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The Republic of the Philippines, is an archipelago of some 7100 islands in southeast Asia, about 500 miles off the coast of Vietnam. The capital is Manila. The area of the Philippines is about 115,800 square miles (300,000 square kilometers). The estimated population of Philippines in July, 2004 was 86,241,697. The official language is Filipino. The Philippine Islands became a Spanish colony during the 16th century; they were ceded to the US in 1898 following the Spanish-American War. The islands attained their independence in 1946 after Japanese occupation in World War II. The 21-year rule of Ferdinand MARCOS ended in 1986, when a widespread popular rebellion forced him into exile. In 1992, the US closed its last military bases on the islands. The Philippines has had a series of electoral presidential transitions since the removal of MARCOS. The government continues to struggle with armed Muslim insurgencies in the south. -- The CIA World Factbook: Philippines
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The New York Times, September 13, 1903, p. 22:Manila's Rainy SeasonWhen the Filipino Goes About Dressed a la Crusoe.The American Cannot Walk and the Street Car Line is Gilbertian--Startling Tropical Growths. MANILA, Aug. 7.--The rainy season in upon us; our boots are covered wtih blue mold of mornings, our white clothes come home from the "wasayman" tastefully sprinkled with spots of mildew. Withal, the discomforts of the rainy season are not very great. It clears up from time to time, and on such days as the sun shines the weather is more pleasant than at any other part of the year. Last week Manila was visited by a typhoon, and it rained heavily and almost continuously for six days. The city being paved with macadam, the streets are mud puddles, while the rain lasts, so much so that no white man walks. At such times the sad lack of transportation is keenly felt; the means of transportation in the city are limited, for those who do not own carriages, to the rickety public carromatas and carretelas and a comic opera street car line. This line is furnished with cars that will, on occasions of great urgency, accomodate thirty persons. The closed cars--for the line has both closed and open cars--are constructed to carry ten persons sitting and an indefinite number standing. They are divided into three sections, one in the centre with seats for ten, and a section at each end without seats, in which those who are very short may stand, but as the clear headway in the centre of the arch of the car roof is just six feet, and at the sides about five and a half, any one of average American height needs to stoop considerably. Notwithstanding the low roof, these cars are provided with straps in the stand-up sections, hung from rods that are just five feet ten inches from the floor; the end of the strap hangs within four and a half feet from the floor. There are no platforms to these closed cars; the boards that form the floor of the car are extended in the centre for six inches further out than the boards at the sides, and on the projection so formed the driver and conductor stand. There are no doors to the cars, but you wriggle past the driver to enter. The cars frequently run off the line, and on such occasions, though it be a pouring rain, all the passengers get off into the sea of mud and lift the car back on the rails. One wet, dark night last week it was my privilege to assist at one of these functions, and I was so much impressed with the ease with which the car was raised to the track that I sneaked surreptitiously behind the car when it arrived at the terminus to see if I could not lift one end unassisted. I trust that this issue of The Times will not come to the attention of the Directors of the line, or they will know why one of the cars has the rear platform bent upward. I lifted it. The woodwork is mostly of Georgia pine, and is unvarnished. The seats are plain wood. Most of the permanent way is single track, and the service may be fairly judged from the time table of the branch running from the Bridge of Spain, Pasig River, to the Ermita and Malate section of the city, where a large part of the Americans live. On this section there are twenty cars a day running in each direction, the first car leaving at 6 o'clock A. M., and the last one at 8:05 P. M. The distance is pretty exactly two miles, and the running time twenty-five minutes. The fare is according to the distance traveled, the line being divided into three sections; if you go the full length of the line you are furnished with three tickets, numbered consecutively, each costing two cents Mexican, or about 2¾ cents American money, for the whole trip. At about six points on the line it is the duty of the conductor to make entries in his little book of the number of passengers aboard, the consecutive number with the last ticket issued, and the time. With a full load and good time the car earns about $1.50 gold per round trip of one and one-half hours. The motive power of these cars consists of two tiny ponies; they average between 49 and 50 inches high. There is no bell, but the driver keeps up a continuous squawking on a sort of speaker that sounds like the tin-pan voice of Punch and Judy. An American company is to begin operations on a modern trolley car line within a few weeks. With such a line, the terrors of the rainy season will come pretty nearly to an end, at least for those who live in the city. COUNTRY ROADS ARE SWAMPS.
In the country districts conditions are worse. While the heavy rain lasts, and for one or two days after it clears, the country roads, constructed of earth only, are quagmires. The only repairs made to the roads at a distance from Manila consist of patches of "corduroy," made by putting thin logs or bamboos across the deepest holes. For some reason known only to themselves the natives build their shacks on the lowest available ground, and during the storms they are generally surrounded with water. They are always built on poles so the the room is raised above the floods, and during the hot season the inhabitants spend most of the time under the house, where it is cooler, living on the bare earth with the chickens and pigs; at present they are living up stairs, the chickens are perching on the roofs, and the pigs wallowing in the mud. The costumes worn during this season are novel. I saw a native driver in the city of Manila during a heavy storm with nothing on except an old mackintosh. I am indebted to the strong wind for the opportunity to state with certainty that he positively had nothing else on. In Rizal province I saw, during a recent rain, several men and women dressed in nipa. It was evidently taken from some old roof, and arranged in two circles, like capes, one tied around the neck and the other around the waist. Robinson Crusoe could not have done better. The Filipino has his own way of meeting the difficulties of the wet weather; he does not, if he be of the working class, try to keep dry. He does not usually wear waterproof clothes or rubber boots, nor carry an umbrella. He just takes off his slouchy slippers, that in the dry season are rather an impediment than an aid to walking, and wades in as if nothing were happening. A greater part of the heavy work of the farm is done in the hot weather; the ground is softer and easier to plow, and his cattle are not very strong, nor his plows very good. Those crops that had already started when the rains began are now growing at an amazing rate; the sugar cane looks magnificent. Although the typhoon just past was quite severe, little damage was done either to the trees or smaller crops. The trees of these islands are mostly of very hard wood, slow-growing, and so short in the trunk that to build a two-story house it is necessary to piece the uprights, and so they do not suffer from the wind. The only tall timber is the bamboo, and that is too springy to take harm. The bamboos have shot out sprouts during the month of rain that for quickness of growth surpass anything within my knowledge. From among the clumps of stalks that grow from each great root mass there have shot up stalks like giant asparagus, fifty, sixty, seventy feet high, and four to five inches thick at the root. While the dry season lasted the growth of the bamboos was scarcely perceptible. The Filipino bamboo is is very stout of growth with the stalks closely packed, so that they touch one another for six to ten feet from the ground, and the creaking and groaning in a bamboo thicket during a high wind is something terrifying. UNNATURAL LOOKING FLOWERS.
Hemp and bananas have also made growths that almost startle; there are no plants in the islands so coarse as these two which are closely related. When, during the wet season, a few days of calm hot weather comes, the banana or hemp shoots out long, pale green leaves eight to ten feet long; the first wind that comes tears them to rags, and they are then most dilapidated plants. The fruit and the flowers, great unnatural looking things, the size, shape, and color of a cow's heart, swing heavily among the tattered rags of leaves, but even a severe typhoon does not seem to damage them. Cocoanuts also are weather-proof. While the heavy winds last there is much activity among the natives living near the beach; at such times scraps of wood are thrown up on the sand, and there is nothing scarcer among the poor Filipinos than wood to cook their meals. There are trees, yes; but wheels must go round and papers be signed before any tree can be cut down. The forestry laws are extremely rigid. For this reason, women and children were combing the beach all the time the late typhoon lasted, careless of the storm if they could only secure a few scraps of wood. I truly believe that there is as much wood burned in the City of Manila that grew in the United States as there is of wood grown here, and certainly there is more American wood being used for building purposes in the city at the present time than there is of native timber. Perhaps the Government is right; the native wood is too good to use for house framing. The greater part of the arable land of the islands is very flat; in the hot weather it suffers from want of irrigation, although intersected by hundreds of little streams that would lend themselves to irrigation with great facility. At this time the same lands are drowning for want of a little drainage. Some of the crops do not mind the floods; hemp is all right, rice flourishes, but many other crops that might be grown under other circumstances are impossible with such bad management. When the rain stops for a few days the air is hot with steam; then we have a chilly shower or a heavy storm; following the storm the mud puddles are covered with green slime within six hours. The grass is full of toadstools. And in this changeable, treacherous weather, the cholera and other zymotic diseases disappear. There are three months more of wet weather to come, and at the end of that time there will be one of the finest crops of sugar cane ready to be wasted by miserable machinery and ignorant labor that these islands ever saw. F. T.
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