[1] De La Gironière, in his “Aventures d’un Gentilhomme Breton aux Iles Philippines,” describes (Chapter V.) a feast, at which he had, while on a visit to the Tinguianes, to drink human brains mixed with basi. Whatever De La Gironière says must be received with considerable caution; but Pickering, a prosaic and matter-of-fact Britisher, speaking of the Formosan savages, says that “they mixed the brains of their enemies with wine.” (“Pioneering in Formosa,” p. 153).
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]