RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
To all intents and purposes the Walled City is still in the Middle Ages." The truth is that only part of the walls are really very old—some parts have been built within seventy years.
The river was full of strange craft; long, high-prowed, cumbersome looking boats, with rounded deck-houses roofed with straw matting and painted in every conceivable colour and pattern, which, we were told, were cascoes—cargo boats which ply the length of the Pásig and bring down the cocoanuts and sugar-cane and other products from the middle provinces. The only visible propelling power on these cascoes—and the only power they have—are natives, naked to the waist, armed with long bamboo poles upon which, having fixed them firmly in the mud at the bottom of the river, they push steadily as they walk the length of the narrow running beard along the outer edge of the deck. I should say they might make a mile in about two hours.
Then there were the curious little bancas; narrow canoes, hewn out of single logs and kept on an even keel, usually, by graceful outriggers of bamboo.
Across the river from the Walled City is the Custom House, and there, in a few moments, we drew up at a slippery, low, stone landing and climbed ashore. My feet, at last, were on Philippine soil.
If I had, for the time being, forgotten that a war was going on I was immediately reminded of it. The Custom House was in the hands of the Military Government and it was surrounded by khaki-clad guards who all stood stiffly at attention as my husband and General Wright passed. All our necessary luggage had been released and put into the hands of orderlies to be delivered, so we were free to start at once for home.
My husband had written me that the Philippine horses and the Philippine cockroaches were just about the same
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