Page:How and Why Library 067.jpg

 in the sea, or in the nearest river, every day. There are many crocodiles in the rivers of The Philippines, and there are sharks in the sea, Manuelo had to stay in shallow water near the shore.

Our little brown cousin lived in a village of nipa palm huts, under feathery palm trees. His father's house was built of bamboo. It was raised from the ground on thick, bamboo posts. It was thatched with nipa palm leaves. Underneath the house was a room for the chickens, the pigs and the water buffalo. They all made a great noise in the morning and woke the family up. The light woke them up, too. In the walls of the house, were sliding windows set with thin, pearly squares cut from oyster shells.

Manuelo helped himself to all the rice he wanted from the red earthen cooking pot. He took a banana, an orange, a mango, a pineapple or any fruit he liked best. When he had eaten-his breakfast, he tumbled down a bamboo ladder to the garden. The garden was gay with flowers and fruit trees. A thornbush fence was around it.

If no playmates were in sight, Manuelo knew where to look for them. He ran first to the Plaza. Plaza is Spanish for open square. The church and the priest's house on the Plaza were as Spanish as those of Cuba. They were colored lemon yellow, and had roofs of red tiles. A few shops, and the best nipa houses of the village were on the Plaza. Market was held there some days, and the village band played there in the evenings. In the early morning the Plaza was empty and quiet. Thick, dark forests were behind the village. The woods ran up a mountain slope. From the bare top of the mountain, the steam curled. The mountain was a volcano. Sometimes the volcano made the earth tremble.

Manuelo ran down a street of nipa huts to the river. The women of the village were there washing clothes. His sister Juanita (Wa-nee'ta) had a bamboo basket of pineapples on her head. She was going to the big market in town to sell them. Juanita was pretty. She wore a red skirt, and a white lawn jacket with wide sleeves. She smiled at Manuelo and he slipped into the river. He swam and paddled and dived with forty other children for an hour.

In another part of the river were the water buffaloes chewing their cuds. They looked like clumsy, long-horned cows with thick legs, backs bent like bows and skins like pigs. They were plastered with mud. You would think them very ugly, indeed, but they were good-tempered, useful animals. They plowed the rice and hemp and cane fields; they drew the heavy, two-wheeled carts to market,