Note 12 — Chapter XVIII · Governor Wright—1904

This Mr. Harvey need not be, to the western hemisphere reader, a mere nebulous antipodal entity, as the Hon. Angel Custodio Crisologo might. He is a very live American, a very high-toned gentleman, and an excellent lawyer, and was at last accounts still with the insular government of the Philippine Islands, though in a higher capacity (Solicitor General) than he was at the date of the events herein narrated. There was very little congenial society in Catbalogan when Mr. Harvey came there to help dispose of the criminal docket, and his advent was to me a very welcome oasis in a desert of “the solitude of my own originality”—or lack of originality. On September 19th I had wired Vice-Governor Ide that there were 172 prisoners in the jail awaiting trial and “many more coming.” Of course no justice of the peace would be trusted to pass on whether an alleged outlaw should or should not be held for trial. If he were secretly in sympathy with the discomfiture American authority in Samar was having, he might let the man go, no matter what the proof. Also he might seek to clear himself of all suspicion in each case by committing men against whom there was no proof, thus unnecessarily crowding an already fast filling provincial jail of limited dimensions, wherein beriberi12 was already making its dread appearance.