onging,
we too sent for a carriage.

Our coachman wore no uniform, but was resplendent in a fresh-laundered
white muslin shirt which he wore outside his drill trousers. He
carried us through the walled city and out by a masked gate to a
drive called the Malecon, a broad, smooth roadway lined with cocoanut
palms. On the bay side the waters dashed against the sea wall just as
Lake Michigan does on the Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. But the view
across the bay at Manila is infinitely more beautiful than that at
Chicago. To the left stretches a noble curve of beach, ending with
the spires and roofs of Cavite and a purple line of plateau, drawn
boldly across the sky. In front there is the wide expanse of water,
dotted with every variety of craft, with a lonely mountain, rising
apparently straight from the sea, bulking itself in the foreground
a little to the left. The mountain is in reality Mt. Marivales,
the headland which forms the north entrance to Manila Bay, but it
is so much higher than the sierra which runs back from it that it
manages to convey a splendid picture of isolation. The sun falls
behind Marivales, painting a flaming background for mountains and
sea. When that smouldering curtain of night has dropped, and the sea
lies glooming, and the ships of all nations swing on their anchor
chains, there are few lovelier spots than the Luneta. The wind comes
soft as velvet; the surf croons a lullaby, and the little toy horses
and toy victorias spin up and down between the palms, settling at
last around the turf oval which surrounds the bandstand.

Here are soldiers in clean khaki on the benches; officers of the army
and navy in snow-white uniforms; Chinamen in robes of purple or blue
silk, smoking in their victorias; Japanese and Chinese nursemaids in
their native costumes watching their charges at play on the grass;
bareheaded American women; black-haired Spanish beauties; and native
women with their long, graceful necks rising from the stiff folds of
azure or rose-colored kerchiefs. American officers tower by on their
big horses, or American women in white drill habits. There are droves
of American children on native ponies, the girls riding astride,
their fat little legs in pink or blue stockings bobbing against the
ponies' sides. There are boys' schools out for a walk in charge of
shovel-hatted priests. There are demure processions of maidens from
the _colegios_, sedately promenading two and two, with black-robed
_