As far as the eye could see, there were mountains. Steep ridges and deep clefts made a picturesque jumble of the landscape. Beyond, over the ridge, was the Trinidad Valley, a farm garden area where the American colony of the Philippines got most of its temperate zone vegetables and fruit. On the other side of town was the Golden Bowl of Benguet, where fabulous gold mines were worked by Igorot miners clad only in breechcloths and hard-rock helmets.
Baguio itself was a modern city in most respects. But the population—a strange mixture of Christian Filipinos and primitive, pagan Igorots—was unusual. The Filipinos wore typical Western dress, and actually dressed pretty warmly. The Igorot men wore the breechcloth, perhaps with a shirt or sweater, perhaps with nothing at all. Most of the men had tiny pillbox caps of woven straw on the backs of their heads. The little round boxes were decorated with such oddments as boar's tusks and coke bottle caps. The Igorot women wore a tight-fitting skirt of colorful wool, usually patterned in red or yellow. They wore blouses of embroidered white cotton, or jackets of colored wool. Their skirts had balls of yarn on the hips. The women wore no hats. Both sexes were usually barefoot.
There were contrasts. For example, next to a great Christian cathedral was the Igorot dog market. The Igorots were eaters of dog meat.
But it was not the Igorots or the mountains that had made Baguio famous and turned it into the summer capital of the Philippines—it was the climate. While Manila burned in the tropical sun, Baguio, thousands of feet higher, had cool, fall-like weather. There was hardly a night during the year when blankets were not comfortable. Even the foliage was temperate rather than tropical. Baguio had pine trees, a welcome sight to the Spindrift trio.
There was a tall, fragrant pine just outside the window of the room shared by Rick and Scotty. When the boys returned to their rooms to wash up for an early dinner, Rick leaned out and broke off a pine cone. Then, by reaching only a bit further, he grabbed a cluster of purple-red blossoms from a bougainvillea vine that had climbed the tree to their second-floor height.
In the comfortable dining room, they chose a table in front of a roaring fireplace, glad of the warmth. It was chilly in Baguio. While they waited to be served, Rick mentioned the pine tree to Tony and commented that it was odd that a tree should be left so close to a building.
"The forest practices of the Igorots and Ifugaos could well be copied by us," Tony told the boys. "Anyone who cuts down a tree for anything other than genuine use is severely punished. In the old days the punishment might have been loss of his head. That's how much respect they have for their water supply, which is dependent directly on their forests."
"You talk as though these were civilized people," Scotty commented.
Tony grinned. "Depends on what you call civilization. But they have a very highly developed and complex culture. They have a history, too, which they know better than we know ours. For instance, an Ifugao can recite his ancestry as far back as twenty-five generations. Can you?"
"Not sure I'd want to," Scotty retorted. "Might be a few horse thieves along the way. Seriously, I see what you mean."