Chapter XXIII.
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.[1]
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.
[1] For example, this year (1912) more people “came in” to meet Mr. Worcester then ever before. In Bontok every valley of the sub-province was represented, and there was a time when representatives of all the villages danced together on the plaza, an event of importance in the history of these people as marking the passing of old feuds and a determination to live at piece with one another. A moving picture machine was taken along in a four-wheeled wagon (showing incidentally that the main trails have become roads since 1910), and created both enthusiasm and alarm: enthusiasm when some familiar scene with known living persons was thrown upon the screen, and alarm when a railway train, for example, was shown advancing upon the spectators, causing many of them to flee for safety to the neighboring hills and woods.