Berlin
4 February 1894
DR. JOSE RIZAL
Dapitan, Mindanao Island
Philippines
MY DEAR COLLEAGUE,
It is only today that I have learned about your address and I hasten to write you to request you to please give me your opinion on an ethnographic object from Mindanao which seems to be very rare in Europe.
I hope above all that you are well and that you have not forgotten your friends in Germany. My wife and I are well and so also is Dr. Baesler who has just returned from his second grand tour around the world. Both send you a thousand greetings.
Now to the point: I have just bought for our museum a small collection coming from the Caroline Islands, the Philippines, and Palau. Among the objects are found two bamboo pieces richly decorated, and one of which has a very cautious design.
I send you a photograph of it under separate cover.
According to the label, it was a bamboo case of a Moro chief of Mindanao, used for sending written messages.
The two pieces are enclosed in each other, inserting B in A (near D), in the same position as you see in the photograph; it penetrates until C, so that the design E-F is entirely covered by the bamboo A.
The other end of B does not go into A; B is open at the top. If one supposes that B would be covered in some way to hold the letter, of what use is A?
Is the design E-F simply a decoration or does it, in a certain sense, represent something?
Do they still use today these bamboo cases? In short, will you be so kind to tell me all that you know and all that you can find out about these instruments?
There is nothing like them in any museum in Europe. I shall be very much obliged to you, and with a handshake, I pray you to believe me
Your very devoted,
[PROF. DR.] W. JOSET
Please write me in Spanish.
04-808 [Misc.]