RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
for a long time—one of them for more than a year without visiting civilisation—could give us much interesting first-hand information. The people gathered around us in hordes, but they kept at a respectful, not to say a reverential, distance. I think they were afraid of us; especially the women, not one of whom would let us look at her baby. But we were used to that. Many Christian Filipinos believe firmly in the "evil eye." There was one little dwarf who was bolder than the rest and who followed us everywhere He was like a little, brown, toy-child, beautifully formed, and looking not more than one year old, but we were told that he was at least fourteen.
Everybody wanted to give us things. The evening I arrived I received a present from one of the headmen, of three live chickens, and the next day, as we were picking our way through the native village, another man ran after me and, very graciously and gracefully, presented me with two fresh eggs. We learned to say "mapud," which means "good," and, in connection with smiles and gestures, found. it served us famously for all purposes of social intercourse.
Bontoc is in a deep valley, on the bank of a wide, swift river and surrounded by close sheltering hills, so it is not as cold as it is in Sagada and some other places we visited; but it is cold enough, and I failed to understand how the natives could live in a state of almost complete nakedness. But they do and, in fact, all these people do, even in the coldest regions. The Bontoc Igorrote wears a very bright-coloured clout called a "G-string" with a heavy, brass chain around his waist, while his long, black hair is tucked into a little, flat, straw hat which is fastened, in some mysterious way, on the back of his head. They nearly all wear heavy, brass earrings which make their ears unsightly, and the Bontoc "dandy" usually has a long, black, homemade and half-smoked cigar tucked behind one ear for all the world like the pencil of an absentminded bookkeeper.
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