Pineapple fiber preparations.Here I saw them preparing the fiber of the pine-apple for weaving. The fruit of the plants selected for this purpose is generally removed early; a process which causes the leaves to increase considerably both in length and in breadth. A woman places a board on the ground, and upon it a pine-apple-leaf with the hollow side upwards. Sitting at one end of the board, she holds the leaf firmly with her toes, and scrapes its outer surface with a potsherd; not with the sharp fractured edge but with the blunt side of the rim; and thus the leaf is reduced to rags. In this manner a stratum of coarse longitudinal fiber is disclosed, and the operator, placing her thumb-nail beneath it, lifts it up, and draws it away in a compact strip; after which she scrapes again until a second fine layer of fiber is laid bare. Then, turning the leaf round, she scrapes its back, which now lies upwards, down to the layer of fiber, which she seizes with her hand and draws at once, to its full length, away from the back of the leaf. When the fiber has been washed, it is dried in the sun. It is afterwards combed, with a suitable comb, like women’s hair, sorted into four classes, tied together, and treated like the fiber of the lupi. In this crude manner are obtained the threads for the celebrated web nipis de Piña.Piña, which is considered by experts the finest in the world. Two shirts of this kind are in the Berlin Ethnographical Museum (Nos. 291 and 292). Better woven samples are in the Gewerbe Museum of Trade and Commerce. In the Philippines, where the fineness of the work is best understood and appreciated, richly-embroidered costumes of this description have fetched more than $1,400 each.[7]
Rain prevents another ascent.At Buhi, which is not sufficiently sheltered towards the north-east, it rained almost as much as at Daraga. I had found out from the Igorots that a path could be forced through the tall canes up to the summit; but the continual rain prevented me; so I resolved to cross the Malinao, returning along the coast to my quarters, and then, freshly equipped, descend the river Bicol as far as Naga.
Mountaineers’ arrow poison.Before we parted the Igorots prepared for me some arrow poison from the bark of two trees. I happened to see neither the leaves nor the blossoms, but only the bark. A piece of bark was beaten to pieces, pressed dry, wetted, and again pressed. This was done with the bare hand, which, however, sustained no injury. The juice thus extracted looked like pea-soup, and was warmed in an earthen vessel over a slow fire. During the process it coagulated at the edges; and the coagulated mass was again dissolved, by stirring it into the boiling fluid mass. When this had reached the consistency of syrup, a small quantity was scraped off the inner surface of a second piece of bark, and its juice squeezed into the vessel. This juice was a dark brown color. When the mass had attained the consistency of a thin jelly, it was scraped out of the pot with a chip and preserved on a leaf sprinkled with ashes. For poisoning an arrow they use a piece of the size of a hazel-nut, which, after being warmed, is distributed uniformly over the broad iron point; and the poisoned arrow serves for repeated use.
Sapa river.At the end of November I left the beautiful lake of Buhi, and proceeded from its eastern angle for a short distance up the little river Sapa[8], the alluvial deposits of which form a considerable feature in the configuration of the lake. Across a marshy meadow we reached the base of the Malinao or Buhi mountain, the slippery clay of the lower slope merging higher up into volcanic sand. Leeches.The damp undergrowth swarmed with small leeches; I never before met with them in such numbers. These little animals, no stouter when streched out than a linen thread, are extraordinarily active. They attach themselves firmly to every part of the body, penetrating even into the nose, the ears, and the eyelids, where, if, they remain unobserved, they gorge themselves to such excess that they become as round as balls and look like small cherries. While they are sucking no pain is felt; but afterwards the spots attacked often itch the whole day long.[9] Fig-trees.In one place the wood consisted for the most part of fig-trees, with bunches of fruit quite six feet in length hanging from the stems and the thicker branches; and between the trees grew ferns, aroids, and orchids. After nearly six hours’ toil we reached the pass (841 meters above the sea level), and descended the eastern slope. The forest on the eastern side of the mountain is still more magnificent than that on the west. From a clearing we obtained a fine view of the sea, the Island of Catanduanes, and the plain of Tabaco. Prison as hotel. At sunset we reached Tibi, where I quartered myself in the prison. This, a tolerably clean place, enclosed with strong bamboos, was the most habitable part of a long shed which supplied the place of the tribunal destroyed in a storm two years before. At Tibi I had an opportunity of sketching Mount Malinao (called also Buhi and Takit), which from this side has the appearance of a large volcano with a distinct crater. From the lake of Buhi it is not so clearly distinguishable.
Igabo hot spring.Not far from Tibi, exactly north-east of Malinao, we found a small hot spring called Igabo. In the middle of a plot of turf encircled by trees was a bare spot of oval form, nearly a hundred paces long and seventy wide. The whole space was covered with stones, rounded by attrition, as large as a man’s head and larger. Here and there hot water bubbled out of the ground and discharged into a little brook; beside it some women were engaged in cooking their food, which they suspended in nets in the hottest parts of the water. On the lower surfaces of some of the stones a little sulphur was sublimated; of alum hardly a trace was perceptible. In a cavity some caolin had accumulated, and was used as a stain.
Naglegbeng silicious springs.From here I visited the stalactite springs, not far distant, of Naglegbeng.[10] I had expected to see a calcareous fountain, but found the most magnificent masses of silica of infinite variety of form; shallow cones with cylindrical summits, pyramidal flights of steps, round basins with ribbed margins, and ponds of boiling water. One spot, denuded of trees, from two to three hundred paces in breadth and about five hundred in length, was, with the exception of a few places overgrown with turf, covered with a crust of silicious dross, which here and there formed large connected areas, but was generally broken up into flaky plates by the vertical springs which pierced it. In numerous localities boiling hot mineral water containing silica was forcing itself out of the ground, spreading itself over the surface and depositing a crust, the thickness of which depended on its distance from the center point. In this manner, in the course of time, a very flat cone is formed, with a basin of boiling water in the middle. The continuous deposit of dross contracts the channel, and a less quantity of water overflows, while that close to the edge of the basin evaporates and deposits a quantity of fine silicious earth; whence the upper portion of the cone not only is steeper than its base, but frequently assumes a more cylindrical form, the external surface of which on account of the want of uniformity in the overflow, is ribbed in the form of stalactites. When the channel becomes so much obstructed that the efflux is less than the evaporation, the water ceases to flow over the edge, and the mineral dross, during the continual cooling of the water, is then deposited, with the greatest uniformity, over the inner area of the basin. When, however, the surface of the water sinks, this formation ceases at the upper portion of the basin; the interior wall thickens; and, if the channel be completely stopped up and all the water evaporated, there remains a bell-shaped basin as even as if excavated by the hand of man. The water now seeks a fresh outlet, and bursts forth where it meets with the least obstruction, without destroying the beautiful cone it has already erected. Many such examples exist. In the largest cones, however, the vapors generated acquire such power that, when the outlet is completely stopped up, they break up the overlying crust in concentrically radiating flakes; and the water, issuing anew copiously from the center, deposits a fresh crust, which again, by the process we have just described is broken up into a superimposed layer of flakes. In this manner are formed annular layers, which in turn are gradually covered by fresh deposits from the overflowing water. After the pyramid of layers is complete and the outlet stopped up, the water sometimes breaks forth on the slope of the same cone; a second cone is then formed near the first, on the same base. In the vicinity of the silicious springs are seen deposits of white, yellow, red, and bluish-grey clays, overlaying one another in narrow strata-like variegated marl, manifestly the disintegrated produce of volcanic rocks transported hither by rain and stained with oxide of iron. These clays perhaps come from the same rocks from the disintegration of which the silicious earth has been formed. Similar examples occur in Iceland and in New Zealand; but the products of the springs of Tibi are more varied, finer, and more beautiful than those of the Iceland Geysers.
A world wonder.The wonderful conformations of the red cone are indeed astonishing, and hardly to be paralleled in any other quarter of the world.[11]
[1] According to Grunow, Cladophona arrisgona Kuetzing—Conferva arrisgona Montague.
[2] A visita is a small hamlet or village with no priest of its own, and dependent upon its largest neighbor for its religious ministrations.