Chapter XX.
We push on north.—Banana skirts.—Albino child.—Pine uplands.— Glorious view.
Our two days’ stay had greatly refreshed our horses and ponies, and they needed it, not only because of the work already done, but because of the effort we were going to ask of them during the next forty-eight hours, when the sum total of our ascents was to be 18,000 feet, and of descents the same, and the distance to be travelled seventy miles.
We continued our journey on the 10th, leaving Van Schaick behind, and also Cootes, both of whom had been taken ill, not seriously, but enough to make it safer to fall out than to go on. On this day, the relations between neighboring rancherías being uncertain, we changed cargadoros at the outskirts of each village we came to. We could undoubtedly have taken the same set of men through, but it was thought best not to try it. At the same time, the mere fact of our riding through unmolested, and still more the fact that Gallman was taking a party of Ifugaos with him to show them the country, is proof positive that peace is making its way in the North, just as it has already done farther south.
Our first day the going was very hilly, and very hot; we dismounted frequently so as to spare our cattle over the steepest ups and downs. As before, not only was the scenery that unfolded itself, as we rose from the valley of the Río Chico, of great beauty, but it increased in beauty the farther north we travelled. And I can not but regret again my inability to give some idea, however faint, of these mountains and valleys and rivers, especially of those that paraded themselves before us on the second day’s ride.
About four hours out (the hour, and not the mile, being the unit of the highlands), as we were nearing the top of a ridge, a party of young women and girls came out of the wood on our left, each with a banana-leaf skirt on, no less and no more. They had simply stripped off one side of the leaf, and, after splitting the other into ribbons, had wrapped the stem about their waists, and there they were, each with a sufficient skirt. One of them had apparently never seen a horse before, and showed so much interest that Pack gallantly offered to let her mount his and take a ride. When the remainder of her party understood from her motions that she was actually going to bestride that monster, they set up a chorus of ear-piercing shrieks and screams and laid hold on their insane sister, and besought her with lamentations not to risk her life. During the struggle, Mr. Worcester came up and produced a diversion by offering red cloth, and, moving to the top of the ridge for the distribution, we found there some twenty-five or thirty more damsels, of all ages from grandmother to mere tot, and all banana-skirted. Mr. Worcester said that in all his experience he had never seen the like before. Heiser, in the meantime, had got out his camera and tried to form a group with the children in front and the older ones back. But when they realized that the effect of this would be to conceal all but the heads and shoulders of those in rear, the group broke up almost automatically, giving way to a line with arms linked, which no amount of effort on anyone’s part succeeded in breaking. Each one was resolved to be in the picture at full length! In the crowd, looking on, was a man carrying an albino, a child two or three years of age, with absolutely fair white skin and yellow hair. It was sound asleep, and so I did not see its eyes, but otherwise it was a perfect albino; even here at home and as a normal child it would have been regarded as unusually fair. The pack had now got up, and Mr. Worcester began his issue. At his feet stood a little lassie, whom he overlooked, and whose countenance, as she saw the red cloth diminishing and likewise her chances, displayed the most vivid play of emotion. Finally, when the last yard of the stuff had been given out and she had got none of it, two large tears formed and ran down her cheeks. Poor little thing, but ten minutes ago she had braved it with the best of them, but her skirt had now suddenly gone out of style! The eternal feminine! I neither saw nor heard any other child cry during the whole trip. As we rode off, our banana-grove accompanied us part way, singing, and, disappearing behind a hillock on our left,
“Unrobed and unabashed in Arcady,”
shifted from Nature’s weave to man’s.
From this point to the stream at its foot, the ridge on which we found ourselves was completely bare of trees, and presented a different appearance from any other so far seen or to be seen, tremendous rounded masses. One of these had been split through the middle by a recent earthquake: the right half, as we looked at it, dropping down eight or ten feet below the other, a splendid example of convulsive power. Across the stream and nearly at the top of the climb that followed we halted for chow and sleep under some tall pines. Two hours later we were off again, through a country from which all visible suggestion of the tropics had disappeared. We were passing through red soil uplands, grass and pines, with a clear view in all directions.
Passing on, we now faced one of the most disagreeable ascents of the whole trip: a bare, mountainous hill facing south, so steep that we had to switch-back it to the top, with the sun blazing down on our backs, the hour being three of the afternoon, and not a breath of wind going. It was too steep to ride, and our water-bottles were empty. When we got to the top, Gallman and I, we could both have exclaimed with Villon,
“Je crache blanc comme coton.”
What wonder, then, that on finding a clear, cold spring at hand, Gallman should have drunk his fill of the cool water, and that he should have persuaded me, against my better judgment, to take a swallow of it, just one swallow, no more? Who would have believed that a mere taste of such innocent-looking, refreshing water could have had such dire consequences? For it made me ill for six weeks, at times all but disabling me. However, as water, it was irreproachable; and, anyway, as though to compensate the tiresome climb just finished, we had before us now one of the most glorious views imaginable. From far to the south—indeed, from the blue mountains bounding the view miles away, the silver ribbon of the Río Chico unrolled itself in a straight line between green-sloped mountains, rising from its very banks and towering into the clouds. At our feet, but far below, the river turned square to the east in a boiling rapid between gigantic walls of rock, the mountains here yielding to its sweep in a broadening valley only to press on it beyond and thrust it back on its way northward. It was all splendid and simple; if you please, nothing but a stream filling the intersecting slopes of a wedge-shaped valley and turning off because it had to. But the serenity of the whole composition: gray rocks, shining waters, green slopes; white mists, enveloping the crests, smiling in the afternoon sun! Jaded as were our faculties of admiration by the many exquisite scenes we had already passed through, this one held us. We had to leave it, though, making our halt later for the night at a rest-house in a pine wood, near a good stream.