RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
'bus line was put on the Benguet Road which is the delight of every American or other foreigner in the Islands, as well as of many hundreds of Filipinos who annually take advantage of this wholly novel opportunity to reach a salubrious climate in their own land, and by a route which in any European country would attract scores of thrill-seeking tourists.
And so the Philippine Simla was begun. Its friends, or, in other words, most people have dreams of a great future for it when it shall be a thriving, prosperous city and a health resort for everybody "east of Suez" who needs to seek near by a temperate and invigourating climate.
It is six years since I saw Baguio, for I visited it the last time in 1907, but even then I could not believe that it was built on the ground that I had ridden over and found practically uninhabited only six years before. At that time a provincial government had been organised, and an American, Mr. Phelps Whitmarsh, who was a writer and had lived among the Igorrotes a long time, was appointed governor. But he was governor of a wild-tribe province which did not then boast any greater signs of civilisation than winding foot trails and a few groups of low-thatched huts which were known as towns.
We rode in from Trinidad, not many miles from Baguio, on the morning of the 23rd of June and went straight to the governor's "mansion." We were welcomed by Mrs. Whitmarsh into a nipa-roofed, suali house which, though it was quite large, had no partitions except such as were made of bamboo screens and hangings of bright-coloured Igorrote cloths. But it had a big, open fireplace and a fine blaze from odorous pine boughs was crackling up the chimney. This seemed particularly cosy and delightful to us because we had just been camping in native huts in which the only place for a fire was a square of earth in the middle of the
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