Filipinos eat rice three times a day, and no meal is really complete without it. They like it boiled very dry, and a large plate of it is always placed beside one's regular plate to be eaten with the meal, much as we eat bread. It is interesting to know that so much rice is eaten in the Philippine Islands that large quantities must be shipped in from China in addition to what is raised by the Filipinos themselves.
The most commonly raised rice is almost pure white, but there is one variety grown in certain parts of the Philippines whose grains are red and whose flavor is different from the white variety.
Not all the rice grown in the Philippine Islands needs the extensive irrigation that was described earlier in the chapter; there is a kind of rice that grows with only a moderate amount of moisture. It is produced on the steep mountain slopes where irrigation would be impossible or extremely difficult.
"Manila hemp," as it is so commonly called, is not really hemp at all, but a plant closely related to the banana and so strongly resembling it that some persons are unable to tell the difference. The correct name for this is abaca (ä'-bä-cä), and it is probably the most important crop produced in the Philippine Islands. Nowhere else in the world does it grow so well, and in southern Luzon where Francisco lived, the soil is especially well suited for its cultivation.
Francisco's father had a good many acres devoted to it, and his crop yielded him a good income. A field is planted by setting out, at regular intervals, shoots from old plants. Three years are required for these shoots to grow to maturity, and a planter must therefore be willing and able to wait a long time before he can harvest his crop. An abaca plant grows to a height of ten feet or more, bearing long fanlike leaves that wave gracefully in the breeze and shut out the sun's rays so completely that noontime in an abaca field is like twilight. The stem consists of crisp, juicy, green leaves rolled tightly together around a central stalk. These stems are often eight or ten inches in diameter, and it is from the tightly rolled inner leaves that the fiber which constitutes the crop is secured.
When the proper time comes, the men go out into the field with their sharp bolos (bo'-los), heavy knives much like corn knives, and cut off the abaca plants close to the ground. They tear away the leaves and the green outer part of the stem, which they leave on the ground for fertilizer. The white inner part comes from the plant in long strips and is drawn through a machine that presses out the water and pulp, leaving only the fiber, in long white strands. These are hung up in the sunshine to dry and bleach, after which they are tied into bundles and hauled in carabao carts to market. New shoots grow out from the old stalk so that a plantation constantly renews itself.