unworthy of the same. The tide was going out rapidly,
and the water mark oh the tree trunks was growing high. Sometimes we
met a baroto on its way to market with a cargo of three chickens,
five cocoanuts, two bunches of bananas, one head of the family,
four children, and several women unaccounted for. The freight was
heaped at one end, and the passengers all squatted in that perfect,
uncommunicative equilibrium which a Filipino can maintain for hours
at a time. Sometimes we came out where there were almost a hundred
square yards of ground and two or three houses and the stir of morning
life. Ladies with a single garment looped under their arm pits were
pouring water over themselves from cocoanut shells, and whole colonies
of game-cocks were tethered out on the end of three feet of twine,
cursing each other and challenging each other to fights. The male
population almost to a man was engaged in the process of stroking the
legs of these jewels, to make them strong, and some of the children
were helping.

As a rule, our advent generally disturbed these morning devotions, for
American women were still comparatively new and few in the province at
that time. A shout, "Americanas!" usually brought the whole village
to the waterside, where they bowed and smiled and stared, proffering
hospitality, and exchanging repartee with the lieutenant, who used
the vernacular.

Meanwhile the tide went out and out, and we sank lower and lower in
kut-i-kut till we were in a slimy ditch with four feet of bank on
each side. The turns and twists grew narrower, and the difficulty of
steering our long baroto around these grew greater. The men got but
and waded, pushing the baroto lightly over the soft ooze. But finally
this failed. It was eight o'clock, the sun climbing higher and burning
fiercer, when we stuck ignominiously in the mud of kut-i-kut.

After a short consultation the lieutenant sighed, cast a glance at the
mud and his clean leather puttees, then went overboard, taking a man
with him. They disappeared in the nipa swamps, but came back in half
an hour with three carabaos, their owners, and an army of volunteers.

Our motive power, being hitched tandem, now extended round a couple of
bends, and there ensued the wildest confusion in an endeavor to get
them all started at the same time. Apparently it couldn't be done,
and we wasted a half-hour, in which every native in the swamp seemed
to be giving orders, and the overwhelming desire