The long two and a half mile drive from the wharf of Cagayan to the town proper is lined on either side with well-built nipa dwellings, a schoolhouse, and some native shops, at that time all empty. The windows stared back at one like wide-open sightless eyes; the doors swung to and fro in the warm breeze, and occasionally gave a passing glimpse of a shrine to the Virgin or some saint, the faded flowers still in the vases, the candles burned out, and the placid face looking straight into one's own, pathetic in its neglect.
Deserted Village was writ large on this entrance to Cagayan, but the town itself looked prosperous; the little shops were flourishing; and the natives, with ill-concealed interest, peered out furtively from under their jalousie blinds as the great swinging Dougherty wagon, with its four strapping mules, tore down the broad streets, taking us to or from the ship.
This Dougherty wagon was at our disposal all the time we were there, thanks to the courtesy of the colonel commanding, though sometimes, when there was an unusually large party from the ship, we women were put into a two-seated barouche of great antiquity, as dingy and faded as its own cerulean lining, but the only carriage in town. The officers called this delightful equipage "the extreme unction," as it was owned by the padres before the government bought it, and was by them used in last visits to the dying. The natives crossed themselves on passing this conveyance, and would no more have ridden in it than in a hearse, but we found "the extreme unction" very comfortable and heard no groans or death-bed confessions in its rusty creak, neither saw aught in its moth-eaten tapestry but that it had once been very handsome. To our frivolous minds the old carriage resembled nothing so much as Cinderella's coach just as the clock was striking twelve, and we were constantly expecting it to turn into a pumpkin under our very eyes. But it refrained from doing anything so unconventional, and took us on many pleasant excursions around the quaint old town.
There was much to be seen in Cagayan, as for instance, the Door of the Bloody Hand, a most gruesome memento of a night attack on the place some time before, when several insurgents, fleeing from avenging Americans, tried to force their way into one of the native houses and seek protection from its inhabitants. Then there was the Amazon colonel of a native regiment, who, on the day we saw her, was spreading out washing to dry on a grass plot near her home, a truly feminine occupation, considering her martial proclivities, and one that disappointed us sadly, as we should have preferred seeing her at dress parade; and lastly, there was the old cathedral, which in its way was decidedly unique.