Return to civilization.--Reception at Bambang.--Aglipayanos
and Protestants.
The return to the main road from Campote was a great improvement over
the advance. The sun had partly dried the trail, and his vertical rays
enabled us to see about us a little, and realize what a tremendous
phenomenon tropical vegetation can be. Some Philippine trees, for
example, the _narra_, throw out buttresses. One we saw on this trail
must have measured twenty feet across on the ground, from vertex to
vertex of diametrically opposite buttresses, the bole itself not being
over two and one-half feet in diameter, and the buttresses starting
about fifteen feet above the ground. But the greatest difference
to me personally was in my mount, Connor having lent me his pony,
as admirable as mine of the day before had been wretched. In spite
of the fact that Connor had to stay behind at Campote and could catch
us up later, this attention on his part was one of the most generous
things that ever happened to me, for certainly the pony he got from
me was the most irritating piece of horseflesh imaginable. I am glad
publicly to give him my warmest thanks again! Mr. Worcester was well
mounted, too; he rode this day at two hundred and thirty-five pounds,
and his kit must have weighed some thirty more, yet his little beast
carried him soundly to Bambang, our destination, about seventeen
miles, twelve of them at a "square, unequivocal" trot, by no means
an unusual example of the strength and endurance of some of these
native ponies. In what seemed a very short time (but the trail was
comparatively dry) we broke out of the forest, and again had our
lovely valley below and in front of us. At the top we saw some giant
fly-catchers, a bird of so powerful and erratic a flight that no
one has so far, according to Mr. Worcester, succeeded in killing one
of them. It may be mentioned here that we saw very few birds or any
other animals on our journey. Shortly after beginning the descent,
some of the party, impatient of the zig-zags, decided to go straight
down, the temptation being a cool green stream at the foot of the
mountain; half an hour afterward, on turning a point, we could see
them disporting themselves in the waters, and at that distance looking
very much like Diana and her nymphs in the usual pictures.
Back in the main road, we stopped to rest at a point covered with
a sensitive plant so delicate that, on stepping on it anywhere, the
nervous thrill, if that is what it is, would run three or four feet
or more in all directions before dying down. From this point we turned
north, our way taking us through a broad open valley, past rice-fields
and between clumps of flowering guava bushes. As we neared Bambang,
where we were to spend the night, we were as before met by the local
notabilities on horseback; and breasting a rise, we saw our road down
in the plain in which this town lies, lined on both sides by all the
school-children of the place, dressed in their very best clothes, some
of them American fashion with shoes and stockings and looking mighty
uncomfortable in consequence. Nearly everyone had a flag. Riding into
the town, we found the _plaza_ crowded with men and women, dressed
mostly in white, and what with the flags, the church-bells clanging
with all their might, the crowd, and the children trooping in, our
cavalcade made a triumphant entrance.
We dismounted at the _presidente's_, where muscatel and cocoanut milk
were given us. A little muscatel goes a long way, but this is not true
of the milk when one's tongue is hanging out from riding in the sun,
and there are only two or three cocoanuts. Filipinos apparently are
not fond of this drink, and we nearly always had to send out and
get more. No sooner were we in the house than addresses began, one
of these being in Ilokano. The native language of Bambang, however,
is the Isanay, spoken elsewhere only at Aritao and Dúpax, a dying
tongue, doomed to early extinction.
Bambang, like nearly all the other Nueva Vizcaya towns we had seen
or were to see, shows signs of decadence. It has a good church and
_convento_, a great _plaza_, and is surrounded by a fertile country,
but something is missing. After dinner, I went over and called on
the padre, one of the Belgians, whom we had met the day before. He
informed me that Bambang had many Protestants, which he explained by
the sharp rivalry between the _Aglipayanos_, or members of the "native"
church, headed by the secessionist Aglipay, and the Catholics. To
avoid the issues raised by this rivalry, many natives would appear
to have abandoned the errors of Rome (or of _Aglipayanismo_, as the
case may be) for those of the Reformation.
When I got back to the _presidente's_, everybody had turned in, and the
house was dark. However, I found a bed not occupied by anyone else, but
of my bedding there was not a sign. So I stretched out on the _petate_
[19] of my bed, only to wake up later shivering with cold, which I
tried to remedy by fishing around for cover in a pile of straw mats,
from which I extracted what turned out in the morning to be a _jusi_
table-cloth, through which you could have shot straws. It is altogether
a mistake to imagine that one can not be cold in the tropics.