il within the last two years,
a man's will there has been likely to be his only law.

Nature has done much for the island. The soil is of incalculable
richness. Fruits and grains grow luxuriantly where the ground is
turned over, and as if to make the natives laugh at the need of such
labour the forests yield fruits and nuts with lavish generosity. Deer
and buffalo run wild, and numberless varieties of pigeons live in
the trees.

Mount Apo, in the extreme southeastern part of the island, and almost
upon the coast, is the loftiest mountain in the archipelago. Its
height is usually estimated to be not far from ten thousand feet. A
spiral of steam drifting up from the sulphur-crowned summit of the
mountain shows that fires still linger in its bosom, but for many
years it has been quiet, and at no time does history show that it has
broken forth in fury to wreak the awful destruction that is written
down against some of the volcanoes of these islands.

My work as a naturalist had several times brought me where I could
see Apo, and each time I had been more and more fascinated by it,
and more desirous of climbing to its top.

When I began to talk of making the ascent, though, I found it would
be no easy matter. Not only were the sides of the mountain said to
be steep, and the forests which clothed them impassable, but there
were mysterious dangers to be encountered. Men who had gone with me
anywhere else I had asked them, had affairs of their own to attend
to when I spoke of climbing Apo, or else flatly refused to go.

I was told that no man that started up the mountain had ever come
back. Enormous pythons drew their green bodies over its sides. Man-apes
lived in its upper forests whose strength no human being could
meet. Devils and goblins lurked in the crevasses below the summit,
and above all and most terrible of all, there was a spirit of the
mountain whose face to see was death.

My questions as to how they knew all these things if no man had lived
to come back from the mountain had no effect. This was not a case
for logic; it was one of those where instinct ruled.

There is a queer little animal, something like a sable, which is
peculiar to Mindanao. The natives call it "gato del monte," which
means "mountain cat." I wanted to get some specimens of this animal
and also of a variety of pigeon which they call "the stabbed dove,"
because it has a tuft of bright red feathers like a splash of blood
upon its otherwise