Recollections of full years

by Helen Herron Taft

The Commissioners, Mr. Worcester and Mr. Moses, with their private secretaries and a doctor—five in all—came along about an hour behind their pack train. They straggled in one by one, very grumpy, and we decided right away that they had not been taught, as we had been, to make the best of everything and to cultivate sociability on the trail. They had had a much more difficult day’s riding than we because the trail up is much harder than the trail down, but we were pretty certain, on the whole, that we were much the better managed party.

With more Igorrote blankets we arranged another partition in the hut to make room for them, then we gave them a good hot dinner—cooked in the tent which had been put up for kitchen purposes—and immediately a social thaw set in. We got all the news from Manila that we were so anxious for, and all the latest gossip. The news was disquieting. A cablegram had come announcing that the Supreme Court had decided there should be no duties in Porto Rico against United States imports, and instructing the Commission to suspend all legislation in the Philippine Islands until further notice. This might mean anything, but whatever else it meant it certainly meant renewed uncertainty and the possibility that no change in the government would be made until after Congress met.

The politics of the situation were extremely complicated and seemed to revolve around a question which, because of a rather pugnacious manner of expressing it, had become a popular clamour. The question was: “Does the Constitution follow the Flag?” In other words, really, could duties be collected on imports from one American port to another? In any case, the question in respect to us was one for Congress to answer and it seemed to me we were facing another long period of uneasiness and delay.

We knew the entire Commission had expected to make a trip in June for the purpose of organising the Christian provinces in the far north beyond the Mountain Province, but they were halted by the order to suspend definite activities, and Commissioners Worcester and Moses had taken advantage of the “breathing spell” to run up into the mountains and inspect proposed routes for roads and railways. That is how we happened to encounter them at Loo. We shared their opinion that one of the greatest things that could be done for the country was to make the mountains of central Luzon, with their glorious climate, easily accessible. The trails as we found them were mere paths worn by the feet of Igorrotes and, besides being very narrow, were at such grades as to make them in many places all but impassable. The party, highly representative of American authority in the Islands, as it was, sat around on the bamboo floor, huddled up in blankets, and talked long into the night about hopes and fears and governmental problems of great difficulty and importance.

We left Loo at six o’clock in the morning and after eight straight hours of the hardest work we had yet been called upon to do, we arrived at Cabayan. According to my own diary: “I was completely tired. The greater part of the way we rode through beautiful pine forests, but up and down hills as steep as the side of a house; across rivers, and up a waterfall.” This sounds like pretty heavy going, but my account of it written at the time was, I am sure, only slightly exaggerated. I remember distinctly that from Loo to Baguio, five full days, we walked a great part of the way; and not only did we walk, but we rendered necessary assistance to our horses which, giving out one by one, had to be dragged up the steep grades and “eased” down the opposite sides in a way that would have been highly ludicrous had we been engaged in anything but a very serious business. Only the steady old mules plodded along “without a word,” and found their own way in safety around the dangerous turns.

Bureau of Science, Manila.
THE BENGUET ROAD BEFORE AND AFTER COMPLETION. NOT THE MOST THRILLING CURVE ON THIS SPECTACULAR HIGHWAY

After leaving Bontoc we travelled down through Nueva Viscaya and into Benguet, the southermost division of the Mountain province. At Cabayan we had for camping quarters a large presidencia and schoolhouse combined, while a tent was put up and rudely equipped for bathing purposes. This was luxury indeed, and we began to think that we had left all hardship behind us; but the next night, after a seven hours’ “hike” over a terrible trail, we found shelter in a miserable hut with only one room which we all had to occupy, with Igorrote blankets for partitions.

The Igorrotes grew less and less interesting as we went along and displayed few evidences of the industry and thrift which characterise the more northern tribes. The mountains are higher and the scenes are broader and more wonderful at the southern end of the range, but the only cultivation we came upon was in the villages and along the banks of the little rushing streams. It was evident that we were approaching “civilisation.” Here and there we went through small groves of coffee trees, beautiful in a wealth of snow-white blossoms, but evidently deserted, and wretchedly ragged and unkempt.

Baguio, now the summer capital of the Philippine Islands, the “Philippine Simla,” as it is so often called, lies at the top of what has become justly celebrated as “the magnificent Benguet Road,” the building of which has been the subject of more controversy than almost any other one thing that American authority and enterprise has accomplished in the Islands. The Benguet Road when I first saw it was known as “Mead’s Trail,” so named in honour of the engineer who made the original survey for it, and in some places it was nothing more than a thin line drawn against perpendicular cliffs to indicate where cutting was to be done.