Recollections of Full Years

was erected for the accommodation of invalid soldiers who, before these facilities for taking care of them were provided, had always, at great expense to the government, to be sent back to the United States. A civil hospital and tuberculosis camp were opened; good hotels under private ownership soon took the place of field tents and rough board shacks; markets and stores were started, bringing in supplies in wholesale lots, and fair-sized buildings soon began to go up in a substantial business section; people began to build houses as rapidly as builders could be found to do the work; churches and schools began to appear where nothing was before; a summer camp for the recuperation of thousands of public school teachers was started in a high valley carpeted with pine-needles, and lecture courses for vacation instruction were instituted; a country club was organised with golf links, a baseball diamond, polo grounds, tennis courts and everything that goes to make a country club successful. The plan of the city was drawn by Architect Burnham of Chicago, who visited Benguet for the purpose, and a great central plaza was provided with artistic, but inexpensive buildings for the accommodation of the two branches of the government. Cottages in rows went up almost overnight; rich Filipinos and a few Americans built fine homes; beautifully metalled drives began to wind in and out and over and around the hills, and a high-class government automobile bus line was put on the Benguet Road which is the delight of every American or other foreigner in the Islands, as well as of many hundreds of Filipinos who annually take advantage of this wholly novel opportunity to reach a salubrious climate in their own land, and by a route which in any European country would attract scores of thrill-seeking tourists.

And so the Philippine Simla was begun. Its friends, or, in other words, most people have dreams of a great future for it when it shall be a thriving, prosperous city and a health resort for everybody “east of Suez” who needs to seek near by a temperate and invigorating climate.

It is six years since I saw Baguio, for I visited it the last time in 1907, but even then I could not believe that it was built on the ground that I had ridden over and found practically uninhabited only six years before. At that time a provincial government had been organised, and an American, Mr. Phelps Whitmarsh, who was a writer and had lived among the Igorrotes a long time, was appointed governor. But he was governor of a wild-tribe province which did not then boast any greater signs of civilisation than winding foot trails and a few groups of low-thatched huts which were known as towns.

We rode in from Trinidad, not many miles from Baguio, on the morning of the 23rd of June and went straight to the governor’s “mansion.” We were welcomed by Mrs. Whitmarsh into a nipa-roofed, suali house which, though it was quite large, had no partitions except such as were made of bamboo screens and hangings of bright-coloured Igorrote cloths. But it had a big, open fireplace and a fine blaze from odorous pine boughs was crackling up the chimney. This seemed particularly cosy and delightful to us because we had just been camping in native huts in which the only place for a fire was a square of earth in the middle of the floor and we were not only quite frozen but we were thoroughly smoked.

The zigzag. How the Benguet road climbs to an altitude of over 5,000 feet in six miles

At Baguio we got letters and telegrams from Manila and one of the telegrams announced my husband’s appointment as Governor of the Islands, so I knew that an adjustment of state affairs had been made and that I should reach Manila to begin a new era in my Philippine experience. Mr. Taft wrote me that the plans for his inauguration were practically complete and that he was issuing cards for a big reception in honour of General MacArthur at our house on the evening of the Fourth of July. This filled me with something like panic, because I didn’t expect to reach Manila until after the first of July and I didn’t see how I could get ready on such short notice to entertain hundreds of people. However, it was not for me to enter a protest on such a score, so it was decided that we would go down as soon as we possibly could.

We spent two days enjoying the delightful hospitality of our friends in Baguio and in exploring the country round about, and I, after listening to builders’ dreams of what was to be and now is, proceeded to select a site for my own future summer home.

We sat around a roaring fire of an evening and sang all our songs, rather ruefully; we recounted our many adventures, and expressed our sincere regret that our holiday was over; then on the morning of the 25th of June, at the dreary hour of half past four, we mounted our refreshed and rested horses and started down the long Naguilian trail to the coast. I wish only to add that the heat in the lowlands, after our long breath of white man’s air in the mountains, was almost more than we could stand, and I made the fatal mistake of leaving Baguio in a heavy flannel riding shirt and with no thin blouse handy to take its place.

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Governor Taft

There is no denying that the arrangements made, during my absence in the north, for my participation in the events attending my husband’s induction into the office of Governor of the Philippines were enough to fill me with dismay.

Mr. Taft had issued two thousand invitations for the reception at