MALAY LIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES. 



463 



and a noise like that of a well-sustained musketry 

 discharge, summoning all who, have not already 

 by anticipation mustered on the spot, to the field 

 outside the village, where the castel crowns in fire 

 the rejoicings and glories of the festival. 



It is, if not in general conception, yet certain- 

 ly in detail, a genuine Philippine toy. A tower, 

 of two, three, or even four stages, is constructed 

 of bamboos close interlaced and tied together, 

 with turrets and battlements ad libitum, till the 

 whole reaches twenty-five or thirty feet in height ; 

 abore, below, and to every part of the frame- 

 work, squibs, crackers, Catharine- wheels, Roman 

 candles, and rockets innumerable, are made fast, 

 ready for firing ; and all about the castel itself, 

 but at some little distance, rise outworks, also 

 twined of bamboo, and densely covered with fire- 

 works of every description. For weeks before- 

 hand preparations have been going on, and the 

 yet unkindled edifice, festooned with white or 

 colored cloth, and bravely bedecked with stream- 

 er and flag, has been the favorite resort of after- 

 noon crowds, a constant centre of joyful antici- 

 pation. Now its hour is come : midnight draws 

 on, and the waning moon yet hangs low in the 

 dark sky ; when suddenly a preliminary up-burst 

 of some scores of rockets, grouped clusterwise, 

 and filling the night air as they explode with 

 floating showers of soft-falling stars — green, red, 

 white, purple, blue — ushers in the grand act of 

 the castel. From every side, every angle of bar- 

 ricade and tower, the fire rushes simultaneously 

 forth, crackling, hissing, exploding, a fairy pan- 

 demonium, lighting up the tall trees and bamboo 

 clusters in the fields around far and wide, and 

 every face in the thick-gathered crowd beneath ; 

 for not a man, woman, or child, of all who have 

 attended the Jiesta, would for any human consider- 

 ation miss the spectacle, the very bourne and ut- 

 most goal of their inventive delight ; and at each 

 fresh explosion the rapturous applause rises higher 

 till it reaches the highest pitch of excitement con- 

 sistent with the habitual impassive calm of the Ma. 

 lay character. Sometimes this excitement is in- 

 tensified by the added sport of a fiery bull — that 

 is, a wicker framework more or less representing 

 the animal, and well protected by thick hides, 

 outside of which squibs and crackers are fastened 

 in plenty, while a couple of men concealed with- 

 in the hollow, and protected from the blaze with- 



out by the hide covering, make the burning, 

 crackling monster rush hither and thither among 

 the spectators, who skurry away on all sides in 

 real or simulated alarm, amid shneks and laugh 

 ter. Thus midnight passes, and the merry tu- 

 mult is at its loudest and maddest, when, all too 

 soon, the castel-fires wane and dwindle, the ex- 

 plosions cease, the last rockets shed their sinking 

 stars, and a few minuses later all is darkness and 

 silence over the trampled field ; noiselessly, rap- 

 idly the crowd has melted away and dispersed 

 each to his resting-place to sleep out the brief 

 space left till dawn, and the moon, left sole queen 

 of the night, casts her white veil in a semblance 

 of thin snow over grove and garden, church and 

 home-roof, where a few expiring lamps yet twin- 

 kle amid a stillness like the stillness of the dead. 

 We return to the room prepared for us by our 

 host of the day before, and the bright morning 

 sun wakes us to find the husbandmen already 

 gone to early mass, or out with their buffaloes in 

 the fields, the women moving to and fro with their 

 water-jars, or washing clothes in the neighboring 

 stream ; streets and roads are all alive with slight- 

 clad wayfarers and creaking carts, and the daily 

 current of village-life is flowing calmly in its 

 wonted channels, as, escorted to the outer gate 

 by the capitan and his attendants, we take our 

 leave, and fare forth on our journey by sun and 

 shade, mountain and river, hamlet and field, back 

 to Manila. 



To Manila ? I lean over the low bulwarks of 

 the Leite, as the little craft cleaves the south- 

 western way toward the straits of Singapore, and 

 now see nothing around but the green heavings 

 of the tepid China Sea ; the last dim outline of 

 high Mindoro and wild Palawan, westernmost isl- 

 and of the Spain-ruled archipelago, has faded into 

 sky; and the swarthy, active, boyish-seeming 

 crew of sailors and firemen is all that remains in 

 presence yet for five voyage-days more of the 

 Philippines and their inhabitants. Passed Singa- 

 pore ; and these, too, will be things of the past. 

 But of all tropica! lands, all tropical races that 

 it has been my lot to visit, none will have left a 

 pleasanter, a more heart-satisfying memory than 

 the Philippine Archipelago, the home of the half- 

 civilized Malay. Is wholly-civilized Europe, is 

 England herself, a better home to her children ? 

 a happier? Compare and judge. 



— Cornhill Magazine. 



