To confuse the letters p and f in speaking Spanish was a common error among uneducated Filipinos. —Translator ↩
No cristianos, not Christians, i.e., savages. —Translator ↩
The patron saint of Spain, St. James. —Translator ↩
Houses of bamboo and nipa, such as form the homes of the masses of the natives. —Translator ↩
“In this paragraph Rizal alludes to an incident that had very serious results. There was annually celebrated in Binondo a certain religious festival, principally at the expense of the Chinese mestizos. The latter finally petitioned that their gobernadorcillo be given the presidency of it, and this was granted, thanks to the fact that the parish priest (the Dominican, Fray José Hevia Campomanes) held to the opinion that the presidency belonged to those who paid the most. The Tagalogs protested, alleging their better right to it, as the genuine sons of the country, not to mention the historical precedent, but the friar, who was looking after his own interests, did not yield. General Terrero (Governor, 1885–1888), at the advice of his liberal councilors, finally had the parish priest removed and for the time being decided the affair in favor of the Tagalogs. The matter reached the Colonial Office (Ministerio de Ultramar) and the Minister was not even content merely to settle it in the way the friars desired, but made amends to Padre Hevia by appointing him a bishop.”—W. E. Retana, who was a journalist in Manila at the time, in a note to this chapter.
Childish and ridiculous as this may appear now, it was far from being so at the time, especially in view of the supreme contempt with which the pugnacious Tagalog looks down upon the meek and complaisant Chinese and the mortal antipathy that exists between the two races. —Translator ↩
It is regrettable that Quiroga’s picturesque butchery of Spanish and Tagalog—the dialect of the Manila Chinese—cannot be reproduced here. Only the thought can be given. There is the same difficulty with r’s, d’s, and l’s that the Chinese show in English. —Translator ↩
Up to the outbreak of the insurrection in 1896, the only genuinely Spanish troops in the islands were a few hundred artillerymen, the rest being natives, with Spanish officers. —Translator ↩
Abaka is the fiber obtained from the leaves of the Musa textilis and is known commercially as Manila hemp. As it is exclusively a product of the Philippines, it may be taken here to symbolize the country. —Translator ↩
Yet Ben-Zayb was not very much mistaken. The three legs of the table have grooves in them in which slide the mirrors hidden below the platform and covered by the squares of the carpet. By placing the box upon the table a spring is pressed and the mirrors rise gently. The cloth is then removed, with care to raise it instead of letting it slide off, and then there is the ordinary table of the talking heads. The table is connected with the bottom of the box. The exhibition ended, the prestidigitator again covers the table, presses another spring, and the mirrors descend. —Author’s note ↩
The Malay method of kissing is quite different from the Occidental. The mouth is placed close to the object and a deep breath taken, often without actually touching the object, being more of a sniff than a kiss. —Translator ↩
Now Calle Tetuan, Santa Cruz. The other names are still in use. —Translator ↩
The Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País for the encouragement of agricultural and industrial development, was established by Basco de Vargas in 1780. —Translator ↩
Funds managed by the government for making loans and supporting charitable enterprises. —Translator ↩
The names are fictitious burlesques. —Translator ↩
“Boiled Shrimp.” —Translator ↩
“Uncle Frank.” —Translator ↩
Messageries Maritimes, a French line of steamers in the Oriental trade. —Translator ↩
Referring to the expeditions—Misión Española Católica—to the Caroline and Pelew Islands from 1886 to 1895, headed by the Capuchin Fathers, which brought misery and disaster upon the natives of those islands, unprofitable losses and sufferings to the Filipino soldiers engaged in them, discredit to Spain, and decorations of merit to a number of Spanish officers. —Translator ↩
Over the possession of the Caroline and Pelew Islands. The expeditions referred to in the previous note were largely inspired by German activity with regard to those islands, which had always been claimed by Spain, who sold her claim to them to Germany after the loss of the Philippines. —Translator ↩
“Where the wind wrinkles the silent waves, that rapidly break, of their own movement, with a gentle murmur on the shore.” —Translator ↩
“Where rapid and winged engines will rush in flight.” —Translator ↩
There is something almost uncanny about the general accuracy of the prophecy in these lines, the economic part of which is now so well on the way to realization, although the writer of them would doubtless have been a very much surprised individual had he also foreseen how it would come about. But one of his own expressions was “fire and steel to the cancer,” and it surely got them.
On the very day that this passage was translated and this note written, the first commercial liner was tied up at the new docks, which have destroyed the Malecon but raised Manila to the front rank of Oriental seaports, and the final revision is made at Baguio, Mountain Province, amid the “cooler temperatures on the slopes of the mountains.” As for the political
