An hour before noon
Though it was not yet nine o'clock , they sought the shaded side of the street with the habit which becomes instinctive near the equator , and welcomed the coolness of Bronner 's low house . The cook and the houseboy looked after him with the unobtrusive perfection of service found only in the East . A good breakfast cheered a stomach outraged by the greasy mess perpetrated upon native boats in the name of Spanish cookery , and a cool shower bath eliminated the stench of stale copra which had clung to his nostrils if not to his clothing . An hour before noon he left the house and strolled about the scorching town , regardless of where he went so long as he found shaded walks on which to tread . * * * * * Most Philippine towns are coast towns , and most coast towns are flat and uninteresting unless you are interested in their peoples -- and you are not interested in them unless they are of a different tribe than you have known previously . Take a couple of dusty -- or muddy -- streets , unroll them along some freshwater stream just above a line of palmed beach : place an immense , deserted-looking softstone church in an unkept square flanked with a few straggled acacias and a big convent in which a native priest lives in weary and squalid detachment from a world he knows nothing about : line the two streets with an assortment of rusty bamboo and mixed-material houses which impress one as never having been built but as always having stood there : sprinkle a few naked , pot-bellied , brown children staring at each other in pathetic , Malay ignorance of the manner and spirit of play : set a few brown manikins in the open windows -- women who let life fly by in dull wonder of what it is all about : add a few carabaos lying in neck-deep content in mudwallows , and a score of emaciated curs which snarl at each other in habitual , gnawing hunger and which greet their masters with terrified whines : spread over it all a pall of still moist heat and a sky arched by a molten sun . Contrive all this , then imbue every object -- human and creature , animate and inanimate , -- with an air of hopelessness , of the futility of effort , and you will have a typical Malay town as the Americans found them .