A place most sweet with fragrant mint-beds,
Ha! Ha! ‘Way high up in the hills of Bontoc!
We didn’t do a thing but make a julep,
Heigh ho! Without the cracked ice!
We didn’t do a thing but make a julep,
Ha! Ha! With the mint we found in the hills of Bontoc!
It was a free-for-all composition contest; anybody was likely to produce a new verse, or even a whole new song with a different tune, at any moment, and we shortened many a long mile with such nonsense.
At Don José’s we not only sang all our songs for the benefit of our host, but one of our number produced a harmonica, on which he played very well indeed, and we had an impromptu baile. Then we “dropped the handkerchief,” “followed the leader,” gave some original renderings of German Grand Opera, played Puss-in-the-corner, and finished the evening with our feet on a fender before a great, open fire, recounting, with much appreciated embellishments, our interesting experiences.
We knew we should not find any place as delightful as Don José’s again—not even in Manila, because Manila would be hot—so it was with great reluctance that we obeyed orders to be ready to leave the next morning at six. This meant getting out of our comfortable, civilised beds at five o’clock, while the stars would still be out, and when the ashes of our evening’s fire would be cold and grey on the hearth. It was a cheerless thought, but we had to “get to Loo” said General Bell.
It was raining—of course—and there was not much scenery visible except when the clouds would float upward, now and then, like veils lifted off grand panoramas, but by this time we had ceased to consider the weather. When we got to Loo we found the “town” consisted of just two empty log huts, one with a plaited reed floor, the other with no floor at all, and neither of them with any sort of partition. We stretched a rope across the middle of the better one, hung Igorrote blankets on it by way of a screen, and prepared to make ourselves comfortable on the, fortunately flexible, floor; ladies on one side, gentlemen on the other. But along late in the afternoon a pack train of mules and Igorrotes and orderlies arrived from the south bringing us the astonishing news that the Commissioners were only a few miles behind and expected to camp that night at Loo!
The rain had settled down into a dreary, soaking patter; it was cold; we were all wet; there was no place for a fire; and, altogether, we were fairly uncomfortable.
The Commissioners, Mr. Worcester and Mr. Moses, with their private secretaries and a doctor—five in all—came along about an hour behind their pack train. They straggled in one by one, very grumpy, and we decided right away that they had not been taught, as we had been, to make the best of everything and to cultivate sociability on the trail. They had had a much more difficult day’s riding than we because the trail up is much harder than the trail down, but we were pretty certain, on the whole, that we were much the better managed party.
With more Igorrote blankets we arranged another partition in the hut to make room for them, then we gave them a good hot dinner—cooked in the tent which had been put up for kitchen purposes—and immediately a social thaw set in. We got all the news from Manila that we were so anxious for, and all the latest gossip. The news was disquieting. A cablegram had come announcing that the Supreme Court had decided there should be no duties in Puerto Rico against United States imports, and instructing the Commission to suspend all legislation in the Philippine Islands until further notice. This might mean anything, but whatever else it meant it certainly meant renewed uncertainty and the possibility that no change in the government would be made until after Congress met.
The politics of the situation were extremely complicated and seemed to revolve around a question which, because of a rather pugnacious manner of expressing it, had become a popular clamour. The question was: “Does the Constitution follow the Flag?” In other words, really, could duties be collected on imports from one American port to another? In any case, the question in respect to us was one for Congress to answer and it seemed to me we were facing another long period of uneasiness and delay.
We knew the entire Commission had expected to make a trip in June for the purpose of organising the Christian provinces in the far north beyond the Mountain Province, but they were halted by the order to suspend definite activities, and Commissioners Worcester and Moses had taken advantage of the “breathing spell” to run up into the mountains and inspect proposed routes for roads and railways. That is how we happened to encounter them at Loo. We shared their opinion that one of the greatest things that could be done for the country was to make the mountains of central Luzon, with their glorious climate, easily accessible. The trails as we found them were mere paths worn by the feet of Igorrotes and, besides being very narrow, were at such grades as to make them in many places all but impassable. The party, highly representative of American authority in the Islands, as it was, sat around on the bamboo floor, huddled up in blankets, and talked long into the night about hopes and fears and governmental problems of great difficulty and importance.
We left Loo at six o’clock in the morning and after eight straight hours of the hardest work we had yet been called upon to do, we arrived at Cabayan. According to my own diary: “I was completely tired. The greater part of the way we rode through beautiful pine forests, but up and down hills as steep as the side of a house;
