river bottom near Bontoc
pueblo a herd of seventeen carabaos was skillfully milled round and
round in the water, after the soil was turned, stirring and mixing
the bed into a uniform ooze. The animals were managed by a man who
drove them and turned them at will, using only his voice and a long
switch. It is impossible to get carabaos to many irrigated sementeras
because of the high terrace walls, but this herd is used annually in
the Bontoc river bottom.

After each rice harvest the soil of the irrigated sementera is turned
for planting camotes, but this time it is turned dry. More effort is
needed to thrust the kay-kay deep enough into the dry soil, and it
is thrust three or four times before the earth may be turned. Only
one-half the surface of a sementera is turned for camotes. Raised
beds are made about 2 feet wide and 8 to 12 inches high. The spaces
between these beds become paths along which the cultivator and
harvester walks. The soil is turned from the spaces used as paths
over the spaces which become beds, but the earth under the bed is
not turned or loosened.

Bontoc beds are almost invariably constructed like parallel-sided,
square-cornered saw teeth standing at right angles to the blade of the
saw, which is also a camote bed, and are well shown in Pl. LXII. In
Tulubin this saw-tooth bed also occurs, but the continuous spiral
bed and the broken, parallel, straight beds are equally as common;
they are shown in figs. 2 and 3.

Fig 2. -- Parallel camote beds.

Fig 3. -- Spiral camote beds.

The mountain-side sementera for camotes, maize, millet, and beans is
prepared simply by being scratched or picked an inch or two deep with
the woman's camote stick, the su-wan'. If the plat is new the grass is
burned before the scratching occurs, but if it is cultivated annually
the surface seldom has any care save the shallow work of the su-wan';
in fact, the surface stones are seldom removed.

In the season of 1903, the first rains came April 5, and the first
mountain sementera was scratched over for millet April 10, after five
successive daily rains.

Fertilizing

Much care is taken in fertilizing the irrigated sementeras. The hog
of a few pueblos in the Bontoc area, as in Bontoc and Samoki, is kept
confined all its life in a walled, stone-paved sty dug in the earth
(see Pl. LXXVII). Into this inclosure dry grasses and dead vines are
continually placed to absorb and become rotted by the liquids. As t