The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-01-03
THE CAsCo.
It Has Served the Filipinos Long, But
 Its Days Must Be Numbered.

|
 Its Days Must Be Numbered.
 The casco is a craft for coast and
 river commerce. and is the home of it's crew and petron, the former living fore
 and the latter aft. It is a boat-like
 structure, hooded with bamboo and is ! the handiWorlz of the Filipino water | rat. Its functions on water are the | functions of the baraboa on land. It is | slow and cumbersome and will soon be a fancy of the past, for lighters are to take it's place.
 The casco has had a unique field for l ages. Manila is not city of great 1 wharves, such as the traveller may see
 in Liverpool, New York and in inland | Chicago, Manila Bay is not a deep
 water harbor, hence, when great ships l or transports anchormeans must be at 1 hand to convey their people and car | goes into port. and the casco has been
 and is the chief beast of burden en- | ployed to do it. There are cascos and casquitos, both hooded and covered,
 and both are built on like principles | The former has a tonnage of twenty to | one hundred tons and the latter eight
 to twenty so ability to carry gives the
 dignity of name. The casco is from 70 | to 90 feet in length, has a beam of 10 to
 l2 feet and draws from 21h to feet of water when loaded It is built of light, tough wood grown in the province of
 Bataan, greatly resembles teak, and it
 will last for centuries on land or in
 water. The casuto, the child of the
 casco, is from 20 to 60 feet in length and
 has proportionate beam.
 Casco and casquitos are usually pro-
 pelled by a bamboo pole eighteen or
 twenty feet in length, in the hands of
 husky Filipino river men, The poles are spiked and padded, so that the
 crew may place them against their shoulders and give force to their pushes as they move up or down stream and out and into the bay. Running boards of bamboo are attached to each side of the casco, touching the water and upon these the crew prod their craft whither they will aided, of course, by rudder.
 The crew of a casco numbers from five to ten men, and their families live, as hitherto mentioned. for and aft The casco man is cradled in a casco and is the water rat of the Philippines.
 Food is cooked in earthen pots fed from the flames of fagots, plates are the leaves of the palm, fingers, forks, and teeth, knives. Rice, fish, oysters, clans and shrimps are the staff of life of the casco family. The bow and stern of the craft provide the home and it's center the place for the cargo The pay of the crew is one peso a day and that of the patron one peso media. Rentals run from fifteen to forty pesos | per day. Less than year ago full ton- mage cascos brought 100 pesos per day, while under Spanish rule the maximum prce was thirteen pesos. The rental transitions of the casco have been quite marked, yet it furnishes the water-lov- ing Filipino cradle for his babies. a means of revenue and a place to die When the hour for slumber comes the bow and stern are cleared, the floor is spread with plain mats and they all 1 lie down in a heterogeneous mass, a dozen or more together, something like in a box. The casco crew are certainly a primitive people, and they live in primitive style.
 The casco made a number of Ameri- cans rich during the last three years men who came to Manila as soldiers of fortune in '9S and early in '99-men who had not dollar in the world above the necessity of living. They took the sit uation In, saw at a glance that means must be provided for unloading and landing cargoes and soldiery and the vast stores of everything necessary to !: sustain life during a period of war. The oasco was seized upon cornered at a very low wage. and in a trice rentals shot up like a meteor and the govern nent in it's emergency had to pay the price. There was nothing else to do. Soldiers and civilians had to be fed, lrms and ammunition had to be SUD- piled the men in the field and, in con- sequence, the carpetbagger won point md the snake-like casco was his me- lium
 The casco has long been the home of f | class of ladrone clement q retreat or thugs and thieves and robbers It S to them what the great wharves of America and European ports are to the water rats and lawless elements there md it has always been regarded as a afe place to secrete plunder. The man f the Pasig could hide it forever in the Q vent of hot chase by officers of the t aw and no one knows how to do it so Il yell as the criminal who lives his life n the rlver-a habitue of the casco, itherto an important factor in local but soon to be replaced by nodern lighters,-From the Manila 'ritic.
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