Beautiful Philippines: A Handbook of General InformationPhilippine Islands. Commission of Independence
History
Beautiful Philippines: A Handbook of General Information
Philippine Islands. Commission of Independence
Philippines -- Description and travel; Philippines -- Economic conditions
For in reality there are three Manilas, which are still
noticeable. First, there is the Manila of the original Malay, which,
with its nipa shacks, its carabaos, and its quaint fishing boats,
exists much as it did in the days of Raja Lacandola. Secondly,
there is the Manila of the sixteenth and seventeenth century
Spaniard--adventurer, merchant, and crusader in equal parts--who, in
the churches and convents, the walls and gates, and the half-Moorish
domestic architecture, has left ineffaceable memorials of the fact
that this, the oldest of the European settlements in the East, was in
its day among the chief glories of the "once imperial race." Finally,
there is the Americanized Manila of to-day, the town of electricity,
motor cars, macadamized roads and sewers and steel bridges, well on
its way to become one of the beautiful cities of the world.
[Costumes]
The costumes of the women are admittedly unique and attractive. Old
Spain gave the peasant's neckerchief that has evolved into the pañuelo;
the court train of her damas gave the saya; her priests gave the
tapis; the ground plan is Malayan, the sleeves swelled to suit the
climate. This, which has changed but little in over three centuries,
is the predominating model; but America, Paris, half Asia, and the
South Pacific contribute also to the revue des modes: georgette crèpe
and coconut fiber rain cape and skirt, white duck and rengue, all in
the same rain shower on the same block.
[The Shops]
Modern shops with plate-glass fronts, office buildings with their
elevators, elbow in between the open-fronted Chino shops of the
Rosario. And the carabao snails by, and the "little gray hawk" that
"hangs aloft in the air," happens to be an aëroplane.
[The Pasig]
Down by the entrance to the Pasig River modern steamers are warped
to the river wall, and farther up dumpy river launches shuffle about
their work of conveying to the big household of Manila chickens,
pigs, fruits, and vegetables; a string of bamboo-roofed cascoes lie
in wait by the market; sturdy bargemen with thirty-foot bamboo poles
shove the unwieldy lorchas about, and the tiny bancas now toddle
bravely along, now reel and wobble from the cuffs of their elders. The
river is navigable for miles, and a trip upstream reveals successive
combinations of meadows, high banks fringed with feathery bamboo,
and here and there a village with its nipa houses and its gray stone
church embowered in groves of coconuts and mangoes.
OTHER PLACES OF INTEREST
[Churches]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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