Settling a Head-hunting Feud
This picture shows Lieutenant-Governor Walter F. Hale, of Kalinga, persuading Kalinga head men of Mañgali and Lúbao to settle amicably a head-hunting feud of long standing.
My trip to Baguio promptly relieved a severe attack of acute intestinal trouble from which I had been suffering, and when Governor Taft fell ill the following year with a similar ailment, and his physicians recommended his return to the United States, I did my best to persuade him to try Baguio instead. He decided to do so.
Five rough cottages had meanwhile been constructed for the use of the commissioners, the lumber for them being sawed by hand on the ground. Boards had been nailed to frames as rapidly as they fell from the logs, and had shrunk to such an extent that a reasonably expert marksman might almost have thrown a cat by the tail through any one of the houses. At night they looked like the old-fashioned perforated tin lanterns, leaking light in a thousand places. These were the luxurious homes provided for the high officials of the government of which so much has been said!
We paid for them an annual rental amounting to ten per cent of their cost, which had of course been excessively high on account of the necessity of packing everything used in them, except the lumber, up the Naguilian trail.
However, we were in no frame of mind to be critical. We had put in three years of killing hard work, labouring seven days in the week, and keeping hours such as to arouse a feeling little short of horror among old British and other foreign residents. We were all completely exhausted, and Mr. Taft was ill. For my part, I would gladly have paid almost any sum for a tent under the pine trees and the privilege of occupying it for a few weeks.
On the trip up Mr. Taft had ridden a magnificent saddle horse which had been given to him by General Chaffee. At the time he left, Manila had been burning hot. When he was at last seated on the porch of the little house which was to be his home for weeks, with a cool breeze sighing through the needles of a spreading pine tree close at hand, his satisfaction knew no bounds. Already his magnificent constitution had begun to respond to the stimulation of the wonderful mountain air, and filled with enthusiasm he summoned a stenographer and dictated the following cablegram to the secretary of war:—
“April 15, 1903.
“Secwar,