Note 19 — Chapter VII · AGAIN IN THE PHILIPPINES

When he landed at San Francisco, April 28, 1888, his first experiences under the American flag were hardly calculated to swell his enthusiasm for the republic. It happened to be a time when a terror of epidemics was afoot, and he might have reminded himself from what he saw that sporadic hysteria is not the exclusive possession of the Spaniards nor of anybody else. What a whisper of insurrection meant to a Spanish government officer in Manila, a vision of a cholera-germ might signify to a health-officer in America. The health authorities of San Francisco were then busily quarantining everything that came into the port. To them the fact that Rizal’s steamer carried a clean bill of health meant nothing, nor that she had been properly inspected and cleared at Yokohama, nor that no disease had developed among her people on the way over. Who knew what horrent microbes might be lurking in her woodwork or snugging in the coal-hole? Therefore, authority decreed to hold her day after day in quarantine while the passengers chafed and fidgeted and the British among them complained to their consul and threatened an international scandal.19