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2ND EDITION

Black Hat Python


Python Programming for
Hackers and Pentesters

R L Y
A
E ESS
A C C
Justin Seitz and Tim Arnold
Foreword by Charlie Miller
NO S TA RCH PRE SS
E A R LY A C C E S S P R O G R A M :
FEEDBACK WELCOME!

Welcome to the Early Access edition of the as yet unpublished Black Hat
Python, 2nd Edition by Justin Seitz and Tim Arnold! As a prepublication
title, this book may be incomplete and some chapters may not have been
proofread.
Our goal is always to make the best books possible, and we look forward
to hearing your thoughts. If you have any comments or questions, email us
at earlyaccess@nostarch.com. If you have specific feedback for us, please
include the page number, book title, and edition date in your note, and
we’ll be sure to review it. We appreciate your help and support!
We’ll email you as new chapters become available. In the meantime,
enjoy!
BL ACK H AT P Y T H ON,
2ND EDITION
JUSTIN SEIT Z AND TIM ARNOLD
Early Access edition, 12/3/20

Copyright © 2021 by Justin Seitz and Tim Arnold.

ISBN-10: 978-1-7185-0112-6
ISBN-13: 978-1-7185-0113-3

Publisher: William Pollock


Executive Editor: Barbara Yien
Production Editor: Dapinder Dosanjh
Developmental Editor: Frances Saux
Cover Illustration: Garry Booth
Interior Design: Octopod Studios
Technical Reviewer: Cliff Janzen
Copyeditor: Bart Reed
Compositor: Happenstance Type-O-Rama
Proofreader: Sharon Wilkey

No Starch Press and the No Starch Press logo are registered trademarks of No Starch Press,
Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trade-
marked name, we are using the names only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the
trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any informa-
tion storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner
and the publisher.

The information in this book is distributed on an “As Is” basis, without warranty. While every
precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor No Starch
Press, Inc. shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage
caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in it.
CONTENTS

Preface
Chapter 1: Setting Up Your Python Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter 2: The Network: Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Chapter 3: The Network: Raw Sockets and Sniffing . . . . . . . . . 35
Chapter 4: Owning the Network with Scapy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Chapter 5: Web Hackery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Chapter 6: Extending Burp Proxy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Chapter 7: GitHub Command and Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Chapter 8: Common Trojaning Tasks on Windows . . . . . . . . . 127
Chapter 9: Fun with Exfiltration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Chapter 10: Windows Privilege Escalation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Chapter 11: Offensive Forensics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

The chapters in red are included in this Early Access PDF.


Black Hat Python (Early Access) © 2021 by Justin Seitz and Tim Arnold

SE T T ING U P YOU R
1
PY THON ENVIRONMENT

This is the least fun, but nevertheless criti-


cal, part of the book, where we walk through
setting up an environment in which to write
and test Python. We’ll do a crash course in set-
ting up a Kali Linux virtual machine (VM), creating a
virtual environment for Python 3, and installing a nice
integrated development environment (IDE) so that you
have everything you need to develop code. By the end
of this chapter, you should be ready to tackle the exer-
cises and code examples in the remainder of the book.
Before you get started, if you don’t have a hypervisor virtualization client
such as VMware Player, VirtualBox, or Hyper-V, download and install one.
We also recommend that you have a Windows 10 VM at the ready. You can
get an evaluation Windows 10 VM here: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/
windows/downloads/virtual-machines/.
Black Hat Python (Early Access) © 2021 by Justin Seitz and Tim Arnold

Installing Kali Linux


Kali, the successor to the BackTrack Linux distribution, was designed by
Offensive Security as a penetration testing operating system. It comes with
a number of tools preinstalled and is based on Debian Linux, so you’ll be
able to install a wide variety of additional tools and libraries.
You will use Kali as your guest virtual machine. That is, you’ll download
a Kali virtual machine and run it on your host machine using your hypervi-
sor of choice. You can download the Kali VM from https://www.kali.org/down-
loads/ and install it in your hypervisor of choice. Follow the instructions
given in the Kali documentation: https://www.kali.org/docs/installation/.
When you’ve gone through the steps of the installation, you should
have the full Kali desktop environment, as shown in Figure 1-1.

Figure 1-1: The Kali Linux desktop

Because there may have been important updates since the Kali image
was created, let’s update the machine with the latest version. In the Kali
shell (ApplicationsAccessoriesTerminal), execute the following:

tim@kali:~$ sudo apt update


tim@kali:~$ apt list --upgradable
tim@kali:~$ sudo apt upgrade
tim@kali:~$ sudo apt dist-upgrade
tim@kali:~$ sudo apt autoremove

2 Chapter 1
Black Hat Python (Early Access) © 2021 by Justin Seitz and Tim Arnold

Setting Up Python 3
The first thing we’ll do is ensure that the correct version of Python is
installed. (The projects in this book use Python 3.6 or higher.) Invoke
Python from the Kali shell and have a look:

tim@kali:~$ python

This is what it looks like on our Kali machine:

Python 2.7.17 (default, Oct 19 2019, 23:36:22)


[GCC 9.2.1 20191008] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

Not exactly what we’re looking for. At the time of this writing, the
default version of Python on the current Kali installation is Python 2.7.18.
But this isn’t really a problem; you should have Python 3 installed as well:

tim@kali:~$ python3
Python 3.7.5 (default, Oct 27 2019, 15:43:29)
[GCC 9.2.1 20191022] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

The version of Python listed here is 3.7.5. If yours is lower than 3.6,
upgrade your distribution with the following:

sudo apt-get upgrade python3

We will use Python 3 with a virtual environment, which is a self-contained


directory tree that includes a Python installation and the set of any extra
packages you install. The virtual environment is among the most essential
tools for a Python developer. Using one, you can separate projects that have
different needs. For example, you might use one virtual environment for proj-
ects involving packet inspection and a different one for projects on binary
analysis.
By having separate environments, you keep your projects simple and clean.
This ensures that each environment can have its own set of dependencies and
modules without disrupting any of your other projects.
Let’s create a virtual environment now. To get started, we need to
install the python3-venv package:

tim@kali:~$ sudo apt-get install python3-venv


[sudo] password for tim:
...

Setting Up Your Python Environment 3


Black Hat Python (Early Access) © 2021 by Justin Seitz and Tim Arnold

Now we can create a virtual environment. Let’s make a new directory to


work in and create the environment:

tim@kali:~$ mkdir bhp


tim@kali:~$ cd bhp
tim@kali:~/bhp$ python3 -m venv venv3
tim@kali:~/bhp$ source venv3/bin/activate
(venv3) tim@kali:~/bhp$ python

That creates a new directory, bhp, in the current directory. We create a


new virtual environment by calling the venv package with the -m switch and
the name you want the new environment to have. We’ve called ours venv3,
but you can use any name you like. The scripts, packages, and Python
executable for the environment will live in that directory. Next, we activate
the environment by running the activate script. Notice that the prompt
changes once the environment is activated. The name of the environment
is prepended to your usual prompt (venv3 in our case). Later on, when
you’re ready to exit the environment, use the command deactivate.
Now you have Python set up and have activated a virtual environment.
Since we set up the environment to use Python 3, when you invoke Python,
you no longer have to specify python3—just python is fine, since that is what
we installed into the virtual environment. In other words, after activation,
every Python command will be relative to your virtual environment. Please
note that using a different version of Python might break some of the code
examples in this book.
We can use the pip executable to install Python packages into the virtual
environment. This is much like the apt package manager because it enables
you to directly install Python libraries into your virtual environment without
having to manually download, unpack, and install them.
You can search for packages and install them into your virtual environ-
ment with pip:

(venv3) tim@kali:~/bhp: pip search hashcrack

Let’s do a quick test and install the lxml module, which we’ll use in
Chapter 5 to build a web scraper. Enter the following into your terminal:

(venv3) tim@kali:~/bhp: pip install lxml

You should see output in your terminal indicating that the library is
being downloaded and installed. Then drop into a Python shell and vali-
date that it was installed correctly:

(venv3) tim@kali:~/bhp$ python


Python 3.7.5 (default, Oct 27 2019, 15:43:29)
[GCC 9.2.1 20191022] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from lxml import etree
>>> exit()
(venv3) tim@kali:~/bhp$

4 Chapter 1
Black Hat Python (Early Access) © 2021 by Justin Seitz and Tim Arnold

If you get an error or a version of Python 2, make sure you followed all
the preceding steps and that you have the up-to-date version of Kali.
Keep in mind that for most examples throughout this book, you can
develop your code in a variety of environments, including Mac, Linux, and
Windows. You may also want to set up a different virtual environment for
separate projects or chapters. Some chapters are Windows specific, which
we’ll make sure to mention at the beginning of the chapter.
Now that we have our hacking virtual machine and a Python 3 virtual
environment set up, let’s install a Python IDE for development.

Installing an IDE
An integrated development environment (IDE) provides a set of tools for
coding. Typically, it includes a code editor, with syntax highlighting and
automatic linting, and a debugger. The purpose of the IDE is to make it eas-
ier to code and debug your programs. You don’t have to use one to program
in Python; for small test programs, you might use any text editor (such as
vim, nano, Notepad, or emacs). But for larger, more complex project, an
IDE will be of enormous help to you, whether by indicating variables you
have defined but not used, finding misspelled variable names, or locating
missing package imports.
In a recent Python developer survey, the top two favorite IDEs were
PyCharm (which has commercial and free versions available) and Visual
Studio Code (free). Justin is a fan of WingIDE (commercial and free ver-
sions available), and Tim uses Visual Studio Code (VS Code). All three IDEs
can be used on Windows, macOS, or Linux.
You can install PyCharm from https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/download/
or WingIDE from https://wingware.com/downloads/. You can install VS Code
from the Kali command line:

tim@kali#: apt-get install code

Or, to get the latest version of VS Code, download it from https://code


.visualstudio.com/download/ and install with apt-get:

tim@kali#: apt-get install -f ./code_1.39.2-1571154070_amd64.deb

The release number, which is part of the filename, will likely be differ-
ent from the one shown here, so make sure the filename you use matches
the one you downloaded.

Code Hygiene
No matter what you use to write your programs, it is a good idea to follow a
code-formatting guideline. A code style guide provides recommendations to
improve the readability and consistency of your Python code. It makes it eas-
ier for you to understand your own code when you read it later or for others if

Setting Up Your Python Environment 5


Black Hat Python (Early Access) © 2021 by Justin Seitz and Tim Arnold

you decide to share it. The Python community has a such a guideline, called
PEP 8. You can read the full PEP 8 guide here: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/
pep-0008/.
The examples in this book generally follow PEP 8, with a few differ-
ences. You’ll see that the code in this book follows a pattern like this:

1 from lxml import etree


from subprocess import Popen

2 import argparse
import os

3 def get_ip(machine_name):
pass

4 class Scanner:
def __init__(self):
pass

5 if __name__ == '__main__':
scan = Scanner()
print('hello')

At the top of our program, we import the packages we need. The first
import block 1 is in the form of from XXX import YYY type. Each import line
is in alphabetical order.
The same holds true for the module imports—they, too, are in alphabet-
ical order 2. This ordering lets you see at a glance whether you’ve imported a
package without reading every line of imports, and it ensures that you don’t
import a package twice. The intent is to keep your code clean and lessen the
amount you have to think when you reread your code.
Next come the functions 3, then class definitions 4, if you have any.
Some coders prefer to never have classes and rely only on functions. There’s
no hard-and-fast rule here, but if you find you’re trying to maintain state
with global variables or passing the same data structures to several func-
tions, that may be an indication that your program would be easier to
understand if you refactor it to use a class.
Finally, the main block at the bottom 5 gives you the opportunity to use
your code in two ways. First, you can use it from the command line. In this
case, the module’s internal name is __main__ and the main block is executed.
For example, if the name of the file containing the code is scan.py, you could
invoke it from the command line as follows:

python scan.py

This will load the functions and classes in scan.py and execute the main
block. You would see the response hello on the console.
Second, you can import your code into another program with no side
effects. For example, you would import the code with

import scan

6 Chapter 1
Black Hat Python (Early Access) © 2021 by Justin Seitz and Tim Arnold

Since its internal name is the name of the Python module, scan, and not
__main__, you have access to all the module’s defined functions and classes,
but the main block is not executed.
You’ll also notice we avoid variables with generic names. The better
you get at naming your variables, the easier it will be to understand the
program.
You should have a virtual machine, Python 3, a virtual environment,
and an IDE. Now let’s get into some actual fun!

Setting Up Your Python Environment 7


Black Hat Python (Early Access) © 2021 by Justin Seitz and Tim Arnold
Black Hat Python (Early Access) © 2021 by Justin Seitz and Tim Arnold

THE NE T WORK: BA SICS


2
The network is and always will be the sexi-
est arena for a hacker. An attacker can do
almost anything with simple network access,
such as scan for hosts, inject packets, sniff data,
and remotely exploit hosts. But if you’ve worked your
way into the deepest depths of an enterprise target,
you may find yourself in a bit of a conundrum: you
have no tools to execute network attacks. No netcat.
No Wireshark. No compiler, and no means to install
one. However, you might be surprised to find that
in many cases, you’ll have a Python install. So that’s
where we’ll begin.
Black Hat Python (Early Access) © 2021 by Justin Seitz and Tim Arnold

This chapter will give you some basics on Python networking using the
1
socket module. Along the way, we’ll build clients, servers, and a TCP proxy.
We’ll then turn them into our very own netcat, complete with a command
shell. This chapter is the foundation for subsequent chapters, in which we’ll
build a host discovery tool, implement cross-platform sniffers, and create a
remote trojan framework. Let’s get started.

Python Networking in a Paragraph


Programmers have a number of third-party tools to create networked serv-
ers and clients in Python, but the core module for all of those tools is socket.
This module exposes all of the necessary pieces to quickly write Transmission
Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) clients and
servers, use raw sockets, and so forth. For the purposes of breaking in or
maintaining access to target machines, this module is all you really need.
Let’s start by creating some simple clients and servers—the two most com-
mon quick network scripts you’ll write.

The TCP Client


Countless times during penetration tests, we (the authors) have needed to
whip up a TCP client to test for services, send garbage data, fuzz, or per-
form any number of other tasks. If you are working within the confines of
large enterprise environments, you won’t have the luxury of using network-
ing tools or compilers, and sometimes you’ll even be missing the absolute
basics, like the ability to copy/paste or connect to the internet. This is
where being able to quickly create a TCP client comes in extremely handy.
But enough jabbering—let’s get coding. Here is a simple TCP client:

import socket

target_host = "www.google.com"
target_port = 80

# create a socket object


1 client = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)

# connect the client


2 client.connect((target_host,target_port))

# send some data


3 client.send(b"GET / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: google.com\r\n\r\n")

# receive some data


4 response = client.recv(4096)

print(response.decode())
client.close()

1. The full socket documentation can be found here: http://docs.python.org/3/library/socket.html.

10 Chapter 2
Black Hat Python (Early Access) © 2021 by Justin Seitz and Tim Arnold

We first create a socket object with the AF_INET and SOCK_STREAM param-
eters 1. The AF_INET parameter indicates we’ll use a standard IPv4 address
or hostname, and SOCK_STREAM indicates that this will be a TCP client. We
then connect the client to the server 2 and send it some data as bytes 3.
The last step is to receive some data back and print out the response 4 and
then close the socket. This is the simplest form of a TCP client, but it’s the
one you’ll write most often.
This code snippet makes some serious assumptions about sockets that
you definitely want to be aware of. The first assumption is that our con-
nection will always succeed, and the second is that the server expects us to
send data first (some servers expect to send data to you first and await your
response). Our third assumption is that the server will always return data
to us in a timely fashion. We make these assumptions largely for simplic-
ity’s sake. While programmers have varied opinions about how to deal
with blocking sockets, exception-handling in sockets, and the like, it’s
quite rare for pentesters to build these niceties into their quick-and-dirty
tools for recon or exploitation work, so we’ll omit them in this chapter.

UDP Client
A Python UDP client is not much different from a TCP client; we need to
make only two small changes to get it to send packets in UDP form:

import socket

target_host = "127.0.0.1"
target_port = 9997

# create a socket object


1 client = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)

# send some data


2 client.sendto(b"AAABBBCCC",(target_host,target_port))

# receive some data


3 data, addr = client.recvfrom(4096)

print(data.decode())
client.close()

As you can see, we change the socket type to SOCK_DGRAM 1 when creat-
ing the socket object. The next step is to simply call sendto() 2, passing in
the data and the server you want to send the data to. Because UDP is a con-
nectionless protocol, there is no call to connect() beforehand. The last step
is to call recvfrom() 3 to receive UDP data back. You will also notice that it
returns both the data and the details of the remote host and port.
Again, we’re not looking to be superior network programmers; we want
it to be quick, easy, and reliable enough to handle our day-to-day hacking
tasks. Let’s move on to creating some simple servers.

The Network: Basics 11


Black Hat Python (Early Access) © 2021 by Justin Seitz and Tim Arnold

TCP Server
Creating TCP servers in Python is just as easy as creating a client. You might
want to use your own TCP server when writing command shells or crafting a
proxy (both of which we’ll do later). Let’s start by creating a standard multi-
threaded TCP server. Crank out the following code:

import socket
import threading

IP = '0.0.0.0'
PORT = 9998

def main()
server = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
1 server.bind((IP, PORT))
2 server.listen(5)
print(f'[*] Listening on {IP}:{PORT}')

while True:
3 client, address = server.accept()
print(f'[*] Accepted connection from {address[0]}:{address[1]}')
client_handler = threading.Thread(target=handle_client,
args=(client,))
4 client_handler.start()

5 def handle_client(client_socket):
with client_socket as sock:
request = sock.recv(1024)
print(f'[*] Received: {request.decode("utf-8")}')
sock.send(b'ACK')

if __name__ == '__main__':
main()

To start off, we pass in the IP address and port we want the server to lis-
ten on 1. Next, we tell the server to start listening 2, with a maximum back-
log of connections set to 5. We then put the server into its main loop, where
it waits for an incoming connection. When a client connects 3, we receive
the client socket in the client variable and the remote connection details in
the address variable. We then create a new thread object that points to our
handle_client function, and we pass it the client socket object as an argument.
We then start the thread to handle the client connection 4, at which point
the main server loop is ready to handle another incoming connection. The
handle_client function 5 performs the recv() and then sends a simple mes-
sage back to the client.
If you use the TCP client that we built earlier, you can send some test
packets to the server. You should see output like the following:

[*] Listening on 0.0.0.0:9998


[*] Accepted connection from: 127.0.0.1:62512
[*] Received: ABCDEF

12 Chapter 2
Black Hat Python (Early Access) © 2021 by Justin Seitz and Tim Arnold

That’s it! While pretty simple, this is a very useful piece of code. We’ll
extend it in the next couple of sections, when we build a netcat replacement
and a TCP proxy.

Replacing Netcat
Netcat is the utility knife of networking, so it’s no surprise that shrewd sys-
tems administrators remove it from their systems. Such a useful tool would
be quite an asset if an attacker managed to find a way in. With it, you can
read and write data across the network, meaning you can use it to execute
remote commands, pass files back and forth, or even open a remote shell.
On more than one occasion, I’ve run into servers that don’t have netcat
installed but do have Python. In these cases, it’s useful to create a simple
network client and server that you can use to push files, or a listener that
gives you command line access. If you’ve broken in through a web applica-
tion, it’s definitely worth dropping a Python callback to give you second-
ary access without having to first burn one of your trojans or backdoors.
Creating a tool like this is also a great Python exercise, so let’s get started
writing netcat.py:

import argparse
import socket
import shlex
import subprocess
import sys
import textwrap
import threading

def execute(cmd):
cmd = cmd.strip()
if not cmd:
return
1 output = subprocess.check_output(shlex.split(cmd),
stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)
return output.decode()

Here, we import all of our necessary libraries and set up the execute
function, which receives a command, runs it, and returns the output as
a string. This function contains a new library we haven’t covered yet: the
subprocess library. This library provides a powerful process-creation inter-
face that gives you a number of ways to interact with client programs. In
this case 1, we’re using its check_output method, which runs a command
on the local operating system and then returns the output from that
command.
Now let’s create our main block responsible for handling command line
arguments and calling the rest of our functions:

if __name__ == '__main__':
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser( 1
description='BHP Net Tool',

The Network: Basics 13


Black Hat Python (Early Access) © 2021 by Justin Seitz and Tim Arnold
[<==] Received 28 bytes from local.
0000 50 4F 52 54 20 31 39 32 2C 31 36 38 2C 31 2C 32 PORT 192,168,1,2
0010 30 33 2C 31 38 37 2C 32 32 33 0D 0A 03,187,223..
0000 32 30 30 20 50 4F 52 54 20 63 6F 6D 6D 61 6E 64 200 PORT command
0010 20 73 75 63 63 65 73 73 66 75 6C 2E 20 43 6F 6E successful. Con
0020 73 69 64 65 72 20 75 73 69 6E 67 20 50 41 53 56 sider using PASV
0030 2E 0D 0A ...
[<==] Received 6 bytes from local.
0000 4C 49 53 54 0D 0A LIST..
[<==] Received 63 bytes from remote.
0000 31 35 30 20 48 65 72 65 20 63 6F 6D 65 73 20 74 150 Here comes t
0010 68 65 20 64 69 72 65 63 74 6F 72 79 20 6C 69 73 he directory lis
0020 74 69 6E 67 2E 0D 0A 32 32 36 20 44 69 72 65 63 ting...226 Direc
0030 74 6F 72 79 20 73 65 6E 64 20 4F 4B 2E 0D 0A tory send OK...
0000 50 4F 52 54 20 31 39 32 2C 31 36 38 2C 31 2C 32 PORT 192,168,1,2
0010 30 33 2C 32 31 38 2C 31 31 0D 0A 03,218,11..
0000 32 30 30 20 50 4F 52 54 20 63 6F 6D 6D 61 6E 64 200 PORT command
0010 20 73 75 63 63 65 73 73 66 75 6C 2E 20 43 6F 6E successful. Con
0020 73 69 64 65 72 20 75 73 69 6E 67 20 50 41 53 56 sider using PASV
0030 2E 0D 0A ...
0000 51 55 49 54 0D 0A QUIT..
[==>] Sent to remote.
0000 32 32 31 20 47 6F 6F 64 62 79 65 2E 0D 0A 221 Goodbye...
[==>] Sent to local.
[*] No more data. Closing connections.

In another terminal on the Kali machine, we started an FTP session to


the Kali machine's IP address using the default port, 21:

tim@kali:$ ftp 192.168.1.203


Connected to 192.168.1.203.
220 Welcome to ftp.sun.ac.za
Name (192.168.1.203:tim): anonymous
331 Please specify the password.
Password:
230 Login successful.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp> ls
200 PORT command successful. Consider using PASV.
150 Here comes the directory listing.
lrwxrwxrwx 1 1001 1001 48 Jul 17 2008 CPAN -> pub/mirrors/
ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN
lrwxrwxrwx 1 1001 1001 21 Oct 21 2009 CRAN -> pub/mirrors/
ubuntu.com
drwxr-xr-x 2 1001 1001 4096 Apr 03 2019 veeam
drwxr-xr-x 6 1001 1001 4096 Jun 27 2016 win32InetKeyTeraTerm
226 Directory send OK.
ftp> bye
221 Goodbye.

You can clearly see that we’re able to successfully receive the FTP ban-
ner and send in a username and password, and that it cleanly exits.

The Network: Basics 25


Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
We had canyaos, or bonfires with “head-dances,” and all the
strange varieties of entertainment provided by the village headmen.
The musical instrument of the Igorrote is called a ganza, which is a
round brass gong with a handle made of a human jaw-bone, upon
which the “musician” beats a rhythmical measure with a soft, padded
mallet as he whirls and twists in his fantastic dance. These ganzas—
some of them very old,—are tribal rather than individual property
and it is very difficult to induce their owners to part with them. Their
value is computed in carabaos instead of in rice, or in dollars and
cents. If you should ask an Igorrote how much he would take for his
ganza, especially if it were one associated with tribal history, he
would very likely look smilingly solemn and say: “One hundred
carabao,” or any other prohibitive number that might happen to
occur to him. This is a form of racial pride and deserves respect.
We went from Bontoc back through Sagada to Cervantes, and then
started down the long, narrow trail straight through the mountains
to Baguio. At Cervantes we received our first messages from Manila
and, among other things, was an order to Major Stevens to report for
duty. His going gave us an opportunity to send letters down and
report ourselves alive and not at all anxious to get home, but we
didn’t like losing the Major. We had, by this time, become a very well
acquainted, well-disciplined and congenial party and we disliked
seeing the beginning of the end of our expedition. General Bell
directed everything and joined in our sports and foolishness
whenever he could do so without endangering the dignity of the
“corps,” but, while he was kindness itself, he was so strict with the
young officers that we had sometimes to steal our opportunities for
relaxation.
A few hours’ riding south from Cervantes are some famous copper
mines which were owned by a Spanish syndicate. We turned off in
their direction and came into a most extraordinary country. The
whole face of the landscape looks like corroded copper, and the great,
scarred gulches where the ore has been taken out make one think of
chaos, or dreams of an inferno. I don’t know how to express an idea
of bigness in a mere touch of description as I pass on through the
story of this trip, but I want to convey an impression of
overwhelming size in everything. It is a great, wild world where one
sees miles in every direction and where nature seems to have done
everything on a gigantic scale.
A mile or so beyond the copper mines we came upon a veritable
mountain paradise,—from our point of view, at least. It was the home
of Don José Mills, a Spaniard who, for some unknown reason, had
banished himself to this out-of-the-world spot and, with what labour
and pains can only be imagined, had made for himself a civilised
abode. I was shown to a room all by myself, which had in it a real bed
with springs and a mattress. It was the first one I had seen for I don’t
know how long. I regarded it with great curiosity at first, then I sat
down on it most respectfully. I lay down and stretched myself out;
then I pulled up a soft blanket and, though it was only midday,
nothing short of the gravest emergency could have induced me to
move. The emergency presented itself, finally, in the form of
luncheon and I discovered that Don José had returned hurriedly
from Candon in order to entertain us and that he had brought with
him everything in the form of food and liquid refreshments that he
could find. The result was a triumph, and we decided that we should
like to remain under his hospitable roof indefinitely.
That night, amid much merriment, we initiated our host into the
mysteries and secrets of a little society we had formed and which we
called the Earring Club. Our insignia was a big, brass Igorrote
earring, and we had signs and pass-words, to say nothing of a song
which nobody but ourselves could sing. We appropriated the Cavalry
tune of “For Seven Long Years I’ve Courted Nancy,” but the words
were our own and it was not difficult to supply a new verse to fit each
incident or occasion as it came along. The song began:
Bureau of Science,
Manila.

IGORROTE CHIEF PROUDLY


DISPLAYING HIS HOUSE
DECORATIONS OF HUMAN SKULLS
AND CARABAO HORNS
Bureau of Science,
Manila.

BONTOC IGORROTES WITH


GANZAS, SHOWING HANDLES
MADE OF HUMAN JAW BONES

For twelve long days we’ve hiked through mountains,


Heigh ho! Cross roaring rivers!
For twelve long days we’ve hiked through mountains,
Ha! Ha! While on our way through wild Lepanto!

Up at Sagada we came upon the only bed of mint that any of us


had ever seen in the Philippines, and as General Bell had almost an
inspired knowledge as to what mint was originally intended for, this
gave us material for three new verses:
One rainy day we reached Sagada,
Heigh ho! Among the rice fields!
One rainy day we reached Sagada,
Ha! Ha! As we toiled along o’er the hills of Bontoc!
A place most sweet with fragrant mint-beds,
Heigh ho! How did it get there?
A place most sweet with fragrant mint-beds,
Ha! Ha! ‘Way high up in the hills of Bontoc!

We didn’t do a thing but make a julep,


Heigh ho! Without the cracked ice!
We didn’t do a thing but make a julep,
Ha! Ha! With the mint we found in the hills of Bontoc!

It was a free-for-all composition contest; anybody was likely to


produce a new verse, or even a whole new song with a different tune,
at any moment, and we shortened many a long mile with such
nonsense.
At Don José’s we not only sang all our songs for the benefit of our
host, but one of our number produced a harmonica, on which he
played very well indeed, and we had an impromptu baile. Then we
“dropped the handkerchief,” “followed the leader,” gave some
original renderings of German Grand Opera, played Puss-in-the-
corner, and finished the evening with our feet on a fender before a
great, open fire, recounting, with much appreciated embellishments,
our interesting experiences.
We knew we should not find any place as delightful as Don José’s
again,—not even in Manila, because Manila would be hot,—so it was
with great reluctance that we obeyed orders to be ready to leave the
next morning at six. This meant getting out of our comfortable,
civilised beds at five o’clock, while the stars would still be out, and
when the ashes of our evening’s fire would be cold and grey on the
hearth. It was a cheerless thought, but we had to “get to Loo” said
General Bell.
It was raining—of course—and there was not much scenery visible
except when the clouds would float upward, now and then, like veils
lifted off grand panoramas, but by this time we had ceased to
consider the weather. When we got to Loo we found the “town”
consisted of just two empty log huts, one with a plaited reed floor,
the other with no floor at all, and neither of them with any sort of
partition. We stretched a rope across the middle of the better one,
hung Igorrote blankets on it by way of a screen, and prepared to
make ourselves comfortable on the, fortunately flexible, floor; ladies
on one side, gentlemen on the other. But along late in the afternoon a
pack train of mules and Igorrotes and orderlies arrived from the
south bringing us the astonishing news that the Commissioners were
only a few miles behind and expected to camp that night at Loo!
The rain had settled down into a dreary, soaking patter; it was
cold; we were all wet; there was no place for a fire; and, altogether,
we were fairly uncomfortable.
The Commissioners, Mr. Worcester and Mr. Moses, with their
private secretaries and a doctor—five in all—came along about an
hour behind their pack train. They straggled in one by one, very
grumpy, and we decided right away that they had not been taught, as
we had been, to make the best of everything and to cultivate
sociability on the trail. They had had a much more difficult day’s
riding than we because the trail up is much harder than the trail
down, but we were pretty certain, on the whole, that we were much
the better managed party.
With more Igorrote blankets we arranged another partition in the
hut to make room for them, then we gave them a good hot dinner—
cooked in the tent which had been put up for kitchen purposes—and
immediately a social thaw set in. We got all the news from Manila
that we were so anxious for, and all the latest gossip. The news was
disquieting. A cablegram had come announcing that the Supreme
Court had decided there should be no duties in Porto Rico against
United States imports, and instructing the Commission to suspend
all legislation in the Philippine Islands until further notice. This
might mean anything, but whatever else it meant it certainly meant
renewed uncertainty and the possibility that no change in the
government would be made until after Congress met.
The politics of the situation were extremely complicated and
seemed to revolve around a question which, because of a rather
pugnacious manner of expressing it, had become a popular clamour.
The question was: “Does the Constitution follow the Flag?” In other
words, really, could duties be collected on imports from one
American port to another? In any case, the question in respect to us
was one for Congress to answer and it seemed to me we were facing
another long period of uneasiness and delay.
We knew the entire Commission had expected to make a trip in
June for the purpose of organising the Christian provinces in the far
north beyond the Mountain Province, but they were halted by the
order to suspend definite activities, and Commissioners Worcester
and Moses had taken advantage of the “breathing spell” to run up
into the mountains and inspect proposed routes for roads and
railways. That is how we happened to encounter them at Loo. We
shared their opinion that one of the greatest things that could be
done for the country was to make the mountains of central Luzon,
with their glorious climate, easily accessible. The trails as we found
them were mere paths worn by the feet of Igorrotes and, besides
being very narrow, were at such grades as to make them in many
places all but impassable. The party, highly representative of
American authority in the Islands, as it was, sat around on the
bamboo floor, huddled up in blankets, and talked long into the night
about hopes and fears and governmental problems of great difficulty
and importance.
We left Loo at six o’clock in the morning and after eight straight
hours of the hardest work we had yet been called upon to do, we
arrived at Cabayan. According to my own diary: “I was completely
tired. The greater part of the way we rode through beautiful pine
forests, but up and down hills as steep as the side of a house; across
rivers, and up a waterfall.” This sounds like pretty heavy going, but
my account of it written at the time was, I am sure, only slightly
exaggerated. I remember distinctly that from Loo to Baguio, five full
days, we walked a great part of the way; and not only did we walk,
but we rendered necessary assistance to our horses which, giving out
one by one, had to be dragged up the steep grades and “eased” down
the opposite sides in a way that would have been highly ludicrous
had we been engaged in anything but a very serious business. Only
the steady old mules plodded along “without a word,” and found
their own way in safety around the dangerous turns.
Bureau of Science, Manila.

THE BENGUET ROAD BEFORE AND AFTER COMPLETION.


NOT THE MOST THRILLING CURVE ON THIS SPECTACULAR
HIGHWAY

After leaving Bontoc we travelled down through Nueva Viscaya


and into Benguet, the southermost division of the Mountain
province. At Cabayan we had for camping quarters a large
presidencia and schoolhouse combined, while a tent was put up and
rudely equipped for bathing purposes. This was luxury indeed, and
we began to think that we had left all hardship behind us; but the
next night, after a seven hours’ “hike” over a terrible trail, we found
shelter in a miserable hut with only one room which we all had to
occupy, with Igorrote blankets for partitions.
The Igorrotes grew less and less interesting as we went along and
displayed few evidences of the industry and thrift which characterise
the more northern tribes. The mountains are higher and the scenes
are broader and more wonderful at the southern end of the range,
but the only cultivation we came upon was in the villages and along
the banks of the little rushing streams. It was evident that we were
approaching “civilisation.” Here and there we went through small
groves of coffee trees, beautiful in a wealth of snow-white blossoms,
but evidently deserted, and wretchedly ragged and unkempt.
Baguio, now the summer capital of the Philippine Islands, the
“Philippine Simla,” as it is so often called, lies at the top of what has
become justly celebrated as “the magnificent Benguet Road,” the
building of which has been the subject of more controversy than
almost any other one thing that American authority and enterprise
has accomplished in the Islands. The Benguet Road when I first saw
it was known as “Mead’s Trail,” so named in honour of the engineer
who made the original survey for it, and in some places it was
nothing more than a thin line drawn against perpendicular cliffs to
indicate where cutting was to be done.
Let somebody else argue the question as to whether or not this
road has justified the faith of the men who built it. My husband and
his colleagues were responsible for the beginning of it and Mr. Taft
authorised the payment of the large sums of money which went into
it, but he does not in the least object to honest criticism of the
project. His only question is: “How else could we have accomplished
what we did?” For which there is no satisfactory answer. I have
ridden over it since it was completed and, in common with a majority
of those who have enjoyed this privilege, I am strongly prejudiced in
its favour. There are few, if any roads in the world more spectacular,
or which represent a greater triumph of engineering skill. Fairly
hewn out of the almost solid, but too crumbling, walls of the Bued
River Canyon, it winds for about seventeen miles through constantly
changing scenes of extraordinary grandeur, then it strikes the
foothills of the mountains and rises in a succession of splendid
upward sweeps to an altitude of more than five thousand feet in less
than six miles.
The Benguet Road was originally a railway project and was to have
been built by the British company which owns the Manila and
Dagupan Railway. But this syndicate wanted a perpetual grant and a
guarantee from the government which could not then be given. It
was necessary, in any case, to build a wagon-road before railway
construction could be started and Captain Mead, who was sent out at
the head of a surveying party, reported that such a road would cost at
least $50,000, or $75,000. The Commission appropriated the
$50,000 and issued orders to have the work begun, fully expecting to
have to add another $25,000 before the road was finished. Nobody
knows what character of road Captain Mead had in mind when he
made his estimate, but it transpired that nothing short of first-class
construction would last through even one heavy rain. Besides, the
Bued River Canyon had to be spanned six or eight times with
tremendous suspension bridges, and before the project was
completed an unwilling government had spent something like
$2,500,000 on it. This was spread over a period of years, of course,
and much of it went for necessary improvements or for the
replacement of storm-wrecked bridges and graded sections, but its
enemies like to refer to it as our two and a half million dollar road.
The Manila and Dagupan Railway company extended its road up
to the point where the Benguet Road begins and thus a way was
opened into the only region in the Philippines where one may find
really invigorating air. And while the road was building Baguio
development began. A United States Army Camp was established on
a ridge overlooking a wide range of pine-covered hills, and a hospital
was erected for the accommodation of invalid soldiers who, before
these facilities for taking care of them were provided, had always, at
great expense to the government, to be sent back to the United
States. A civil hospital and tuberculosis camp were opened; good
hotels under private ownership soon took the place of field tents and
rough board shacks; markets and stores were started, bringing in
supplies in wholesale lots, and fair-sized buildings soon began to go
up in a substantial business section; people began to build houses as
rapidly as builders could be found to do the work; churches and
schools began to appear where nothing was before; a summer camp
for the recuperation of thousands of public school teachers was
started in a high valley carpeted with pine-needles, and lecture
courses for vacation instruction were instituted; a country club was
organised with golf links, a baseball diamond, polo grounds, tennis
courts and everything that goes to make a country club successful.
The plan of the city was drawn by Architect Burnham of Chicago,
who visited Benguet for the purpose, and a great central plaza was
provided with artistic, but inexpensive buildings for the
accommodation of the two branches of the government. Cottages in
rows went up almost overnight; rich Filipinos and a few Americans
built fine homes; beautifully metalled drives began to wind in and
out and over and around the hills, and a high-class government
automobile ‘bus line was put on the Benguet Road which is the
delight of every American or other foreigner in the Islands, as well as
of many hundreds of Filipinos who annually take advantage of this
wholly novel opportunity to reach a salubrious climate in their own
land, and by a route which in any European country would attract
scores of thrill-seeking tourists.
And so the Philippine Simla was begun. Its friends, or, in other
words, most people have dreams of a great future for it when it shall
be a thriving, prosperous city and a health resort for everybody “east
of Suez” who needs to seek near by a temperate and invigorating
climate.
It is six years since I saw Baguio, for I visited it the last time in
1907, but even then I could not believe that it was built on the
ground that I had ridden over and found practically uninhabited only
six years before. At that time a provincial government had been
organised, and an American, Mr. Phelps Whitmarsh, who was a
writer and had lived among the Igorrotes a long time, was appointed
governor. But he was governor of a wild-tribe province which did not
then boast any greater signs of civilisation than winding foot trails
and a few groups of low-thatched huts which were known as towns.
We rode in from Trinidad, not many miles from Baguio, on the
morning of the 23rd of June and went straight to the governor’s
“mansion.” We were welcomed by Mrs. Whitmarsh into a nipa-
roofed, suali house which, though it was quite large, had no
partitions except such as were made of bamboo screens and hangings
of bright-coloured Igorrote cloths. But it had a big, open fireplace
and a fine blaze from odorous pine boughs was crackling up the
chimney. This seemed particularly cosy and delightful to us because
we had just been camping in native huts in which the only place for a
fire was a square of earth in the middle of the floor and we were not
only quite frozen but we were thoroughly smoked.
THE ZIGZAG. HOW THE BENGUET ROAD CLIMBS TO AN
ALTITUDE OF OVER 5,000 FEET IN SIX MILES

At Baguio we got letters and telegrams from Manila and one of the
telegrams announced my husband’s appointment as Governor of the
Islands, so I knew that an adjustment of state affairs had been made
and that I should reach Manila to begin a new era in my Philippine
experience. Mr. Taft wrote me that the plans for his inauguration
were practically complete and that he was issuing cards for a big
reception in honour of General MacArthur at our house on the
evening of the Fourth of July. This filled me with something like
panic, because I didn’t expect to reach Manila until after the first of
July and I didn’t see how I could get ready on such short notice to
entertain hundreds of people. However, it was not for me to enter a
protest on such a score, so it was decided that we would go down as
soon as we possibly could.
We spent two days enjoying the delightful hospitality of our
friends in Baguio and in exploring the country round about, and I,
after listening to builders’ dreams of what was to be and now is,
proceeded to select a site for my own future summer home.
We sat around a roaring fire of an evening and sang all our songs,
rather ruefully; we recounted our many adventures, and expressed
our sincere regret that our holiday was over; then on the morning of
the 25th of June, at the dreary hour of half past four, we mounted
our refreshed and rested horses and started down the long Naguilian
trail to the coast. I wish only to add that the heat in the lowlands,
after our long breath of white man’s air in the mountains, was almost
more than we could stand, and I made the fatal mistake of leaving
Baguio in a heavy flannel riding shirt and with no thin blouse handy
to take its place.
CHAPTER X
GOVERNOR TAFT

There is no denying that the arrangements made, during my


absence in the north, for my participation in the events attending my
husband’s induction into the office of Governor of the Philippines
were enough to fill me with dismay.
Mr. Taft had issued two thousand invitations for the reception at
our house in honour of General MacArthur, and on my way down
from Baguio I had been spending my time wondering how I should
take care of the three or four hundred I imagined had been asked. I
had received no information more definite than the simple statement
that invitations had been sent out, and it was not until I reached
Manila that I learned the startling number. I thought my husband
knew something about the limitations of our house, but I found that
he had not taken this important matter into consideration at all.
Fortunately we had a large garden in fairly good condition by this
time, so I immediately went to work and had it decorated with long
lines and festoons of Japanese lanterns; I ordered a large
refreshment tent put up in the middle of the wide lawn; then I sat
down and prayed for fair weather. It was the rainy season and I knew
that only a specially importuned Providence could keep the
afternoon of the Fourth of July clear.
The inauguration of the first American Governor was an occasion
of great dignity and interest. The ceremony took place on a platform
erected at one end of a large square in the Walled City which is
enclosed on one side by the Ayuntamiento, or Insular Capitol, and on
another by the Cathedral. The foundations of the Inaugural stand
were of historic interest in that they were originally intended to
support a magnificent residence for Spanish Governors-General and
were on the site of the ancient gubernatorial mansion which was
destroyed by an earthquake in 1863. The rebuilding had never
progressed beyond the laying of the massive granite base, and this
still stands as a mute reminder to progressive Americans of the
dilatory and otherwise questionable methods which once obtained in
the Philippine government.
The Cathedral Plaza—since renamed Plaza McKinley—presented a
memorable scene that Fourth of July morning. The architectural
grace and time-mellowed colours of the old Spanish buildings
blended with the rich luxuriance of many-hued tropic plants and the
green of spreading acacias. American flags covered the canopied
platforms and floated from every possible point of vantage.
Americans and Filipinos, all in gala attire, were pressed close
together in the spectators’ stands which extended on either side of
the central pavilion; the plaza below was thronged with Filipinos of
every rank and condition, in all manner of bright jusis and calicoes;
while above the crowd towered many American soldiers and sailors
in spic-and-span khaki or white duck.
The programme was much like other programmes. General
MacArthur and his staff occupied the centre of the platform. A well
trained and finely conducted Filipino band played several numbers;
there was a prayer and an invocation; then my husband, looking
larger even than his natural size in his crisp white linen suit, stepped
to the front of the platform and stood gravely looking down upon the
stocky little Chief Justice of the Archipelago, Señor Arellano, who
administered the oath of office. Afterward Mr. Taft and Mr.
Fergusson stood together and delivered, in English and Spanish,
paragraph by paragraph in translation, the Inaugural address.
I think only one unfortunate incident occurred to mar the
complete harmony of the occasion, and that was furnished by a
United States Congressman of the Military Committee of the House,
who was visiting Manila at the time.
Tickets of admission to the central pavilion had been sent to him,
but he had forgotten to bring them with him. However, when he
arrived at the plaza he started, with several ladies who were with
him, to mount the steps of the Inaugural platform on which no ladies
were allowed. He was stopped, naturally, and a guard offered to
conduct his guests to seats on a side pavilion, telling him at the time
that the central stand had been reserved for government officials and
representatives, among whom he, of course, was included. This
separate seating of the ladies seemed to annoy him for some reason,
and he announced his intention of remaining with his party. He was
then shown to the best available seats and the incident seemed to be
closed. But he was by no means satisfied with his position, especially
when he found that the wives of some of the Commissioners had
seats in front of him. I think the heat must have been affecting him
for he called the Naval Lieutenant, who was in charge as usher, and
made audible protest against “those wives of clerks” being put before
him and his wife. The young naval officer was polite, but quite firm
in his refusal to take any steps to remedy matters.
“You don’t seem to know who I am!” he exclaimed, with manifest
indignation.
“No, sir, I do not,” mildly replied the Lieutenant.
“Well,” said the angry man, “I’m a member of the Military
Committee of the House of Representatives. I helped to make this
Army out here and I’ve come out to see what kind of work I did. I
don’t like it, and I’m going home and unmake it. This treatment of
me here is of a piece with the treatment I’ve received ever since I’ve
been in these islands.”
This didn’t sound quite fair. He had been treated with marked
courtesy by everybody and had accepted rather lavish hospitality
from both Army officers and civil officials. In fact, he had received
every possible attention in a most unusually hospitable community.
The young Lieutenant bristled up and said:
MR. TAFT TAKING THE OATH OF OFFICE AS THE FIRST
AMERICAN GOVERNOR OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

“Sorry, sir, but I’m obeying orders; and I’d just like to tell you that
I consider your remarks exceedingly impolite.”
Upon which the gentleman from Washington left the pavilion and
went down to stand in a place which the guards had been ordered to
keep clear.
The rest of the story I heard afterward. It seems that both General
Barry and General Davis saw him and took pains to go down and ask
him up into the central pavilion, but he refused to go. Then one of
the guards came up and politely informed him: “Orders, sir, you’ll
have to stand back.” By this time he was infuriated and he turned on
the guard and, after identifying himself, repeated his remarks about
having made the Army and being determined to go back to
Washington and unmake it.
“Well,” said the guard, “I guess you can’t unmake me. I’ve just
been mustered out of the United States Army and am a plain
American citizen. I don’t understand that Congress can do much
about unmaking American citizens.” Which all goes to show that it
doesn’t do much good to lose one’s temper. The gentleman took his
party and stalked out of the plaza.
My hopes for the evening were blasted. About five o’clock the
heavens opened and such a sheet of water descended upon my
refreshment tent and my strings of gay paper lanterns as one never
sees in the Temperate Zone. It was raining in torrents when our
guests began to arrive, and if many of those invited had not been
kept at home by the weather I don’t know what I should have done
with the crowd. I had a wide hall, a small reception room, a dining-
room and the verandah, but two thousand people are a good many,
and I’m sure a large majority of them came in spite of the weather. It
was a “crush,” and a warm, moist crush, but it was a gala occasion,
everybody was in good humour and the evening passed much more
pleasantly than I had any reason to expect. This was the first
entertainment of such proportions that I had undertaken in Manila,
and I saw at once that, as the Governor’s wife, I should need all the
spaciousness of Malacañan Palace.
I think General MacArthur was pleased with our farewell
hospitality to him; he seemed to be; and I think his feelings toward
Mr. Taft, when he left the Islands the next day, were exceedingly
friendly. But we heard later that letters had come from companions
of his on the ship which said that he very keenly resented the fact
that the new Governor had not seen fit to mention him with praise in
his Inaugural address. Mr. Taft said he was very sorry, but, in view of
the relations which were known to exist between the Military
government and the Commission, he thought it would have been
very difficult to find the tactful words which would have satisfied the
General, and in uttering which he would not have stultified himself.
I am quite sure that General MacArthur never disliked my
husband personally. His resentment was against the Commissioners
in their official capacity, whereby his own authority was diminished.
In later years, as Secretary of War, Mr. Taft met him very often and
their relations were always perfectly cordial. After his death there
was considerable newspaper comment to the effect that he had been
very badly treated. There was no refutation of the charges, but
everybody familiar with the facts knew they had no foundation.
When Mr. Taft was Secretary of War, on his recommendation
General MacArthur was given the highest rank in the United States
Army, that of Lieutenant-General, and at his own request was sent by
Mr. Taft on a mission to travel through China with his son, an Army
officer, as his aide, and to make a military report upon the country.
On his return, at his own request, he was not assigned to specific
command, but was ordered to his home at Milwaukee to prepare the
report on China, and there he remained by his own choice until his
retirement.
On the morning of July 5, we moved to Malacañan, and General
Chaffee, who succeeded General MacArthur, took our house on the
Bay. There was a great deal of contention with regard to this
exchange of houses. Mr. Taft knew that to the mind of the Filipinos
the office of Governor, without the accustomed “setting” and general
aspects of the position, would lose a large part of its dignity and
effectiveness. He also knew that a Civil Government, unless it were
quartered in the Ayuntamiento, the recognised seat of government,
would inspire but little confidence or respect. The outward
semblance is all-important to the Filipino mind, yet knowing this the
Military authorities clung with dogged tenacity to every visible
evidence of supremacy, and it took an order from Washington to get
them to vacate the Ayuntamiento in which they had, in the
beginning, refused the Commission adequate office room. An official
order also turned the Governor’s residence over to the new Governor
and, at the same time, relieved Mr. Taft of the necessity for deciding
what to do with our house in Malate. It was the best available house
in the city and every man on the Commission wanted it, so if the War
Department had not taken it for the Commanding General
somebody’s feelings surely would have suffered. Mr. Taft had about
decided to toss a coin in the presence of them all to see which one of
his colleagues should have it.
In some ways we regretted that the move was necessary, for we
were very comfortable in our “chalet,” as Señor Juan de Juan had
editorially called it, and invigorating dips in the high breakers of the
Bay had become one of our pleasantest pastimes. But we knew that
no amount of executive orders could turn our homely and unpalatial
abode into a gubernatorial mansion, so we needs must move for the
effect on the native mind, if for nothing else. Not until we did, would
the Filipinos be convinced that Civil Government was actually
established.
Not that I wasn’t well pleased with the idea of living in a palace,
however unlike the popular conception of a palace it might be. I had
not been brought up with any such destiny in view and I confess that
it appealed to my imagination.
Malacañan is old and rather damp and, in my time, some of it had
not been furnished or finished according to modern ideas, but in size
and dignity it leaves nothing to be desired, and it has historic
associations which give it an atmosphere that I found to be quite
thrilling. It contains many fine, old-world Spanish portraits, and
there is one large canvas of especial interest which hangs at the head
of the main stairway. It depicts the ceremony through which
Magellan made peace with the natives of Cebu when he landed on
that island in April, 1521. This consisted of drawing blood from the
breasts of the principal parties to the contract, the one drinking that
of the other. The Spaniards called it the Pacto de Sangre, or the
Blood Pact, and so the picture is named. In our own day the
Katipunan League, the strongest and most sinister of all the
insurrectionary secret societies, are said to have adopted this
ceremony in their rites of initiation, and members of the League
could be identified by a peculiar scar on the breast.
The grounds at Malacañan contain, perhaps, twenty acres, and in
those days there were fields and swamps in the enclosure as well as
lawns and fountains, flower-beds and kitchen gardens. There were
five or six good-sized houses in the grounds for the use of secretaries
and aides, and the stables were very large.
I would not care to hazard a guess as to the number of parientes
we sheltered in the quarters of our employés. Mr. Taft called these
quarters our “Filipino tenement” and “Calle Pariente,” but screened
with shrubbery and spreading down the sides of a twenty-acre lot the
colony did not seem as conspicuous as our huddled tribe had been in
Malate.
The Palace is architecturally Spanish, yet it lacks the large patio,
having two small courts instead. The lower floor, on a level with the
ground, is really nothing more than a basement and has no usable
spaces in it except some raised offices and cloak rooms. Frequently
during bad typhoons I have seen water two and three feet deep in the
entrance hall, but it always receded very rapidly and seldom gave us
any inconvenience. The entrance, which is paved with marble, is very
broad, and there is a wide and imposing staircase of polished
hardwood leading to the reception hall above. The great living-rooms

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