Our coachman wore no uniform, but was resplendent in a fresh-laundered white muslin shirt which he wore outside his drill trousers.  He carried us through the walled city and out by a masked gate to a drive called the Malecon, a broad, smooth roadway lined with cocoanut palms.  On the bay side the waters dashed against the sea wall just as Lake Michigan does on the Lake Shore Drive in Chicago.  But the view across the bay at Manila is infinitely more beautiful than that at Chicago.  To the left stretches a noble curve of beach, ending with the spires and roofs of Cavite and a purple line of plateau, drawn boldly across the sky.  In front there is the wide expanse of water, dotted with every variety of craft, with a lonely mountain, rising apparently straight from the sea, bulking itself in the foreground a little to the left.  The mountain is in reality Mt.  Marivales, the headland which forms the north entrance to Manila Bay, but it is so much higher than the sierra which runs back from it that it manages to convey a splendid picture of isolation.  The sun falls behind Marivales, painting a flaming background for mountains and sea.  When that smouldering curtain of night has dropped, and the sea lies glooming, and the ships of all nations swing on their anchor chains, there are few lovelier spots than the Luneta.  The wind comes soft as velvet; the surf croons a lullaby, and the little toy horses and toy victorias spin up and down between the palms, settling at last around the turf oval which surrounds the bandstand.

Here are soldiers in clean khaki on the benches; officers of the army and navy in snow-white uniforms; Chinamen in robes of purple or blue silk, smoking in their victorias; Japanese and Chinese nursemaids in their native costumes watching their charges at play on the grass; bareheaded American women; black-haired Spanish beauties; and native women with their long, graceful necks rising from the stiff folds of azure or rose-colored kerchiefs.  American officers tower by on their big horses, or American women in white drill habits.  There are droves of American children on native ponies, the girls riding astride, their fat little legs in pink or blue stockings bobbing against the ponies’ sides.  There are boys’ schools out for a walk in charge of shovel-hatted priests.  There are demure processions of maidens from the colegios, sedately promenading two and two, with black-robed madres vainly endeavoring to intercept surreptitious glances and remarks.  There are groups of Hindoos in turbans.  There are Englishmen with the inevitable walking-sticks.  There are friars apparently of all created orders, and there is the Manila policeman.

As I recall those early impressions, I think the awe and respect for the Manila police was quite the strongest of all.  They were the picked men of the army of invasion, non-commissioned officers who could show an honorable discharge.  Size must have been taken into consideration in selecting them, for I do not remember seeing one who was of less than admirable proportions.  Soldierly training was in every movement.