The Foreign Settlement in Yokohama consists of a broad business section, solidly built, on the low lands fronting the harbour, and The Bluff. The Bluff is a garden of beautiful homes. At one end it rises high above the bay and commands a wide view of harbour, town and Pacific Ocean, while the other end runs inland to meet the higher hills beyond and forms a deep valley in which has been built up a teeming native quarter full of colour, of picturesque outline and of never-ending oriental clamour. Around this village are terraced, bright-green rice paddies and high hills covered with dark, Japanese pines which grow at curious angles.
Our house, a spreading bungalow in a large and well-kept garden, was on the inland side and overlooked this valley. From a Buddhist temple on the opposite hill, a quaint structure with uptilted roof and great stone torii gateway, came the ceaseless drone of a priest repeating over and over an endless invocation to the constant, measured tum-tum accompaniment of little wooden drums, while from the narrow streets below rose the strange cries of itinerant food venders. Throughout the whole long evening sounded the long wail of the blind masseurs who, with their thumping bamboo sticks, tramp from door to door seeking patronage. At intervals the single low tong of a great temple bell set the hills to vibrating.
We rented the house from an Englishman who was “going home” on vacation, and with it we rented a complete ménage, including a most efficient little Japanese woman named Matsu who served us both as waitress and housekeeper and answered to the call of “Amah!”—meaning either nurse or maid. Besides the Amah, there was only a cook, an excellent one, but the two contrived to run the house with a smoothness and an economy which I have never seen equalled. They were so economical, in fact, that we had difficulty in getting them to serve to us enough of their well-prepared food. There were six of us in family, not including Charlie, or Baby San as he was called, and at each meal Matsu would bring in just six portions of whatever there was, six chops, six croquettes, six little fishes, always six—no more. We resorted to strategy sometimes and announced, well in advance, that there would be guests.
“How many, O Ku San?” says Matsu cautiously.
“Well, maybe two,” says we.
Whereupon we would get eight little chops, or eight little croquettes, or whatever it might be. But we couldn’t play this game very often because we were afraid that if too many guests failed to materialise the time would come when we really would be giving a party and be forced to act out the “Wolf! Wolf!” story to our own very great embarrassment. I’m glad to say this never occurred; Matsu always obeyed orders; but when an unexpected guest dropped in we had to exercise the principle of “family hold back” in real earnest.
However, while Matsu was in command none of us had any cause for complaint. She had plenty of native shrewdness and didn’t neglect her own interests to any appreciable extent, but she displayed none of the traditional oriental duplicity which we had been warned to look out for in all Japanese servants. She relieved us of all the responsibilities of housekeeping and left us free to wander around among the fascinating shops and to go off on long sightseeing expeditions at our pleasure.
While we were still in the midst of the miseries of quarantine I got my first letter from my husband, and as he had sailed away into what to me then was a very far distant and somewhat unreal world, I was exceedingly glad to hear from him.
The Hancock had stopped at Kobe and had then gone on to Nagasaki where it had to lie for two days taking on coal. The Commissioners seem to have begun by that time to chafe at delays and to long for their settled, definite employment. But they had to go to Hong Kong on some business matters and it was from Hong Kong that my first long letter came. They were received by the British authorities with the usual formality; pompous calls to be returned as pompously; dinners, luncheons, club privileges, launch parties and much entertaining gossip; but they were interested, principally, in meeting for the first time the genus Filipino irreconcilable.
The Filipinos, after three centuries of Christian education, which had taken the form of religious instruction only, had, with reason, risen in revolt against the Spanish system of friar domination and had demanded some measure of freedom and a voice in the control of their own affairs. This is a long and complicated story which can only be touched upon here.
They were engaged in a hopeless struggle with Spanish authority when the Spanish-American War, unexpected, undreamed of, suddenly turned the tables and placed them in an entirely new situation. They saw Spain defeated and turned from the islands she had held since Magellan’s first voyage, while another flag quickly rose above their ancient forts and strongholds. Then it was that the handful of ambitious “illustrados,” or well-to-do and educated ones, began freely to preach independence and were encouraged by not a few Americans, including some in official relation to the situation, who, in complete ignorance of real conditions, approved the so-called aspiration and gave hope of its early fulfilment.
The idea of these Americans was that our forefathers had fought for independence and that it was against our most cherished principles to hold any people against their will. But they didn’t take into consideration the fact that the Filipinos were Malays, not ten percent of them with even a primary education, used only to a theocratic and absolute government and without any experience in the rule of the people. Nor did they consider that our forefathers had, for a century and
