A Carabao, 144
The Oldest Cathedral of Manila, 238
General Rufino in Moro Country, 256
Captain Isidro Rillas with the Datto, 256
A Deserted Moro Shack, 274
Moro Weapons (Spear and Dirk), 274

Chapter I.

In Old Manila.

As the big white transport comes to anchor three miles out in the
green waters of Manila Bay, a fleet of launches races out to meet
the messenger from the Far West. The customs officers in their blue
uniforms, the medical inspectors, and the visitors in white duck suits
and panama hats, taking their ease upon the launches without the
slightest sign of curiosity, give one his first impressions of the
Oriental life--the white man's easy-going life in the Far East. But
the ideas of the newcomer are to undergo a change after his first few
days on shore, when he takes up the grind, and realizes that his face
is getting pasty--that the cool veranda and the drive on the Luneta
do not constitute the entire program, even in Manila.

Unwieldy lighters and strange-looking _cascos_ now surround the
transport, and the new arrival sees the Filipino for the first
time. Under the woven helmet of the nearest _casco_ squats a shriveled
woman, one of the witches from Macbeth, stirring a blackened pot of
rice. A gamecock struggles at his tether in the stern, while the deck
amidships swarms with wiry brown men, with bristling pompadours and
feet like rubber, with wide-spreading toes. With unintelligible cries
they crowd the gunwale, spurning the iron hull of the transport with
long billhooks, as the heavy swell sucks out the water, leaving the
streaming sluices and the great red hull exposed, and threatening at
the inrush of the sea to bump the _casco_ soundly against the solid
iron plates of the larger ship. A most disreputable-looking crew it
is, the ragged trousers rolled up to the knee, the network shirts,
or cotton blouses full of holes drawn down outside. Highly excitable,
and yet good-natured as they work, they take possession and disgorge
the ship, while Chinamen descend the hatchways after dirty clothes.

Off in the hazy distance lies Cavite, or "the port," with its white
mist of war ships lying at anchor where the stout Dutch galleons rode,
in 1647, to attack the Spanish caravels, retiring only after the
Dutch admiral fell wounded mo