ndeed. Most of the
men stood up all night, this being better than lying down in the mud;
to march on was impossible, as the country was then trailless, except
for the Spanish trail mentioned, to attempt which by night would have
been suicide. A tropical forest can be pretty dreary in bad weather,
almost as dreary as a Florida cypress swamp on a rainy Sunday.

We now made on, having crossed into Bontok sub-province, and by
midday had reached a point on the trail above an Igorot village
called Ambawan. Here we were met by a number of the officials of
the province, who gave us a sumptuous tiffin in the rest-house. And
here, too, we bought a number of baskets made in Ambawan, graceful
of design and well-woven, though small. Governor Evans offered an
escort of Constabulary through the next village, Talubin, the temper
of its inhabitants being uncertain, but Mr. Forbes declined it,
and ordered the escort sent back. We were riding as men of peace,
determined to mark our confidence in the good intentions and behavior
of the various _rancherias_ we passed through.

Immediately on leaving Ambawan, we had to drop from the new trail
(ours) to the old Spanish one for a short distance, for our trail
had run plump upon a rock, waiting before removal for a little money
to buy dynamite with. Having turned the rock, the climb back to the
new trail proved to be quite a serious affair, as such things go,
the path being so steep and so filled with loose sand and gravel
clattering down the slope at each step that only one man leading
his horse was allowed on it at a time, the next man not starting
till his predecessor was well clear at the top. A loss of footing
meant a tumble to the bottom, a matter of concern if we had all been
on the path together. But finally we all got up and moved on, this
time over the narrowest trail yet seen, a good part of the way not
more than eighteen or twenty inches wide, with a smooth, bare slope
of sixty to eighty degrees on the drop side, and the bottom of the
valley one thousand to fifteen hundred feet or more below us. Many
of us dismounted and walked, leading our horses for miles. With us
went an Igorot guide or policeman, who carried a spear in one hand,
and, although naked, held an umbrella over his head with the other,
and a civilized umbrella too, no native thing. However, it must be
admitted that it was raining.

The mists prevented any general view of the country; as a matter of
fact, we were at