We leave the mountains.--Nanong.--Passage of the Chico.--The
Apayao.--Tabuk.--The party breaks up.--Desolate plain.--The
Cagayán Valley.--Enrile.
The morning of Friday, May 13th, broke clear after a night of hard
rain. We set off before sunrise, our way now taking us eastward for
the last stage of the mountain journey proper. The whole earth this
morning seemed to be a-drip: every stream was rushing, and banks of
cloud, fog, and mist crowned the heights and filled the valleys. To
describe even approximately our course as we descended from the great
terrace of Lubuagan is well-nigh impossible; but, as we came down,
scene after scene of the greatest beauty offered itself to our
admiration. The landscape softened too; we were leaving the high
mountain land behind us, not too suddenly, however; for example,
at one point a huge valley lay below us, bounded on the other side
by a tremendous vertical wall of rock, over which fell a powerful
stream. I estimated the fall at the time as at least four hundred feet.
In due course we came to an affluent of our old friend the Chico, and
had to ford. The stream was up, but we got over without mishap. Fording
is always a delicate operation in these, mountains after a hard rain,
since no one can ever tell what the nature of the footing will be,
because of the boulders swept down. On this occasion Evans's pony
stopped short in mid-stream, refusing either to move on or back. There
was nothing for it but dismount and investigate, Evans discovering
that his pony had put one foot down between two large stones close
together and so was simply caught fast. The country had now become
decidedly more open; the trail for long stretches was almost a road. As
a matter of fact, we were on the old main line of communication from
the highlands to the Cagayan Valley. We made our first halt at Nanong,
where everybody brought in gifts of chickens, eggs, and _camotes_
and received beads, red cloth, pins and needles in return. What made
a particular impression here was the number of children brought in,
all wide-eyed, sloe-eyed, and some of them extremely pretty. The
remainder of the day we spent going down the left bank of the Chico,
encountered again at Nanong. Shortly after leaving this point two
large monkeys, brown with white breasts, appeared on the edge of
the trail, apparently protesting with the utmost indignation against
our presence in those parts. Harris remarked that once passing this
point alone he had run into eighteen of them, and that for a time he
thought they were going to dispute his passage. These were the only
animals we saw on the whole trip, not counting a few birds. The valley
opened hereabouts, and on the other bank, the right, a sharp-edged
terrace came into view, fully three hundred feet above the river and
continuing for miles as far as the eye could see. This must be an
unusually good example of river terrace. On our side the trail was cut
out of the cliff, solid rock, with a straight drop to the river below,
a stretch of two of the hottest miles conceivable, what with the full
blaze of the sun and the heat radiated and reflected from the face
of the cliff. I was so weak from the water I had drunk the other day
that I dismounted and walked the whole way, so that, if knocked out
by the heat, I should at least not fall off my pony; a tumble on the
wrong side would have brought the journey to a very sudden end. But,
fortunately, nothing happened, and we at last got down to the level
of the river again, only to find it half in flood and fording out of
the question. We were on the upstream side of a huge dome of rock,
rising from the river itself, the only way around which was to
cross twice. The rest of the party coming up with the _cargadores_,
we had to wait until bamboo rafts could be built, the raft really
being nothing but a flat bundle lashed together with _bejuco_. In
this case our rafts were so small that under the weight of only one
man and his kit they immediately became submarines, so that one got
partially wet crossing. Our horses and ponies were swum over.
We were six hours making the two passages; still we were in luck,
for had the stream been really up, we should simply have had to camp
on its bank and wait for the waters to fall, a fate that sometimes
overtakes the traveller in a country where an innocent stream may
become a raging torrent almost while one is looking at it.
We slept that night in a rest-house just across the river from Tabuk,
and next morning the party divided, Mr. Worcester, Dr. Strong,
Governor Pack, and Lieutenant-Governor Villamor to continue the
mountain trip into Apayao, while the remainder of us, having been
invited to accompany Mr. Worcester only as far as Tabuk, went on to
the Cagayán River. It may be of interest, however, to say a few words
here about the Apayao country, my authority being the "Seventh Annual
Report of the Secretary of the Interior to the Philippine Commission"
for the fiscal year 1907-1908.
This country was first visited by Mr. Worcester in 1906. The Spanish
Government never having succeeded in gaining a foothold in it. "During
the insurrection Lieutenant Gilmore, of the United States Navy, and
his fellow-captives were taken into the southern part of it and there
abandoned." "So far as is known, no white man had ever penetrated
the southern and central portions of Apayao until" Mr. Worcester,
suitably accompanied and escorted, crossed the Cordillera, in 1906,
from North Ilokos. A later expedition, commanded by a Constabulary
officer, was attacked, not necessarily from any hostility to it
as such, but because it was accompanied by natives hostile to a
_ranchería_ (Guenned) approached on the way. A punitive expedition,
led by the same officer, afterward met with some success, but American
popularity suffered in consequence. The Apayao country is the only
sub-province under a native Governor, and its Governor, Señor Blas
Villamor, is the only Filipino that has ever shown any interest in
or sympathy for the highlanders. His task has been a difficult one;
for example, his only line of communication, the Abulug River, runs
through a territory inhabited by Negritos, who had been so abused
by the Christian natives on the one hand, and whose heads had been
so diligently sought by the wild Tinguians of the mountains, on the
other, that they had acquired the habit of greeting strangers with
poisoned arrows. His mountain region itself was inhabited by inveterate
head-hunters, most of whom had never even seen a white man. Conditions
are improving, however; the raids against the Christian and Negrito
inhabitants of the lowlands of Cagayán have been completely checked,
and Mr. Worcester hopes that head-hunting will diminish. It still
exists. Strong told me, on his return to Manila, that, looking into
a head-basket after leaving Tabuk, he found in it fresh fragments
of a human skull; for the Apayaos take the skull like the other
highlanders, but unlike them, break it into pieces. But with these
people head-hunting is a part of their religious belief, and so all
the harder to uproot. With the others it is a matter of vengeance,
or else even of sport. "On the other hand, the people of Apayao have
many good qualities. They are physically well-developed and are quite
cleanly. They erect beautifully constructed houses. Their women are
well clothed, and both men and women love handsome ornaments. They
are quite industrious agriculturists and are now begging for seed and
for domestic animals in order that they may emulate their Christian
neighbors in the raising of agricultural products."
Of course we should have been very glad to go on with Mr. Worcester
into the Apayao country if he had asked us; but it is practically
trailless as yet, and for a party as large as ours would have been,
questions of supply and transportation would have been difficult, to
say nothing of the impolicy of taking a large number into the country
at all. And so, on Saturday morning, May 14th, we shook hands with
Mr. Worcester and his companions. His progress so far had been an
unqualified success, unmarred by a single adverse incident, for the
deplorable loss of life at Kiangan could in no wise be attributed
to our presence or to the occasion. What the results of the visit
of 1910 will be, only time can tell; but experience shows that every
year marks an advance in the spread of friendly relations, not only
between the Government and the people, but between the subdivisions
of the people itself. [41]
The Chico being still up when we reached it, we crossed again on
submarines, climbed the bank, and found ourselves in Tabuk (or Talbok),
the most pestilential hole in the Archipelago. Nothing is left of it
now but a ruinous church and one or two houses. The first mass was said
here or hereabouts in 1689, by the Dominicans, who kept up the mission
until the monks all died of fever. Did an occasional officer in the old
days prove objectionable to the authorities in Manila, he got an order
to proceed to Tabuk for station; it was almost certain that he would
never return. The point is of unquestionable importance, commanding,
as it does, the main outlet, of the Kalinga country to the plains of
the Cagayán Valley; and so our own Government undertook to garrison
it with Constabulary as a check on raids. The garrison remained long
enough to be carried out on stretchers, and was removed to Lu-bagan,
where the check is just as complete and personal control possible.
We had a long and hard day before us, but we did not know it when we
set out from Tabuk at about seven in the morning. Gallman, Harris,
and I kept together; our first business was to cross a vast, roughly
circular plain fifteen miles in diameter, and densely overgrown with a
rough, reedy grass two feet and more high. A foot-path ran across the
plain, visible for only a very short distance ahead as long as one was
in it, but imperceptible twenty yards to the right or left. To lose
this path would have been a serious matter, as it would have been a
heart-breaking thing to force one's way through the undisturbed grass.
It would be hard to imagine anything else more wearisome than that
fifteen-mile stretch. The sun was riding high in the heavens, "shining
on both sides of the hill"; not a breath of wind was stirring nor
was there, barring a rare bird or two, a sign of life save the
thousands of flies which, as our ponies pushed aside the grass
overhanging the path, rose in clouds only to settle on our faces,
hands, necks, backs, everywhere. We began by brushing them off,
but it was of no use, and so we rode with our faces turned to a dim
haze of low mountains bounding the plain on the east, and themselves
dominated by still another range, the Sierra Madre, so distant as
to look like a bank of immovable blue cloud. For miles our plodding
seemed to bring them no nearer. If we could only get out of that sea
of olive-gray grass, on which the heavy, stifling air seemed to press,
and reach those nearer mountains! Twice the path led us into sinks or
depressions fully ninety or one hundred feet below the level of the
plain; why these could not have been avoided when the path was first
struck out is hard to imagine, unless it was to get to water. For
one of these sinks boasted of a clear, bold stream with all of its
course underground save the part in the depression. In both were
full-grown trees and grateful shade. Had we not been pressed to get
through, it would have been interesting to explore these huge sinks;
but we passed on, the flies, which had abandoned us on our descent,
rejoining us when we climbed out on the other side. In time we reached
our mountains, arid, bare, eroded, wind-bitten, and made our way
slowly and painfully up and through the pass, our trail hereabouts
being nothing but a trench so deep and narrow that part of the way we
could not keep our feet in the stirrups. As we neared the crest of
the range the pass disappeared, and for the last half-mile or so we
attacked the ridge directly. When we got to the top, we found a gallant
breeze blowing, and, spreading out before us, the vast plains of the
Cagayán Valley. Far over in the east, and apparently no nearer than
ever, rose the blue, cloud-like mountains of the Sierra Madre, now
showing like a wall, which indeed they are, and one which no man has
so far succeeded in scaling. But not a sign of life, of man or beast,
caught our eye. And yet this valley is an empire in itself; its axial
stream, the Rio Grande de Cagayán, or Ibanag, the "Philippine Tagus"
of the ancient chronicles, the longest river of the Archipelago, by
overflowing its banks every year, renews the fertility of the soil
wherever its waters can reach. We stood here on the ridge a long time,
resting and looking. Below us green ribbons, following the undulations
of the plain, marked the trail of various water-courses; but, apart
from this evidence of Nature's living forces, somehow or other the
entire landscape was silent and desolate. We now began the descent,
leading our ponies, for it was too steep to ride, and at last came to
a stream where we found shade and grass, and, better yet, the advance
guard of the party with food and drink ready. Our next stage was over
rolling country, covered with fine short grass; once over this, the
ground broke in our front, and we made the descent, finally coming
out on the lowest floor of the valley at Enrile, two or three miles
from the river. Night was falling as we made our way through its
grass-grown streets, finding the air heavy, the people dull-looking,
and everything commonplace: we had already begun to miss our mountains.