RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
uprooted in our own garden, and across the street a house was flattened out. Groups of Filipinos stood here and there talking and gesticulating in their usual manner, but nobody seemed unduly excited. We saw many houses unroofed, and once in a while we met a native with a piece of nipa or tin roofing balanced on his head, quietly carrying it back where it belonged.
We drove down through the Escolta and into the crowded Tondo district beyond, and there we suddenly found ourselves hub-deep in a flood. The below-the-sea-level quarters were under several feet of water, and we got a sudden revelation as to why all the nipa houses are built on such high and unsightly stilts. Crowds of Filipinos were paddling through the flood, most of them carrying some part of a house, or other belonging, and nearly all of them playing and splashing like pleased children. Bancas―long canoes from the river—were plying from house to house as if it were an everyday affair and conditions were quite normal.
I had heard a great deal about the severity of typhoons, but as I had passed a whole season in the East and had crossed the China Sea during the typhoon season without encountering one, I began rather to scoff at the general fear of them. But I never did after that; when anybody said typhoon I knew exactly what it meant. The water subsided rapidly and in a day or two Manila showed few signs of the fury which had passed, but for several days the Commission continued to receive reports of the damage done and the lives lost throughout the surrounding country. It was the worst and the last storm of that year.
When we arrived in Manila we found the social atmosphere somewhat peculiar. Members of our own party, who had crossed the Pacific on the Hancock, welcomed us at once with dinners and teas and other kinds of parties; also a number of Army ladies called without delay, and our cir-
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