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When the bodies were taken to the Central they were recognized, and to cover his responsibility somewhat, General Arolas said that when he challenged them they ran off, and at the first discharge of musketry they fell dead." Life, liberty and property have all been sacrificed by these determined patriots for the sake of the cause they love.
It having come to his knowledge that a small body of rebels was encamped on the sugar estate Mercedes, of Mr. Oarrillo, General Arolas went to engage them, but the rebels, who were few in numbers, retreated.
But Arolas was probably less popular with the Mohammedans than was the American officer in command at the time of our visit.
Everybody in the Philippines knows the story of General Arolas, and of how, at the close of a brief republican administration in Spain, he was practically banished to Sulu, there to die by fever or be killed by the Moros.
As a rule, there was no evidence of any effort to put provincial towns into decent sanitary conditions. I must, however, note one striking exception. Brigadier General Juan Arolas, long the governor of Joló, had a thorough knowledge of modern sanitary methods and a keen appreciation of the benefits derivable from their application.
But Arolas, instead of settling down into an inactive life awaiting what seemed the inevitable, occupied himself in building up the town, fortifying it strongly, and at the same time making it more beautiful by laying it out in broad streets and avenues, interspersed at regular intervals with flowering squares and plazas.
Unfortunately they were unable to extract very much information, for it appeared that every officer had perished, either in the attack upon the estate, or at the far end of the defile: while the soldiers seemed either too stupid or too ill-informed to be able to give trustworthy replies to any of the questions asked, except that General Weyler had gone back to Havana, and that the operations in the province of Pinar del Rio were being conducted by Generals Bernal and Arolas, who, by strict command of Weyler, were laying the entire country waste, destroying every building of whatsoever description, churches included, on the ground that they afforded possible places of refuge or shelter for revolutionaries; mercilessly shooting down every man, woman, and child found, on the plea that, not having obeyed General Weyler's concentration order, they were contumacious rebels: that, in short, where this host went they found smiling prosperity, and left behind them a blood-stained, fire-blackened waste.
In fact, so delightful a place is Sulu, that if fever were not prevalent there at some seasons of the year, it would be a veritable Paradise; but even the sanitary measures taken by the great Spanish General Arolas have not quite stamped out that scourge to white men, which long made Sulu the most undesirable military station in the islands.
As a slight safeguard against possible backsliding, he was allowed a fine house within the walls, where he kept several wives and some forty slaves. Arolas reasoned that, rather than lose so extensive an establishment, he would behave himself. Later we had reason for believing that the precaution was a wise one....
The people of the town of Matanzas, with Jull as Governor, and Arolas at the head of a column, will suffer in consequence of their pernicious and bloody instincts. "That the readers may know in part who General Arolas is, it may be well to relate what has happened in the Mercedes estate, near Colon.
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