Lineage, Life and Labors of José Rizal, Philippine Patriot
The same boat carried some soldier prisoners, one of whom was to be
executed in Mindanao, and their case was not particularly creditable
to Spanish ideas of justice. A Spanish officer had dishonorably
interfered with the domestic relations of a sergeant, also Spanish,
and the aggrieved party had inflicted punishment upon his superior,
with the help of some other soldiers. For allowing himself to be
punished, not for his own disgraceful act, the officer was dismissed
from the service, but the sergeant was to go to the scene of his
alleged "crime," there to suffer death, while his companions who had
assisted him in protecting their homes were to be witnesses of this
"justice" and then to be imprisoned.
After an uneventful trip the steamer reached Dapitan, in the northeast
of the large island of Mindanao, on a dark and rainy evening. The
officer in charge of the expedition took Doctor Rizal ashore with
some papers relating to him and delivered all to the commandant,
Ricardo Carnicero. The receipt taken was briefed "One countryman and
two packages." At the same time learned men in Europe were beginning
to hear of this outrage worthy of the Dark Ages and were remarking
that Spain had stopped the work of the man who was practically her
only representative in modern science, for the Castilian language
has not been the medium through which any considerable additions have
been made to the world's store of scientific knowledge.
Rizal was to reside either with the commandant or with the Jesuit
parish priest, if the latter would take him into the convento. But
while the exile had learned with pleasure that he was to meet priests
who were refined and learned, as well as associated with his happier
school days, he did not know that these priests were planning to
restore him to his childhood faith and had mapped out a plan of action
which should first make him feel his loneliness. So he was denied
residence with the priest unless he would declare himself genuinely
in sympathy with Spain.
On his previous brief visit to the Islands he had been repelled from
the Ateneo with the statement that till he ceased to be anti-Catholic
and anti-Spanish he would not be welcome. Padre Faura, the famous
meteorologist, was his former instructor and Rizal was his favorite
pupil; he had tearfully predicted that the young man would come to
the scaffold at last unless he mended his ways. But Rizal, confident
in the clearness of his own conscience, went out cheerfully, and when
the porter tried to bring back the memory of his childhood piety by
reminding him of the image of the Sacred Heart which he had carved
years before, Rizal answered, "Other times, other customs, Brother. I
do not believe that way any more."
So Rizal, a good Catholic, was compelled to board with the commandant
instead of with the priest because he was unwilling to make
hypocritical professions of admiration for Spain. The commandant and
Rizal soon became good friends, but in order to retain his position
Carnicero had to write to the Governor-General in a different strain.
The correspondence tells the facts in the main, but of course
they are colored throughout to conform to Despujol's character. The
commandant is always represented as deceiving his prisoner and gaining
his confidence only to betray him, but Rizal seems never to have
experienced anything but straightforward dealing.
Rizal's earliest letter from Dapitan speaks almost enthusiastically
of the place, describing the climate as exceptional for the tropics,
his situation as agreeable, and saying that he could be quite content
if his family and his books were there.
Shortly after occurred the anniversary of Carnicero's arrival in the
town, and Rizal celebrated the event with a Spanish poem reciting
the improvements made since his coming, written in the style of the
Malay loa, and as though it were by the children of Dapitan.
Next Rizal acquired a piece of property at Talisay, a little bay close
to Dapitan, and at once became interested in his farm. Soon he built
a house and moved into it, gathering a number of boy assistants about
him, and before long he had a school. A hospital also was put up for
his patients and these in time became a source of revenue, as people
from a distance came to the oculist for treatment and paid liberally.
One five-hundred-peso fee from a rich Englishman was devoted by Rizal
to lighting the town, and the community benefited in this way by his
charity in addition to the free treatment given its poor.
The little settlement at Talisay kept growing and those who lived
there were constantly improving it. When Father Obach, the Jesuit
priest, fell through the bamboo stairway in the principal house, Rizal
and his boys burned shells, made mortar, and soon built a fine stone
stairway. They also did another piece of masonry work in the shape of
a dam for storing water that was piped to the houses and poultry yard;
the overflow from the dam was made to fill a swimming tank.
The school, including the house servants, numbered about twenty and
was taught without books by Rizal, who conducted his recitations
from a hammock. Considerable importance was given to mathematics,
and in languages English was taught as well as Spanish, the entire
waking period being devoted to the language allotted for the day,
and whoever so far forgot as to utter a word in any other tongue was
punished by having to wear a rattan handcuff. The use and meaning of
this modern police device had to be explained to the boys, for Spain
still tied her prisoners with rope.
Nature study consisted in helping the Doctor gather specimens
of flowers, shells, insects and reptiles which were prepared and
shipped to German museums. Rizal was paid for these specimens by
scientific books and material. The director of the Royal Zooelogical
and Anthropological Museum in Dresden, Saxony, Doctor Karl von Heller,
was a great friend and admirer of Doctor Rizal. Doctor Heller's father
was tutor to the late King Alfonso XII and had many friends at the
Court of Spain. Evidently Doctor Heller and other of his European
friends did not consider Rizal a Spanish insurrectionary, but treated
him rather as a reformer seeking progress by peaceful means.
Doctor Rizal remunerated his pupils' work with gifts of clothing,
books and other useful remembrances. Sometimes the rewards were
cartidges, and those who had accumulated enough were permitted to
accompany him in his hunting expeditions. The dignity of labor was
practically inculcated by requiring everyone to make himself useful,
and this was really the first school of the type, combining the use
of English, nature study and industrial instruction.
On one occasion in the year 1894 some of his schoolboys secretly
went into the town in a banca; a puppy which tried to follow them
was eaten by a crocodile. Rizal tired to impress the evil effects of
disobedience upon the youngsters by pointing out to them the sorrow
which the mother-dog felt at the loss of her young one, and emphasized
the lesson by modeling a statuette called "The Mother's Revenge,"
wherein she is represented, in revenge, as devouring the cayman. It
is said to be a good likeness of the animal which was Doctor Rizal's
favorite companion in his many pedestrian excursions around Dapitan.
Father Francisco Sanchez, Rizal's instructor in rhetoric in the Ateneo,
made a long visit to Dapitan and brought with him some surveyor's
instruments, which his former pupil was delighted to assist him in
using. Together they ran the levels for a water system for the the
town, which was later, with the aid of the lay Jesuit, Brother Tildot,
carried to completion. This same water system is now being restored
and enlarged with artesian wells by the present insular, provincial
and municipal governments jointly, as part of the memorial to Rizal
in this place of his exile.
A visit to a not distant mountain and some digging in a spot supposed
by the people of the region to be haunted brought to light curious
relics of the first Christian converts among the early Moros.
The state of his mind at about this period of his career is indicated
by the verses written in his home in Talisay, entitled "My Retreat,"
of which the following translation has been made by Mr. Charles
Derbyshire. The scene that inspired this poem has been converted by
the government into a public park to the memory of Rizal.
My Retreat
By the spreading beach where the sands are soft and fine,
At the foot of the mount in its mantle of green,
I have built my hut in the pleasant grove's confine;
From the forest seeking peace and a calmness divine,
Rest for the weary brain and silence to my sorrow keen.
Its roof the frail palm-leaf and its floor the cane,
Its beams and posts of the unhewn wood;
Little there is of value in this hut so plain,
And better by far in the lap of the mount to have lain,
By the song and the murmur of the high sea's flood.
A purling brook from the woodland glade
Drops down o'er the stones and around it sweeps,
Whence a fresh stream is drawn by the rough cane's aid;
That in the still night its murmur has made,
And in the day's heat a crystal fountain leaps.
When the sky is serene how gently it flows,
And its zither unseen ceaselessly plays;
But when the rains fall a torrent it goes
Boiling and foaming through the rocky close,
Roaring uncheck'd to the sea's wide ways.
The howl of the dog and the song of the bird,
And only the kalao's hoarse call resound;
Nor is the voice of vain man to be heard,
My mind to harass or my steps to begird;
The woodlands alone and the sea wrap me round.
The sea, ah, the sea! for me it is all,
As it massively sweeps from the worlds apart;
Its smile in the morn to my soul is a call,
And when in the even my fath seems to pall,
It breathes with its sadness an echo to my heart.
By night an arcanum; when translucent it glows,
All spangled over with its millions of lights,
And the bright sky above resplendent shows;
While the waves with their sighs tell of their woes--
Tales that are lost as they roll to the heights.
They tell of the world when the first dawn broke,
And the sunlight over their surface played;
When thousands of beings from nothingness woke,
To people the depths and the heights to cloak,
Wherever its life-giving kiss was laid.
But when in the night the wild winds awake,
And the waves in their fury begin to leap,
Through the air rush the cries that my mind shake;
Voices that pray, songs and moans that partake
Of laments from the souls sunk down in the deep.
Then from their heights the mountains groan,
And the trees shiver tremulous from great unto least;
The groves rustle plaintive and the herds utter moan,
For they say that the ghosts of the folk that are gone
Are calling them down to their death's merry feast.
In terror and confusion whispers the night,
While blue and green flames flit over the deep;
But calm reigns again with the morning's light,
And soon the bold fisherman comes into sight,
As his bark rushes on and the waves sink to sleep.
So onward glide the days in my lonely abode;
Driven forth from the world where once I was known,
I muse o'er the fate upon me bestow'd;
A fragment forgotten that the moss will corrode,
To hide from mankind the world in me shown.
I live in the thought of the lov'd ones left,
And oft their names to my mind are borne;
Some have forsaken me and some by death are reft;
But now 'tis all one, as through the past I drift,
That past which from me can never be torn.
For it is the friend that is with me always,
That ever in sorrow keeps the faith in my soul;