RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
tage of the "breathing spell" to run up into the mountains and inspect proposed routes for roads and railways. That is how we happened to encounter them at Loo. We shared their opinion that one of the greatest things that could be done for the country was to make the mountains of central Luzon, with their glorious climate, easily accessible. The trails as we found them were mere paths worn by the feet of Igorrotes and, besides being very narrow, were at such grades as to make them in many places all but impassable. The party, highly representative of American authority in the Islands, as it was, sat around on the bamboo floor, huddled up in blankets, and talked long into the night about hopes and fears and governmental problems of great difficulty and importance.
We left Loo at six o'clock in the morning and after eight straight hours of the hardest work we had yet been called upon to do, we arrived at Cabayan. According to my own diary: "I was completely tired. The greater part of the way we rode through beautiful pine forests, but up and down hills as steep as the side of a house; across rivers, and up a waterfall." This sounds like pretty heavy going, but my account of it written at the time was, I am sure, only slightly exaggerated. I remember distinctly that from Loo to Baguio, five full days, we walked a great part of the way; and not only did we walk, but we rendered necessary assistance to our horses which, giving out one by one, had to be dragged up the steep grades and "eased" down the opposite sides in a way that would have been highly ludicrous had we been engaged in anything but a very serious business. Only the steady old mules plodded along "without a word," and found their own way in safety around the dangerous turns.
After leaving Bontoc we travelled down through Nueva Viscaya and into Benguet, the southermost division of the Mountain province. At Cabayan we had for camping quar-
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