NON-CHRISTIAN PEOPLES OF PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 



1243 



every tribe known to inhabit the Islands, 

 I have never lost a man nor fired a shot, 

 while those with me have never fired, 

 with the sole exception of the occasion 

 when my party walked into an ambush 

 prepared for the provincial governor by 

 renegade Aloros on the west coast of 

 Palawan. 



On a number of occasions we should 

 have been fully justified in opening fire, 

 but we were determined to avoid this 

 until the last possible moment, and it was 

 w^ith the result that in each case things 

 took a turn for the better and we were 

 spared the unpleasant necessity of fall- 

 ing back on brute force in order to pro- 

 tect ourselves. 



Given a reasonable stock of good na- 

 ture, a feeling of real friendliness to- 

 ward the wild people, a few beads, some 

 scarlet cotton cloth and brass wire, and, 

 if one is in the Ifugao country, a goodly 

 supply of narrow strips of white paper 

 (see page 1218), and one may leave fire- 

 arms behind and go far without danger 

 of serious molestation. 



OPENING LINKS OF TRAVi:i, 



The early exploration trips served to 

 emphasize the fact that the establish- 

 ment of feasible lines of travel was abso- 

 lutely prerequisite to successful work 

 among the non-Christian tribes which, 

 with the exception of the Moros, inhabit 

 mountainous regions in the interiors of 

 the larger islands. Perhaps the most im- 

 portant thing which we have done was 

 the opening up of such lines of travel, 

 without which little could have been ac- 

 complished. 



At the outset we had a bit of costly 

 experience in building trails of too high 

 grade, which were promptly destroyed 

 by the action of water during torrential 

 rains. Fortunately our lesson was not 

 long delayed, and we soon discovered 

 that in a country where 38 inches of 

 water have been known to fall from the 

 heavens in 24 hours the cost of main- 

 taining a short high-grade trail between 

 two points is so much greater than is that 

 of maintaining a much longer low-grade 

 trail that the original greater expense of 

 constructing the latter is very soon more 

 than overbalanced. 



In the special government province^ 

 coming under my administrative control 

 I did not permit the construction of trails 

 with a grade of more than 6 per cent ex- 

 cept under extraordinary conditions and 

 for short distances, and even then 10 per 

 cent was the high limit (see page 1208). 

 On account of limited funds the trails 

 are built narrow at the outset, but are 

 rapidly widened, in connection with 

 maintenance work, until they become 

 passable first for narrow-tread carts and 

 then for carts of ordinary size. Any of 

 them can promptly be converted into car- 

 riage or automobile roads by widening 

 and surfacing. 



Vv'e now have more than 1,000 miles 

 of cart roads and trails in the Mountain 

 Province alone, to say nothing of long 

 stretches in the province of Nueva Viz- 

 caya and the subprovince of Bukidnon. 

 Work has begun in ]\Iindoro, Palawan, 

 and the subprovince of Agusan. Rest- 

 houses have been built at convenient in- 

 tervals as required. 



the: wonde:rFuIv scknkry 01^ rut 



MOUNTAIN PROVINCE 



It is now possible to make in perfect 

 comfort a most wonderful horseback 

 trip through the Alountain Province, on 

 which one sees magnificent tropical vege- 

 tation (see page 1205) and the oaks and 

 pine trees of the temperate zone ; wild 

 men who have always been peaceful ag- 

 riculturists and wild men who until very 

 recently have been active, and still are 

 potential, head-hunters ; mountain scen- 

 ery of unsurpassed beauty (see pages 

 1 198 and 1206), and a thousand and one 

 things each of which makes its own 

 strong appeal. This extraordinary oppor- 

 tunity is sure to be taken advantage of, 

 and it will be but a few years until the 

 Bontoc Igorot is hammering out head- 

 axes for the tourist. 



When I laid down on the map the gen- 

 eral route for a main trail from Baguio, 

 in Benguet, to Claveria, at the extreme 

 northern end of Luzon, I did not expect 

 to live to see it constructed. I now be- 

 lieve that within a year it will be possible 

 safely to ride a spirited American horse 

 from Baguio to Claveria without dis- 

 mounting. Numerous important branch 



