iterranean, clusters of bamboo and groups of
plantains, flowering shrubs and fields of young rice, green as a well
kept lawn at home.

Picturesque natives saluted us from the roadway, or from the windows
of their nipa shacks; naked brown children fled at our approach, and
wakened their elders from afternoon _siestas_ that they might see two
white women and a yellow-haired child drive by; carabao, wallowing
in the muddy water of a near-by stream, stared at us stolidly;
fighting-cocks crowed lustily as we passed; and hens barely escaped
with their cackling lives from under our very wheels.

A native lazily pounding rice in a mortar rested from his appearance
of labour and watched the carriage until it became a mere speck in
the distance. Two women beating clothes on the rocks of a little
stream stopped their gossip to peep at us shyly from under their
brown hands. Weavers of _abaca_ left their looms and hung out of the
windows to talk with their neighbours about the great event. Heretofore
they had thought the Americans were like Chinamen, who came to the
country, yes, and made money from it, but never settled down as did
the Spaniards, never brought their families with them and made the
islands their home. But here were two American women and a little
girl--surely evidences of domesticity.

Everyone was friendly and peaceably disposed, everyone seemed glad
to see us, if smiles and hearty greetings carry weight, and there was
apparently no race prejudice, no half-concealed doubt or mistrust of
us. Yet in a few days thereafter that very road became unsafe for
an unarmed American, while the people who had greeted us with such
childlike confidence and delight were preparing a warmer reception
for the Americans under the able leadership of a Cebu villain, who
had incited them to insurrection by playing upon their so-called
religious belief, this in many instances being merely fetishism of
the worst kind.

This instigator of anarchy boasted an _anting-anting_, a charm
against bullets and a guarantee of ultimate success in battle, which
consisted of a white _camisa_, the native shirt, on which was written
in Latin a chapter from the Gospel of St. Luke. But notwithstanding
his _anting-anting_, and the more potent factor of several hundred
natives in his ranks, he was easily defeated by a mere handful of
soldiers from the little fort, and when last heard of by our ship was
lying in the American hospital at Dumaguete awaiting