[Philippines]

Baguio: The Philippines Simla. By R.M. Woolley [caption title]

[N.p. ca. 1905]. 3pp., rectos only. About 900 words. Folio. Typescript with manuscript corrections and notations. Light wear and soiling, slight creasing. Together with two silver gelatin photographs. About very good. Item #5191

A short but interesting essay on the mountain city of Baguio. It reads a bit like a travel article or potential newspaper puff piece for tourism, and has been edited by hand with manuscript notations and corrections. It opens, "Somewhere 'round about Petersburg the Czar of the Russias has what he calls his winter palace; down in Indian the English have what they call Simla, their summer capital, and here we Americans have Baguio." The author goes on to discuss the oppression of the tropics and therefore the need for cooler cities to enable functional government, discussing the needs of the "white man" for livable conditions in such a place: "In the Philippines there are some months of the year that are extraordinarily summer, summer in all the sense that the word implies, summer until one can't rest and do it comfortably. It is during this time that the summer capital comes in as a life-saving station for the overworked and rundown public servant and such others as care to take advantage of the rural pueblo. ... drudging all year in a comparatively warm atmosphere and then to be hit with a blast that seems like a draft from the furnace of the place that has its main thoroughfare paved with good resolutions is more than the average Anglo-Saxon can stand." He continues: "Shortly after the arrival of the civil commission in the islands the Governor wasn't long in deciding...that the English were pretty wise in having their summer capitals. He also decided the Philippines must have one. It was necessary if the white man was to stay indefinitely."

He describes the process of locating Baguio in the pine forests and establishing a small town there, despite the lack of a road and precipitous ascent to the area: "The committee reported the climate fine, incomparable, just like that of the United States in late fall, and that one had to sleep under heavy blankets at night to keep warm. ... [despite skepticism] ... it proved a fact and one that was a blessing. Think of the pleasure of residing in the Philippines where flies seldom bother, where mosquitos, as a rule, are few, where patent leather shoes never crack...and having a delightfully hilly resort not ninety miles away to go to when one's spleen enlarges from a languid life or the malaria attacks with unrelenting persistence." He goes on to note that it costs nearly as much to go to Baguio as it does to travel to China, "so that its full benefit has not yet been felt by the more humble in life". The typescript is accompanied by two photographs of the Philippines, one depicting a trail through a pine forest (presumably around Baguio), and the other showing a Filipino woman being carried by two Filipino men in a sedan chair.

Price: $850.00