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His practised eyes discerned the shadowy forms of watchers squatting along the beach; beyond, the patrol-boat moved about restlessly, and in the distance twinkled the lights of Zamboanga. "If I could only get past the lepers and the boat, I could swim back," thought Piang, and he looked with longing at the oily smoothness of the water.
Preyed upon by Jesuits, Filipinos, and Spaniards, they had long ago found a ready bolo the safest argument. Governor Findy had sent them word that they were to be protected from their enemies, and that Americans were their friends, but disturbing whispers of traps and bondage made the wild folk hesitate to obey the summons. Thus, a strange scene was being enacted at the Zamboanga wharf.
I demanded, a trifle sharply, for heads had appeared at various windows and the situation was becoming embarrassing. The coachman turned with a dignified gesture, if one can look dignified in a shirt thin as mosquito-netting. "It is the house of the presidente," he said, in an injured tone. "Every American who comes to Zamboanga wishes to be driven here. He is a very great man, the presidente."
He subsequently swore to an affidavit relative to conditions under Insurgent rule. It reads as follows: "We always had peace in Zamboanga District; except during the revolution of the Filipinos in the year 1899, when for seven or eight months there was in existence the so-called Filipino Republic.
Confinement in the jail at night, with labour in irons on the public roads during the day, is also a usual punishment; criminals being generally linked in pairs by a chain round the leg of each, and taken out, under a guard, to work on the streets or roads at Manilla, Cavite, or Zamboanga, at sunrise, and led back to jail at sunset.
Small wonder the fiesta was a success, and that the "Viva America's" were uttered from full hearts. But it is primarily to Datto Mandi and the presidente that the people of Zamboanga should be grateful. Citizens of the world these men are, and statesmen, too, although their sphere is comparatively circumscribed.
However, these foolish restrictions were at length put a stop to, and the trade encouraged, by the Government establishing a custom-house at Zamboanga, where there is at all times a considerable military force. The Sultan appears to be the most powerful nobleman in the country, rather than the sovereign monarch of it.
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