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

UNOFFICIAL LETTERS OF

hotter than it had been, and the daily round of meetings, banquets, often two in one day, and balls were
exhausting to everyone. We went up to Nueva
Ciceres, a town of especial interest for me, as I had
vivid memories of Vieja Caceres in Spain, from
whence this little town, far away in the islands of
the sea, takes its name. We went up the river in a
launch, through a country said to be infested with
insurrectos. Several young officers, who had come
down to the Sitnter to get us, filled our listening
ears with tales of Filipino treachery, and their apprehensions lest our party be shot at from the river
bank. The launch was what they call " protected ";
that is, it had a piece of thin iron along the rail on
either side about four feet high. A sense of the
ridiculous prevented me from sitting behind this protection, and I imagine the rest of the party felt the
same way. I suggested to the infantile second lieutenant that the Filipinos were bad shots, but he
removed even that consolation by telling us that
they put up targets on the opposite river bank and
trained their guns on them. When they heard a
steamer coming they sighted their rifles, and then
all banged away as soon as the vessel came into
range. This dampened my spirits for a time, but as
the hours passed and nothing happened, I recovered,
and concluded the youth was " talking to a civilian,"
as they say.
Three launches of the Federal party, gayly dec144