ve
us some idea of its construction: floor sills on posts to ground;
roof frame of planks, 1 x 6 inches, bent over to form the sides of
the house when completed, all hard wood, without a single nail, the
whole being held together by mortises and tenons and other joints,
accurately made and neatly fitted. We remained here an hour or so,
while the "Commission" was making gifts to the people. No weapons
whatever were visible, and the women and children moved about freely
without a trace of shyness or fear. Our way beyond the village now
took us by many turns back to the river, the trail finally rising
in the side of a vertical cliff, such that by leaning over a little
one could look past one's stirrup straight down to the water many
hundreds of feet below. At the highest point the trail turned sharp
to the left, almost back on itself. I am proud to say that I rode it
all, but was thankful when it was behind us. Heiser's horse this day
got three of his feet over the edge and rolled down eighty or ninety
feet, Heiser having jumped off in time to let his mount go alone. It
was fortunate for him that this particular cliff was not the scene of
this fall. Some three miles farther, on fording a stream, we passed
from Bontok into Kalinga, and were met by Mr. Hale, the Governor, with
two warriors, tall and slender, broad of chest and thin of flank, with
red and yellow gee-strings, tufts of brilliant feathers in their hair,
and highly polished head-axes on their hips. Greetings over, we went
on, and soon reached the river again, going down the left bank until
we came upon what seemed to me to be a most interesting geological
formation. For the bank of the river here rose sharply in a rounded,
elongated mass, the end of which toward us was cut off, as it were,
just as one cuts off the end of a loaf of bread, and showed alternate
thin black and white strata only three or four inches thick tilted
at an angle of sixty or seventy degrees and mounting several hundred
feet in the air. The trail itself had been cut out in the side of
the mass, and was so narrow that not only was everyone ordered to
dismount, but the American horses were all unsaddled, the inch or
two so gained being important in passing along. The black and white
strata showing on the path, there was an opportunity to examine them;
the black layers were so soft and friable that they could be gouged
out with ease with the hand, and appeared to be vegetable, while the
white s