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I was on the edge of the steersman's perch, enjoying the mist of the flying spray and watching the stars appear one by one. Tetuahunahuna pointed toward the northern sky. "Miope! I steer by the star the color of the rosewood tree," he said. There was our own Mars, redder than the sunsets over Mariveles. Northwest he was, this god of war and fertility, and our bow beacon.
The negritos whom I saw at Angat and Mariveles knew nothing whatever about agriculture, lived in the open air, and supported themselves upon the spontaneous products of nature; but the half-savages of the Iriga dwell in decent huts, and cultivate several vegetables and a little sugar-cane. No pure negritos, as far as I could ascertain, are to be met with in Camarines.
Unfortunately it was not till the close of our stay that I learnt that there was a colony of negritos in the mountains; and it was not till just before my departure that I got a chance of seeing and sketching a couple of them, male and female. The inhabitants of Mariveles have not a very good reputation.
Many of the houses have a tiny store at the ground level in which a small stock of canned goods, native fruits, dried fish, native shoes etc. may be seen. One of the main department stores of Mariveles is shown in the accompanying photograph, with the very American sign at the side of the entrance.
Then, in a few days, taking the declaration of the said fiscal of the king, the visitor brought charges against him, and commanded that he should go into banishment on the island of Mariveles, and from that place should answer the charges.
Everything about him appeared under the saddest and somberest colors: the bay, deserted and solitary, seemed more solitary still on account of the few steamers that were anchored in it; the sun was dying behind Mariveles without poetry or enchantment, without the capricious and richly tinted clouds of happier evenings; the Anda monument, in bad taste, mean and squat, without style, without grandeur, looked like a lump of ice-cream or at best a chunk of cake; the people who were promenading along the Malecon, in spite of their complacent and contented air, appeared distant, haughty, and vain; mischievous and bad-mannered, the boys that played on the beach, skipping flat stones over the surface of the water or searching in the sand for mollusks and crustaceans which they caught for the mere fun of catching and killed without benefit to themselves; in short, even the eternal port works to which he had dedicated more than three odes, looked to him absurd, ridiculous child's play.
The Mindoro cast off from the pier, and, having rounded the neck of land on which Mariveles stood, was just on the point of starting in the direction of Corregidor, when the signalman on the bridge called Parrington's attention to a black steamer which was apparently steaming at full speed from the sea toward the entrance to the Bay of Manila. "A ship at last," said Parrington.
The incident has left its impress on the names about the harbor, Corregidor being so called for the officer who pursued and arrested the runaways, Camaya being rechristened Mariveles, which, you see, is Maria Velez, while two rocks beyond the Boca Grande are named for the friar and his would-be bride, Fraile and Monja: monk and nun. The Christianizing of Wong
Like many native villages Mariveles has a large stone church, with red tile roof, bell tower, etc.; it is now in such bad repair as to be unsafe, so that a crude shed with thatched sides and corrugated iron roof has been built to take its place. No priest now lives in this barrio and the shed-like church did not have the appearance of being much used.
At Mariveles there is a very large and complete disinfecting plant, and vessels may also be satisfactorily disinfected at Cebú and Iloilo. This quarantine service kept the Philippines free from bubonic plague for seven years, and has repeatedly prevented the entry of pneumonic plague, that most deadly of all known diseases.
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