THE PIvANT WORLD 261 



As we passed by a little path leading up a steep bank to his ranch, 

 Don Jos^ said : " Seiior, do you know this is All Saints Day? " Then 

 he spoke most tenderly of his dead wife, saying that he and his children 

 had been praying for the repose of her soul. He told me what a good, 

 hard-working wife and mother she had been and how he thought of her 

 every day, especially when he came up this hill and saw the path up 

 which she had so often passed. He was an old man now, he said, and in 

 a few years he would join her and leave his property to be divided among 

 his children. Blessed be God ! Then he told me a most interesting story 

 of his early life : how his stern step-father, an exile from Spain, had made 

 him work so very hard ; how he had rebelled then against his severity, 

 but how afterwards he blessed him. He spoke of his youth and of the 

 visits of the whaling fleet, when the crews spent money like water on the 

 island and the time of their stay in port was like a continuous fiesta ; of 

 the terrible outbreak of small-pox, when he assisted the little Irish doctor, 

 George, to take care of the sick, for whom they had no other remedy 

 than salt water, which they administered as a purge. As we passed 

 through a cut on the top of the hill he told me of a mutiny of Filipino 

 convicts, who had been sent to Guam to serve as laborers, and who had 

 conspired to kill all the officials and marry the prettiest girls on the 

 island. While waiting to send them back to Manila they were kept at 

 work making this cut through which we were passing. Then he spoke 

 of some of the early governors : of Villalobos, who ordered a house- 

 to-house inspection in the evenings to see that the natives observed the 

 hour of the angelus, and who went through the palace followed by the 

 government employees reciting the litany ; of the governor's friend. 

 Padre Ciriaco del Kspiritu Santo, who built the house where we now saw 

 the ruins all overgrown by banyan trees ; of another governor, Don Pablo 

 Perez, who fought the priests and was excommunicated. For nearly 

 every turn in the road he had a story : perhaps of runaway sailors, who 

 remained hid until their ships had sailed ; perhaps of some love affair 

 or some accident. One account of a murder was especially thrilling. 

 Don Jose pointed to a cleared space on the hilltop, where a lover went 

 by night to visit his mistress, but was met at the door by her husband, 

 who thrust into his body a knife. " He ran down this hill," said Don 

 Jose, " and that is the spot where he fell and died." The only vestiges 

 left of human habitation were a few fruit trees, among which were an 

 Anacardium and a Carambola tree. Indeed, Don Jose's fund of remi- 

 niscences seems inexhaustible, and he is a most delightful companion on 

 a walk, varying his tales of adventure and pathos with flashes of humor, 

 and stopping now and then to repeat some Spanish proverb in the form 

 of a rhymed couplet or to recite a short prayer before some wayside 

 cross. 



