The first day we forded a river—the same river—several times, and, finally, we had to cross it on a raft which was so small that it could carry only one thing, or one person at a time. My sister, Miss Bubo and I sat on the bank above the ford for more than two hours waiting for all our things to get across. While we waited many natives came along driving carabaos, and it was amusing to see the two-wheeled, awkward carts hustled onto the swaying raft—one thing after another falling into the river—while each poor old carabao was forced to swim, dragged along by his master who held fast to a string attached to a ring in the animal’s nose. If I had been able to speak the dialect I would have said: “Your friend the Carabao, being a water-buffalo, could probably swim the river much more easily without your assistance.” I have had to look on and suffer at many things in the Philippine Islands merely because I was unable to speak a dozen-odd different dialects. In the provinces Spanish was seldom of any use because the common tao knows little or nothing of it, and it is with the common tao that one wishes there to communicate.
On our first day’s journey we did thirty-seven miles in a jolting Army wagon, but the air was so invigorating, and we were having such a good time, that we were not exhausted. We didn’t even murmur when we were told to be ready to start at four the next morning.
This was at Candon and we were joined there by Major Stevens, which made our party complete. The next evening, at Concepción, we camped in a lovely, new nipa-thatched house which had been built by a man who was known generally as “Windy” Wilson, an Army captain. We were extremely thankful for the shelter, because it was raining as it can rain only in northern Luzon and we had every reason to believe that this would be the last house we would be permitted to occupy for many a day. We were striking straight into the mountains and our shelter-to-be was a small field tent slung on the cargo saddle of a commissary mule.
Captain Wilson’s house was quite spacious. It had two rooms; one small and one large one. The ladies slept in the smaller room on Army cots, while the four stalwart officers of our military escort stretched themselves out on blankets and slickers on the split bamboo floor of the larger room. The walls and partitions were of woven nipa palm leaves, known locally as suali, while the two windows were made of braided bamboo and were set in grooves so, when we wanted to open them, all we had to do was to give them a gentle shove. There were no “trappings of civilisation,” but we managed to be perfectly comfortable.
The next day, before the sun was very high, we found ourselves in the midst of mountain-tops, on a trail which rose in great upward sweeps around the densely wooded slopes, to an altitude of 5,600 feet. By this time we were all on horseback with eight Igorrote boys behind us carrying a sedan chair to be used in case of accident or a dangerous washout on the trail. I wish I could describe the magnificence of the scene which lay all about us when we reached that amazing summit. General Bell, who had been all through the Rocky Mountains, the Yellowstone, and the Yosemite Valley, said there was nothing that he had ever seen which could compare with it. And its grandeur is accentuated by vivid colouring. The Igorrotes have, for hundreds of years, been building extraordinary rice terraces and these have gradually climbed the mountains until, in some places, only the rugged crests are left uncultivated. The terraces are as symmetrical as honeycomb and are built in solid walls of finely laid masonry out of which grow ferns and tangled vines. The brilliant colour of the young rice fairly glows against the dark greens of pine trees, of spreading mangoes, and of tropic forest giants whose names I do not know. And wherever one looks there are peaks, jagged sunlit peaks which rise from sombre valleys upward into a strange light whose every ray seems to shine in its own individual hue. In the far distance we could see the ocean, with white breakers dashing against the cliffs; while in the valley below the Santa Cruz River, though actually foaming and dashing through its winding, rocky bed, seemed to us to be lying still, without motion of any kind, or sound.
In my diary, which I kept on that trip, I find that at each stopping place I have solemnly set down the observation that: “the scenery today was the finest we have yet found”; and when we reached Sagada I took the trouble to record for my own future reference that: “I shall not rest until Will has seen it.” He never has.
At Sagada we found ourselves quite far up in the Igorrote country, where Filipinos as a rule, do not go. We had come from Cervantes over a trail where the horses cautiously kept to the inside, and where we were told to let go of our inner stirrups so, in case a
