itself; not a word, not a sound, is to be heard, 

 not a gesture to be seen, approaching to " row- 

 dyism ; " not a hint of disorder or disturbance. 

 Passions, strong ones too, certainly, are at work ; 

 vice in many forms can hardly fail to be present 

 and busy in gatherings of the kind ; but no vul- 

 garity, no visible or audible coarsress are there. 

 This is partly due to the comparative absence of 

 intoxication; for tuba, the fermented palm-juice 

 that does almost universal duty for beer or spirits 

 among the Philippine " natives," is rarely drunk 

 in excess, and, even were it, could hardly prove 

 more effective than, in Dr. Johnson's estimation, 

 clai-et itself. But the chief order-preserver is the 

 stable equilibrium of the native mind, the deco- 

 rum born of moderation. A Malay may be a 

 profligate, a gambler, a thief, a robber, a mur- 

 derer ; he is never a cad; that type, as well as 

 the " rough " — the death-bed abhorrence of the 

 great Queen of England's Renaissance — is a de- 

 velopment of the "higher," that is, of the more 

 muscular, more energetic, more pushing, more 

 complicated races ; and his absence from amid 

 the equable diffusion of courtesy and self-restraint 

 that stamp the average Turanian, is alone no 

 small compensation for the inferiority, if inferi- 

 ority there be, of the gentler, calmer, less aggres- 

 sive, also less progressive tribes. The adjuncts 

 of an Epsom grand stand, or a Dutch kermes, may 

 make one occasionally regret the less civilized 

 but better-mannered crowd of a Philippine^esfa. 

 Quitting the equivocal attractions of the 

 cockpit, we engage a caramafa, one of the light 

 covered jaunting-cars before described ; the slim, 

 scantily-attired jarvey, sun-sheltered by his mush- 

 room-like straw hat, and with somewhat of the 

 professional humor of the Wellers of the earth 

 on his boyish face, flogs into a canter the rough, 

 grass-fed ponies of the vehicle, and away we go, 



passing under a highly-decorated bamboo gate- 

 way, built up right across the village entry, and 

 side-doors for foot-farers, the whole extemporized 

 for the day's festival with a prodigality of mate- 

 rial and labor seemingly out of all proportion 

 with the means of the constructors. And now we 

 are on the high-road, where the ditches on cither 

 side, and the spreading trees planted at short 

 intervals for welcome shade, arc almost the only 

 indications that it is a road at all in the European 

 sense of the term. Uneven, irregular, now rock, 

 now mere soil rising in unmanageable hummocks, 

 or deep-scored into ruts and holes, a day's rain, as 

 rain is in the tropics, would render it next to im- 

 passable. But we will suppose our excursion to 

 be made in the dry or the half-dry season, that 

 is, at any date between October and July, best if 

 in February or March, before the summer heats, 

 too intense for average European endurance, have 

 set in. Be our way then through the lowlands, 

 rice districts, sugar districts ; or be it, if more 

 varied scenery attract us, amid the plantations 

 of coffee, cacao, or abaca, of the hilly grounds. 

 The rice-fields are well watered with careful dis- 

 tribution ; Mr. Fergusson does not err in assign- 

 ing the palm of irrigative skill to the Turanian 

 races ; the cane-patches, though small in indi- 

 vidual extent, wave dense and yellow ; the coffee- 

 b ishes, unlike the cruelly mutilated stumps that 

 do duty for them in Ceylon, spread far their 

 straggling boughs berry-laden ; the broad leaves 

 of the shapely abaca plantain glisten emerald in 

 the sun. But to all one feature is common, or 

 rather all are distinguished by the peculiar ab- 

 sence of one feature, rarely missed elsewhere in 

 the colonial tropic namely, large estates. Rice- 

 lands, cane-lands, coffee-lands, hemp-lands alike, 

 all are divided and subdivided ; and, however vast 

 the green carpet of cultivation may be in its total 

 extent, the irregular patches that make it up are 

 not less infinite in number than capricious in 

 shape. Equally remarkable is the absence of 

 large agricultural establishments, buildings, fac- 

 tories, storehouses, and the like. Is that diminu- 

 tive shed, with a few low heaps of crushed cane- 

 refuse about it, a sugar-mill? can that narrow 

 thatch-covering be a coffee-depot ? that rudely- 

 constructed hand - work contrivance just seen 

 through the plantain-stems a hemp - preparing 

 machine ? Yet such in truth it is, such they are ; 

 and, though specimens of somewhat more digni- 

 fied dimensions may occasionally be found, they 

 are rare exceptions, and may be counted, the 

 archipelago through, on the fingers ; while the 

 grandest of them would sink into mere insignifi- 



