RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
things in the Philippine Islands merely because I was unable to speak a dozen-odd different dialects. In the provinces Spanish was seldom of any use because the common tao knows little or nothing of it, and it is with the common tao that one wishes there to communicate.
On our first day’s journey we did thirty-seven miles in a jolting Army wagon, but the air was so invigorating, and we were having such a good time, that we were not exhausted. We didn't even murmur when we were told to be ready to start at four the next morning.
This was at Candon and we were joined there by Major Stevens, which made our party complete. The next evening, at Concepción, we camped in a lovely, new nipa-thatched house which had been built by a man who was known generally as “Windy” Wilson, an Army captain. We were extremely thankful for the shelter, because it was raining as it can rain only in northern Luzon and we had every reason to believe that this would be the last house we would be permitted to occupy for many a day. We were striking straight into the mountains and our shelter-to-be was a small field tent slung on the cargo saddle of a commissary mule.
Captain Wilson’s house was quite spacious. It had two rooms; one small and one large one. The ladies slept in the smaller room on Army cots, while the four stalwart officers of our military escort stretched themselves out on blankets and slickers on the split bamboo floor of the larger room. The walls and partitions were of woven nipa palm leaves, known locally as suali, while the two windows were made of braided bamboo and were set in grooves so, when we wanted to open them, all we had to do was to give them a gentle shove. There were no “trappings of civilisation,” but we managed to be perfectly comfortable.
The next day, before the sun was very high, we found ourselves in the midst of mountain-tops, on a trail which rose in great upward sweeps around the densely wooded slopes, to
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