Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1898-10-17
| A PHILIPPINE ROMANCE.
ADVENTURES IN THE ISLANDS OF
A GENTLEMAN OF BRITTANY,

rates and Married Creole Beauty.
About the middle of the present
century, when Dumas the elder was
ut the height of his career, and the or
igin of many an interesting piece of
French literature was delightfully."- un-
certain, q couple of works appeared
that drew attention to the mysterious
and faroff Philippines. In his 'Thou-
sand ard One Phantoms," issued seri-
ally in the Constitutional, Dumas
made free with fellow countryman
who had been the hero of certain sur
prising adventures in the Pearl of the
Orient, and the hero thereupon not
caring to figure as o phantom in a
feuilleton, got out his adventures of
Gentleman Of Brittany in the Phil
ippines." Some persons, however,
thought the hero would have been
truer to life as the creation of Dumas
that as real gentlemal of Brittany
he was only another living liar, and
that, in fact, his romantic narrative
was the work of new Selkirk and
Defoe combination.
Paul Proust de la Gironniere was
counted in the pedigree of an ancient
Piedmontese family that came over
the st. Bernard and into Brittany in
the days of Louis XIV, and soon be-
came rich enough to have access to the
nobility and to contract "the most
8attering alliances. Paul's father
was born at Nantes, where his ances-
tors had held high Office under the
crown. His wealth was swept away
bS the revolution; and he died on q
piece of land owned by his wife. Pauls
mother gave the boys such education
as she could, and then they went to
seek their fortune. One died in Mad
agascar; another returned to Porto
Rico to die in his mothers arms; the
husband of one of Paul's sisters died
in Mauritius, and another brother died
while visiting Paul in the Philippines.
Paul was born at Nantes; he stud
led medicine; and thence, mere
STRIPPING, he sailed as ships surgeon
to the Far East, embarking for the
fourth time on October 8, 1919, and
casting anchor about the end of May,
1920, in the Bay of Manila. He landed
at Cavite, enjoyed the whirl of Manila
society, studied the TagaToc, went
among the natives in the mountains,
began the career of craftsmanship
that was to culminate in hunting the
stag and the buffalo and in killing
caymans and boa constructors, and fin
ally allowed his ship to go home and
leave him in the metropolis of the
archipelago.
He had resolved to become q resi-
dent physician. He faced the fanati-
cism of the cholera massacre of 1920,
and he had clean shirt in his hat and
dollar in his pocket. Finding rich
old don nearly blind, he cured one eye
and made a glass ball for the socket of
the other, and his reputation was
established. Paul became DR.. Pablo,
and surgeon of a regiment of regulars
and of a battalion of militia. But
when the leaders of the Novalles re-
bellion of 1928 were shot, he had oc-
casion to call Spanish informer q
coward, and some time thereafter,
having words with the Governor Gen
eral over question of ethics, he re-
signed and was thenceforth sort of
surgical free lance to the people of
Luzon.
The travels of La Gironniere in the
island, though undertaken incident
ally to professional duty OF out of mere
curiosity or desire to go somewhere,
are scientifically interesting, and will
be as important to the historian as
many of the manuscript accounts that
are rolled up in the cloistral archives.
He explored caves, lakes, mountain
Businesses and immense forests; slept
in treetops aud ON the tidal sands:
learned The ways of the tribes and
gathered legends; attended the Tin
guian brain feast; sketched the interior
of Igorrot huts and carried off the
skeleton of a Negro woman.
La Gironniere's most valuable con-
tribution to the civilization of the
island was his colony OF -Jala.
Before his resignation had been ac-
cepted, Senior Pablo, who was known
among the natives as Malamit Oulou,
or "Cool Head" had secured of the
Minister of Finance site for model
farm in the mountainous peninsula
that extends southwark into the beau
tiful Lake of Bay at the head of the
Pasig. Here, with his devoted wife,
and commissioned to subdue as he
might the pirates and banditti of this
wild region, he founded among these
victims of Spain's extortion and mis-
rule prosperous and orderly COM
munity. Assisted by these industrious
and loving neighbors, and heartily
seconded by the once dreaded Chieftain
Alila, by Malay Japanese priest whom
the Archbishop had told him nobody
could ever live with, and by his ever
inspiring Anna, the "Queen of Jala-
Jala," he converted forest and a
malarial swamp into thriving town
surrounded with timber land, pasture
grounds, and rich fields of rice, in
digo, sugar cane, tobacco, and coffee.
His herds alone comprised 5000
head of oxen, 800 buffaloes and GOO
horses. For the introduction and per-
nf aHa 1