im in even greater admiration than they had shown
for the formidable little weapon. Two shotguns of newest design were
also brought on deck, and while the native women were frankly bored
at this display of ordnance and preferred to talk about the way our
gowns were made, the men were delighted, declaring they never imagined
a gun could be broken in pieces and put together again so easily.

Before our guests left, lemonade and cake were served on the
quarter-deck, and it was really amusing to watch their faces as they
discussed the coldness of the drink, while the pieces of ice in their
glasses excited as much perturbation as the untutored savages had
shown the day before. One travelled lady, however, who had been to
Iloilo once and tasted ice there, drank her lemonade with ostentatious
indifference to its temperature, as became one versed in the ways of
the world, explaining to me with condescension a few moments later
that the Iloilo ice had been much colder than ours,--an item of
physical research which I accepted politely.

We women were asked innumerable questions as to our respective ages,
the extent of our incomes, our religious beliefs, and other inquiries
of so personal a character as to be quite embarrassing. They seemed,
though, to be very genuine in their admiration of us, and evinced
great interest in our clothes, especially those of the quartermaster's
wife, who, being a recent arrival in the Philippines, had yet the
enviable trail of the Parisian serpent upon her apparel. One heavy
cloth walking-skirt of hers, fitting smoothly over the hips and with
no visible means by which it could be got into, animated the same
inquiry from these people as good King George is said to have made
anent the mystery of getting the apple into the dumpling, a problem
of no little difficulty, as any one will agree. At more than one
stopping-place we were called upon to solve the riddle of that skirt,
and I verily believe that, being women, they were even more awed
at the thought of a garment fastening invisibly at one side of the
front under a very deceptive little pocket than at all the electrical
marvels shown them on the ship.

While in Dumaguete we were driven around the town and far out into
the country surrounding it, finding everything much more tropical and
luxuriant in growth than in Manila or its vicinity. There were giant
cocoanut-palms, looking not unlike the royal palm so often spoken of
by travellers on the Med