362
THE GREEN BAG
and were coming to town in a long string of vehicles, the first occupied by the rotund and ample person of his Excell ency the Governor, and Gen. J. Franklin Bell. The latter is about a couple of inches over six feet, weighs about 200 pounds, is very broad-shouldered and deep -chested, has a clear, healthy complexion, a fine brown eye, frank, piercing and aggressive, is as active and restless as a panther, has a way of giving orders like one who always had been, and proposed to be, implicitly obeyed, and is altogether a very martial figure, a most commanding presence. They all said that nobody but General Bell could have got them landed at Laoag on schedule time. The petty officials at the port said repeatedly "No puede," "No puede" — "it cannot be done." But the general said if it could not be done he was going to "know the reason why." So Achilles got the Solons safely through the breakers to the beach, in "virays," great, flat-bottomed canoes about 30 or 40 feet long, manned by natives and propelled by the use of oars, much resembling the olden time galleys of the Norsemen; thus demonstrating to the Filipinos as Oscar King Davis has wittily put it the " puedebility " of "no puede." He is certainly a fine specimen of manhood, if immense physical strength, and consequent tirelessness, demonstrated recklessness of danger in the presence of something to be accomplished, and capacity to get out of men what they themselves didn't know was in them, be a fair test. If I were to compare the three young men I have known who have come most prominently to the front since a mixture of imagined patriotism and other things switched me off from my profession in the spring of 1898, I would say that this one could lead a charge after the manner of Pickett or Gordon, that Gen. Leonard Wood could "fight it out on this line if it took all sum mer," and that General Funston could do things like Mosby used to do, performances
whose sheer audacity captivates the imagi nation. But let us return to the procession here in-above mentioned as en route from where the China Sea breaks on Luzon beach about the mouth of Laoag River, to the pueblo of that name, and to the other occupant of the first carriage in that procession, Judge Taft. As they passed, we turned to the side of the road to make room, the gover nor bowing pleasantly to all of us. He is almost as big as Mr. Cleveland was when he was President. A Yale man, and one who took quite a part in all athletics while at college, I am told, he is now exceedingly fleshy, with finely chiselled features, blonde moustache and hair whose decidedly Teutonic type particularly impress one, and the bear ing that a man may well have when life has been a placid series of great successes due to a pleasing manner, an equable tem perament, a capacious mind, unvarying industry, unimpeachable character, and continuous good luck. He was Solicitor-General of the United States when but little over thirty years of age, and although now only about fortytwo or three, he has already been a federal circuit judge, and is not at all unlikely to reach, at some future date, a still higher station. Finally we reached the river, where a raft awaited the party. On it was a pavil ion built of bamboo for the occasion, and decorated with American flags and other drapery. Crossing the river, which is about one-fourth as wide as the East River at New York, we had a full view, several hundred yards down stream, of one of the principal sights of the locality, the washer women and water carriers — lavanderas and aguadoras — plying their morning vocation. Hundreds of these congregate on an island or sand bank in midstream every day with great wooden tubs shaped like a soup plate, and on this they beat the clothes with a paddle, the combined sound of the many paddles resembling the patter of distant
