Chapter III

At Worship

When I arose next day and walked to the usual morning seat under the bamboos, I found only Moro there.

“Where is everybody else?” I asked.

“At the Iglesia (ig lāi sē′a),” replied Moro.

I knew iglesia was the Philippine word for church; so I said to Moro: “Let us go there too, and see what they are all doing.”

After we had walked along the white shell paths, past the swaying fisher boats, over an ancient stone bridge, beneath tall palms and hanging vines and thick bananas, we beheld a wonderfully carved doorway, with statues in the niches. Over the tree tops, rose a noble white dome. From the open windows, the sweet singing of sacred music came to our ears. It was the well-known Mass or communion music of our own land, consisting of the beautiful strains of the Gloria, the Sanctus, and the Benedictus. As we came nearer, the breeze wafted us sweet incense from the altar, sandal and spice and flower and cinnamon scents.

Though Moro was of a different faith, he took off his hat; so did I. The short Filipino men were dressed in white. The sweet-looking Filipino women were dressed in wide-striped skirts, and white waists, with very large collars starched stiff. Over their heads were large lace shawls called mantillas. They wore no hats, for they were very proud to show their fine long hair, filled with gold and jeweled pins.

Every one dipped a finger in the water which was placed in a huge shell near the door. Then they bowed before the cross on the altar, which was shining at the end of the long aisle.

In the front seats, under the high dome, we could see Filippa, her parents, and Favra. The colored light from the stained glass windows fell down in rays and clouds of beauty upon the altar boys, who wore robes of purple and white lace.

The music of the blue and gold organ was subdued to a velvet whisper. Suddenly a boy arose behind the carved benches of the choir. He sang in a voice as clear as a bird’s:

It was Fil who was singing. The censers were swinging. The organ began to drown even Fil’s clear voice. Then all the singers in the choir arose and filled the great dome, the long cathedral aisles, and even the palm grove outside the windows, with a great burst of sacred music:

It was all very solemn and very sweet. Far richer than in the homeland, seemed the music, because of the greater natural beauty of the tropics.

Then our good friend, the Padre, arose, and spoke to his people, about charity and missions and peace and the stranger within the doors. He spoke so kindly that we all regretted war, and even hated the name of war. He asked us to give gifts for the wounded and the poor in other sad, colder, harder lands of hate and evil.

Then he extended his hands. A great blessing seemed to flow down from the pulpit and even from the walls of the holy temple of peace, where the white altar, the golden cross, and the colored windows shone out as signs of purity and love.

When the service was dismissed, we all walked home together.

“When are you going to be a Christian, little Moro?” inquired the kind Padre.

“I am a Mohammedan. My people come from the southern Philippines. We worship one God, and Mohammed is his prophet. We make converts by the sword of force, rather than by preaching,” replied Moro, his eyes looking strange and brave.

“Tell me more about your religion. I have heard it is peculiar,” said Filippa.

“When we pray, we face Mecca, instead of Jerusalem or Rome. At Mecca in Arabia is the Holy Book, which we call the Koran. There, also, is the birthplace of Mohammed, our prophet. We believe in troops of angels above, as well as in ‘jinns,’ or spirits, on earth, who are ready to help us. We have no altars in our mosques or churches.

“Our mosques are immense, plain structures, with only large Arabic letters of texts, painted on the walls and ceiling. Five times a day, the Muezzin priest mounts the outside of the mosque tower, and calls the faithful to prayer. Each Mohammedan carries his own praying mat. After placing it on the tile floor beneath the thin pillars, he kneels and bows upon his mat, facing Mecca, where our prophet was born. We do not use music or organs.”

Moro’s Father

All this Moro explained to us. What he told about his religion was very different, very interesting, very new.

“There are good things in your religion,” said the kind Padre, as he placed his hand gently on Moro’s dark head.

“You despise the use of intoxicating liquor. You teach the duty of giving alms and of being charitable to the poor, the unfortunate, and the sick. You teach that every one is his brother’s keeper, and should help his brother to succeed in life. You teach that cleanliness and plain living are almost a part of religion. And we Christians agree with you, Moro, in all these grand ideas; for I think that, with all the sorrow now in the world, some of us have been too selfish, too luxurious, as though we thought we would live forever, and had no duty except to ourselves.”

I, too, felt conscience-stricken for my homeland and for myself, when I heard, in this odd and different quarter of our large world, the Filipino Padre’s true but kind moralizing over Moro’s different religion.

“The bells! Oh, the silver-sweet bells!” exclaimed Filippa’s mother.

“The bells of love and peace,” replied the Padre, as he glanced back at the twin towers of his white Iglesia (church) that shone over the grove of coconut palms.

Chapter IV

Houses

“What odd homes! toy houses toppling over from their stilts!” I exclaimed, as we passed a remarkable village. All the buildings were set up on poles, and had ladders for their dwellers to climb up to the high doors. The houses looked as though the lower story had been washed away, and only the second story remained. Over each window and door projected a very neat eyebrow, so to speak, either to shed rain or to keep out the sun.

“That is our famous nipa-thatch house used by the original Filipinos,” said Moro. “I can explain all about it, for all Moros, and many backward tribes, use these houses.”

“Tell me everything,” I urged.

“First,” said Moro, “there is not one nail in a nipa-thatch house. Perched high in the air on poles, as it is, you perhaps would think our typhoons would blow it over, just like a light bandbox.”

“So I would think,” I replied.

“Well,” laughed bright Moro, “let me ask you a question. What makes a pole snap before the rush of a storm? What makes a brick wall give way before a sudden wind? And why does a tree or a reed bear the storm easily?”

“Because the tree and the reed are elastic enough to give a little,—to bend instead of breaking,” I answered.

“That is just it,” again laughed my little Master Moro. “Our small nipa hut, high in the air, sways a little, but rides out the storm. Every pole, every beam, and every rafter of the frame, is all made of hollow bamboo. Bamboo is stronger than steel, because it bends and gives, and then springs back. There is no nail in the house. Every crosspiece is tied with rattan, the same vine with which you make cane chairs; so you know how strong and elastic it is.”

“And of what are the sloping roofs and the side walls made?” I inquired.

“Of the famous nipa palm,” Moro replied. “It grows in swamps, often near the sea. It looks like a gigantic fern. Its wide leaves we lap one over another, and tie them to the bamboo frame by withes of tough cogon grass.”

“Are you not afraid of fire?” I asked.

Moro frankly said: “Yes, but as our house is so cheap, we can build a new one easily. However, in this warm climate we cook in a separate house, and we bathe out of doors. We do not smoke within our nipa houses; it is too dangerous.”

“Tell our friend from across the purple ocean how we use the bamboo and the nipa plants, for other purposes besides building,” remarked little Fil.

Moro continued: “From the sap of the nipa palm, we distill alcohol. From the hollow bamboo we make pipes for carrying water. We boil the tender new shoots of bamboo, and eat them like celery. We put a stopper into one joint of a hollowed bamboo, and use it for a bottle. The pliant bamboo root we make into whips. We make bridges, fences, window blinds, furniture, and carriages out of bamboo. We even make blow guns and shoot our arrows at birds, through the bamboo stalk.”

“There are one hundred kinds of bamboo, and a thousand uses for the plant,” added Filippa.

“I should imagine that the bamboo is the skeleton or the framework, and that the nipa is the skin of the Philippine structure,” I remarked.

“That is the doctor’s way of drawing a figure of speech,” laughed the Padre.

Chapter V

Cocoa and Coffee

The next morning Filippa’s mother refreshed us all with a cup of fragrant cocoa, so that we might begin the day in good spirits. As I was sipping it, the Padre remarked in good humor:

“Did you Americans seize the Philippines merely for a cup of cocoa?”

I replied laughingly: “This cup of cocoa is so good, that I certainly would try to seize the Philippines for it.”

Filippa’s mother and father both bowed and said I was complimentary, like a diplomat.

Then I continued: “I am glad the Philippines are now ours, and yours too, because our money can help to develop the wonderful tropical products which do not grow in our colder America. I wish you would explain something about cocoa and coffee, which we prize very much and which we send our ships a long way to secure.”

Fil’s father, who was a planter of wide acres, replied:

“The cocoa bean and the coconut are two very different plants. Do not confuse them. The cocoa bean, out of which you grind cocoa powder and chocolate for a drink, for bonbons, and for puddings, comes out of a fruit shaped like a large red cucumber. This fruit grows on a tender bush, which must be shaded by a thick banana palm. In each fruit are twenty of these seeds, or cocoa beans.

“They have hard skins, and are very bitter and stimulating. When eaten, they excite the heart, and thus make a person feel active and alive. Soldiers and athletes eat them, to relieve fatigue. As soon as the fruit is gathered, the beans must be dried in the sun, or be roasted. The cocoa bean is very oily. To make cocoa, the oil is extracted, when the beans are ground into a paste. To make chocolate, the oil is not extracted.”

“I never ate a cocoa bean which was sweet; but a chocolate-drop is sweet,” said Filippa, who had bought chocolate-drops in the candy stores.

Her father explained: “We add sugar and vanilla, to the brown cocoa bean paste.”

“Just think of practically growing chocolate bonbons on a tree, beneath the window of your nipa huts, in these wonderful Philippine Islands,” I added, and every one smiled.

“It is really true, when one adds the sugar,” remarked the Padre.

“Now tell me please about coffee, also,” I begged.

Fil’s father continued:

“The coffee comes from another low bush. You choose a hillside, for, although the plant likes our heavy rains in the Philippines, it does not like to keep its roots long in water. It wants to drain them and to feel the warm sun. The leaves are long and glossy; the blossoms are waxy white. The fragrance is richer than rose sweetened with sugar. The fruit is like a scarlet cherry; each contains two seeds. These two seeds are the coffee bean of commerce and of the breakfast table. They are ground in a small mill, as you know.”

“How were the beans first discovered?” I inquired.

Fil’s father smiled and told this story: “One day a shepherd noticed that his goats, which had eaten the cherries off a coffee bush, danced about in high excitement as though they, instead of their master, were going to a fiesta. Then the shepherd ate the berries, too, and felt stimulated himself. That is how coffee in time came to our breakfast table. Instead of eating the berry, we grind it and steep it, and drink the liquor.”

“But, father, the seeds are light colored, and not deep brown, when you open the fruit,” said Fil.

“I know,” replied Fil’s father. “We roast the seeds in an oven, to get rid of the moisture and to preserve and ripen the stimulating oils.”

“Thank you all;” I exclaimed, “now I will behold a whole tropical story of geography and commerce, every time I look into a grocer’s window at home.”