Unofficial letters of an official's wife [by] Edith Moses.

UNOFFICIAL LETTERS OF
MANILA, September IO, 1900.
MY last letter was written when a typhoon was
at its height, and I am again sitting in the dining room listening to the roar of the waters which
are beating against our sea wall below the windows.
Thursday the biggest storm in years began and
increased until Saturday night when there was no
rest for anyone in the house. You never heard such
a racket. All the tin roofs in the neighborhood
were banging and rattling. Our neighbors opposite
tied down their roofs to stakes in the ground, while
there was an air of unrest and anxiety manifest in
the cautious way the people peered around corners
and scurried across streets to get out of the way of
falling roofs. El Sefior and Danny came home in
a calesa and were nearly blown away. On Sunday
we drove out to view the ruins and I tried to get
a picture or two of the wreckage on our street. A
schooner was washed up on the shore just below our
house, and we were thankful that it did not come
pounding against the breakwater. We went downtown in a quilez, which is a high two-seated vehicle,
and the horse waded through water up to his shoulders. In front of the Ayuntamiento the largest trees
were blown down, and on Saturday night there
were no electric lights in town. Last evening we
went out driving again and were astonished at the
floods all over town. For an hour or two we drove
through water up to the hubs of the carriage wheels,
84