ot have asked for better weather. We went
down the splendid Benguet Road, following the bed of the Bued River [8]
to the railway, a drop of over 4,000 feet in thirteen miles. Strange
to say, the stream had not risen at all, a fortunate circumstance,
as one hundred and sixty bridges are crossed in the drop, and at
times a rise will wash out not only the bridges, but all semblance
of a road. [9] At the railway we turned south over the great plain
of Pangasinan. This, in respect of roads, is the show province of
the Archipelago and deserves its reputation, one hundred and twenty
miles having been built. Those we passed over this day would have
been called good in France even. Our passage was of the nature of
a progress, thanks to the presence of the Governor-General. Simple
bamboo arches crossing the road greeted us everywhere, Mr. Forbes
punctiliously raising his hat under every one. All the villages had
decorated their houses; handkerchiefs, petticoats, red table-cloths,
anything and everything had been hung out of the windows by way of
flags and banners. Across the front of the municipal building of one
village was stretched a banner with this inscription, "_En honor de
la venida del Gobernador General y de su Comitiva_" ("In honor of the
arrival of the Governor-General and of his retinue"), and then below on
the next band, "_Deseamos iener un pozo artesiano_" ("We should like
to have an Artesian well"), which led Mr. Worcester to remark that
four years before the banner would have demanded "_independencia_"
(independence), and not an Artesian well.

Even in Pangasinan, good roads must come to an end, and ours did as
we neared the Agno River. For this blessed river is a curse to its
neighborhood, and rises in flood from a stream say seventy-five yards
wide to a rushing lake, if the expression be permitted, half a mile
and more across. Our car finally refused to move; its wheels simply
turned _in situ_, so deep was the sand. There was nothing for it but
to walk to the river bank, where we were met with many apologies. A
bamboo bridge had been built across the stream a few days before so
that our cars might cross, but yesterday's rain had washed it down,
and would we try to cross on rafts? We looked at the rafts, bamboo
platforms built over large _bancas_ (canoes, double-enders cut out of a
single log), the bamboos being lashed together with _bejuco_ (rattan,
the native substitute for nails), and decided that no self-resp