SOS 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. ift 1901. 
• — »; ■ - I 
In the Philippines. 
SuRiGAO, Mindanao, P. I., July 26. — Editor Foresi and 
Stream: Earlj^ in May the ship came to take us back to 
the United States, and I found myseH once more in 
command of a vessel on the high seas. But it was only 
for a short time, as our destination was Cagayan de 
Misamis, where the regiment was in process of assembly. 
Our first stop was at Oroquita, where a fierce little 
fight had occurred in the previous summer. I was shown 
where the insurrecto army had rushed in, early in the 
morning, armed with bolos, to attack the company of 
soldiers that had landed there only the day before. I was 
shown where thirty of them had been killed in one pile, 
and the niound where over ninety were buried. The 
Filipinos were so sure of exterminating the Americans 
that a lot of them got in a building near the quarters 
occupied by the troops, and when the lieutenant in com- 
mand threw out a skirmish line, they were penned in 
and killed. 
At this post my force was increased by a company, and 
we steamed on, reaching Cagayan late in the evening. 
In the morning I marched my battalion two miles over 
a shaded road, between nipa cottages and silent crowds 
of natives, to the headquarters of the regiment. 
In a few days the regiment boarded the Pennsylvania, 
and we bade good-by to the island of Mindanao. Reach- 
ing Manila, a telegram from Judge Taft summoned me 
to appear before the U. S. Commission at the Palace. 
There I found that I had been appointed Treasurer of 
the Province of Curigao, in Mindanao, In view_ of my 
strong desire to return to the States,^ this appointment 
did not assume the importance my friends tried to im- 
press upon me, but I finally decided to accept, and the 
next few days were spent in settling up my^ company 
affairs and in bidding good-by to the associations com- 
prised in my two years of service. 
The long, weary wait for a transport to carry me to my 
post was enlivened by meeting many old army friends; 
but after the cool, delightful weather experienced in 
Mindanao, the heat of Manila seemed oppressive. 
After reaching my post, I made a trip, in company 
with the Governor, to Butuan, one of the towns of the 
province, to see the natives, and to establish civil gov- 
ernment. The ride on the steamer Surigao was delight- 
ful, especially when we entered the river Butuan, a noble 
stream, as broad and carrying more water than the Mis- 
souri at Sioux City. At one place a moss-grown monument 
marks the spot where Magellenes first landed in Min- 
danao. 
At Butuan we were met by the usual brass band and 
escorted to the. tribunal, where we held several pow- 
wows. The native Malay is indolent, but he is a past 
master in the art of office work and methods, and takes 
rapidly to any new forms in that direction. 
Along the upper river are gold fields that no doubt will 
soon attract the American miner. At Surigao I am in- 
terested in some placer diggings, and I had heard so 
many stories about the native workings that I was 
anxious to see them at work. There are a number of 
Chinese stores in Surigao, and a good part of their busi- 
ness is in buying gold from the natives. That the 
natives could go out from town — men, women and chil- 
dren—and in a few hours' work scraping around the 
rocks, with their little cocoanut shells and wooden bowls, 
could come back with one and sometimes two pecos' 
worth of gold, seemed to me incredible. 
I determined to go out and investigate for myself. 
One morning the "muchacho" brought around two 
ponies and an American horse, and with my associates 
B. and L. I rode through the quiet town, past the white 
monument that marks the memory of a former enter- 
prising Filipino citizen, and over the hill to Tlaya, as 
the Visayans call the open valley beyond. Here the road 
wound through fields and past nipa farm houses, with 
forest-clad hills on either side. I noticed a thick growth 
in the fields that resembled our red clover, but whenever 
our horses' feet touched it the leaves folded up like the 
sensitive plant. Some natives on caraboas overtook us. 
These useful animals appear to travel as well as a horse. 
After crossing Cansaran Creek, B. showed us some 
coal streaks in the bank of the creek, which he thought 
could be traced to the foothill near by. "By running a 
shaft down," he said, "about twelve or fifteen feet I be- 
lieve this vein could be tapped; and if the coal proved of 
good quality it could be shipped in barges to Surigao, 
where it would be marketable." 
Our course now led up the bed of the stream, and as 
we proceeded, the boulders became larger and the gravel 
took on the look of a mining country. Arrived at the 
camp, we found four sluice boxes in operation, a force 
of ten or twelve natives being employed in shovelling 
from the bedrock into the boxes. The foreman was a 
native Filipino who a few months before was an active 
insti IT 6 c t o - 
The entire creek had at some time been worked by 
the natives, and the foreman showed us a large boulder 
that had evidently been propped up by smaller stones. 
The Filipinos have no knowledge of mining as we 
understand it. They pick little holes in the bank, and 
when they come to a large rock, burrow around it until 
they have progressed so far that there is danger of the 
tunnel caving in, when they abandon the working and 
go somewhere else. , , , . , 
' After dinner, which consisted Of «ce and meat, with 
coffee we went to visit some native workings about 300 
yards 'below our diggings. Ths^. were working m a 
slide about 50 feet above the creek, and when we emerged 
from the slippery trail that wound through the forest 
we came suddenly upon fifty people— men, women and 
children— forking like beavers. It was a picturesque 
In a cutbank were a dozen holes, and in each hole a 
native working with a crowbar, loosening the mingled 
clay and gravel which a boy would scrape up with a 
cocoanut shell into a basket and carry down to the 
women in the creek bed, who would take it in a wooden 
bowl shaped like a gold pan. but not so large, and 
wsgh it ^Mf and quickly, in about a mrmxt, extrfictm^ 
the pure gold, which looked very pretty against the dark 
^'ood, I stood near one woman while she washed a pan 
and watched the operation. It was all done very quickly. 
She wobbled the pan two or three times, pushing out 
with one hand the gravel and stones, and finally dis- 
posed of the fine sand with one movement, leaving over 
fifty cents' worth of gold in the pan. One piece alone 
was worth thirty cents. I said to her, "Mucho dinero?" 
She looked up with a smile and said, "Poco." 
If one person with half a pan of dirt could take out in 
one minute fifty cents' worth of gold, the possibilities 
were great; yet this is done right along. Not only there 
but in many places in the neighborhood. But they are 
easily satisfied, and when they have gotten a dollar or 
two they they go home to town to spend it. 
There appears to be about ten miles square of this ter- 
ritory. They are getting on to our idea of sluice boxes, 
however, and I saw some troughs of palm they had man- 
ufactured for the purpose of saving the gold. Along the 
ridges are many of these pits, and some of their workings 
look to be a hundred years old, L. S. K. 
In the Ranger Service* 
BY ROWLAND E. ROBINSON. 
VL^Abercfombie's Defeat. 
Soon the troops began embarking, and as I watched a 
regiment of Connecticut men marching down to the 
boats, I caught sight of an acquaintance, no other than 
Bill Jarvis, the son of our village landlord, and a devil- 
may-care fellow, fond of jokes and gossip. Being off 
duty, I ran down to the landing to get speech with him, 
and got the chance for a few moments while they were 
waiting their turn. 
"How are you, Billy?" I cried, "and what's the news 
from home?" 
He stared at me a minute before he made me out, 
grown broAvner and older looking with nine months of 
soldiering. 
"Why, is it you, Paul? Zounds! you look so hke a 
man I didn't know you." 
"Well, you see, there's a chance for you, Billy. But 
what's the news? How are my uncle's folks^ and — ^the 
minister's?" I blurted out my question. 
"Oh, your uncle's well enough now, but he lost a cow 
last spring, and it nigh about killed him. He pinches 
the King's head on every sixpence he gets hold on till 
it hollers; but he's a-buildin' a house for Lot to live in 
ag'in he gits married.'- 
"Who's Lot going to marry?" I asked, with my- heart 
in my mouth. 
"Hain't you heard? Well, ^at beats all, for I'd ha' 
thought you'd heard that! The minister's goin' up into 
the wilderness to Number Four, or thereabouts, to preach 
the Gospel to the heathen; but his darter hain't a-goin'. 
She's goin' tu marry your cousin Lot." 
"It's a lie!" I cried. "She'll never marry Lot." 
"I give you the news as I git 'em ; I can't make 'em to 
suit you," said Billy, looking very honest. "Fact on't 
is, I s'pose they're married, for the day was set afore I 
come away, and the minister's wife had bespoke marm 
to make the weddin' cake." 
"Forward! March!" came the sharp order, and the 
regiment moved on, leaving me dazed and sick at heart 
as I had never been before. 
I said I would not believe the miserable story, yet how 
could I disbelieve it? Jarvis had lived all liis life in the 
neighborhood that he had left within a month, and 
always kept informed of its affairs; and what reason had 
he for telling me an untruth? Furthermore, this story 
tallied with my jealous fears, and with that part of 
Mercy's letter that had aroused them, where she wrote 
of her father's call to the settlements. Five months had 
passed since I heard from her, and it was because she 
dare not confess how she had broken faith with me. So, 
with more and more sickening certainty, the conviction 
grew upon me that she had proved too weak to with- 
stand the strong wills of her father and the favored 
suitor and their continual entreaty. A year ago I could 
not have believed it possible; yet now it seemed reason- 
able enough, though it was breaking my heart. Ah! why 
could not I have died before I lost my faith in her? Well, 
there must be a battle soon, and I only hoped that in it 
mv heartache and life might end together. 
With my thoughts far away, I must have been the 
poorest scout in the company of Rangers that went for- 
ward in the advance of the embarked army; but the cloud 
that was upon me could not prevent me admiring the 
gallant sight when we looked back from the brow of a 
bold, rocky promontory and beheld the noble pageant 
of the advancing flotilla, thronging the lake, with count- 
less craft, whose oars rose and fell in measured beats in 
time with the martial strains of fife and bugle and dron- 
ing pipes that the echoes mocked with a wild clamor of 
reverberation, while the brilliant freight of scarlet uni- 
forms, many-colored plaids and fluttering banners and 
glittering arms quivered in broken reflections down the 
rii^pled lake like downward pointing tongues of flame 
and falling sparks. Surely I never saw so grand a sight 
a? that proud host sweeping onward with the certainty 
of victory, alas! to such bootless display of valor— to 
such utter defeat. The startled eagles wheeled above 
them in ascending flight; then soared away to remote 
f clSttlCSSCS 
Arriving that night at the foot of the lake, the army 
set forth for Ticonderoga next morning, moving m four 
columns through the wilderness, and had not gone far 
when a partv of our scouts discovered a detachment of 
the enemy and engaged them. The firing presently 
brought some of our friends to us. led by Major Putnam, 
of our own good colony of Connecticut, almost as 
famous a Ranger as Rogers, and he was accompanied by 
Lord Howe, who always desired to bear a part in the 
most perilous service and share danger and hardship 
with the humblest soldier. We had but a. glimpse of 
him recklessly exposing his gallant, conspicuous figure, 
for he was a "novice in the warfare of the woods. 
There was sharp firing in front, and nothing would 
serve my Lord Howe but to go and see what it was, 
though our Major Putnam besought him not to do so. 
Alas! he wen^, and ^ith hiro nUo Putnam, leadm^ a de- 
tachment of Rangers, myself among them. It was woeful 
to see how recklessly his lordship exposed himself, 
taking no care to keep to cover of trees, and very con- 
spicuous in his bright Sfferlet coat. Once I saw hira 
step aside to pluck a rare pink posy, look at it an in- 
stant and thrust it in the breast of his coat, for he was 
very curious in all new, strange things he saw— trees, 
flowers and what-not. I never saw one of those pink 
flowers but I wished its like had never blossomed, for I 
doubt not he then caught the eye of the marksman whose 
bullet the next instant laid him low, the flower of all 
that brave army, so untimely cut down. It was he who 
was the real head of our army, for General Abercrombie 
was a dull man, so liWfe to an old woman that we 
Provincials ever after called him "Nabby Crombie." 
Little wonder it was that with such a leader our noble 
army accomplished so little. 
After a time we routed the Frenchmen, but all the 
columns had fallen into confusion in the maze of woods, 
so we were withdrawn to our last encampment, where 
we passed a heavy night, for every soldier grieved the 
loss of this best-beloved officer, and, viewed in the gloom 
of the day's mishaps, the path to victory seemed not so 
clear as it had in the brightness of morning. However, 
the array was on the move again, betimes, next morning, 
and after a sharp skirmish with a French outpost on the 
right and weary marching in the smothering heat of the 
breathless woods came before the evening to a line of de- 
fenses a mile or less to the westward of the Fort Car- 
rillon or Ticonderoga, and stretching across a neck of 
high ground from one morass to another. The French- 
man had hedged his entrenchments with felled trees, all 
the branches sharpened and bristling out toward us like 
the quills of a hedgehog. 
General Abercrombie's engineer went forward with 
our Rangers to_ spy out the enemy's outworks, and after 
some examination was of the opinion that they might be 
carried by storm. This seemed very hazardous to us 
bush fighters, both officers and men, for the abattis 
bristled along the front of a strong breastwork that hid 
all the Frenchers from our sight, save as now and then 
an officer exposed himself above it, striving to discover 
what he might of us, where we were harassed by oc- 
casional shots from the Indian scouts. One officer often 
showed himself above the breastwork, very busy here and 
there, in his shirt sleeves, but otherwise finely clad in 
gold-laced waistcoat and breeches. I took him to be 
their general. Marquis de M&ntcalm, and tried a shot at 
him, with the remembrance of Fort William Henry bitter 
ill my heart. My bullet went close enough to make him 
more cautious, and so did us more harm than giiod, for 
he went safe through the fight to get his death at Quebec. 
What polite, fine gentlemen they were, yet devils all 
the same, sorting so. naturally with those naked, painted 
friends, their Indian allies, and taking part in all their 
barbarities, stopping short of roasting and eating their 
captives! For my part, I could never abide with them, 
whether of high or low degree; man, woman or child. 
After our troops were deployed in front of this barrier 
there was for a brief space that seemed very long a hush 
of awful stillness. The yet half-withered leaves of the 
lopped branches scarcely stirred the sultry air, and we 
could hear the changing murmur of the distant stream 
like the ringing of remote bells, and the sweet song of 
a little bird that alighted on a high prong of the abattis 
between the silent armies, a strange prelude to the im- 
pending tumultuous clamor of battle. 
Then came the sharp, sudden word of command, a 
wild blast of bugles, a crashing volley of musketry, and 
our columns charged into the smoke clouds upon the 
abattis, and the French breastwork all along the crest 
blazed forth a terrific fire from rattling muskets and 
bellowing cannon, and beneath the lifting smoke we saw 
our brave ranks go down like grass before the scythe. 
Rank after rank rushed on, only to be in turn swept 
down by the fire of the hidden foe. All above the im- 
penetrable barrier of spiked antlers our columns surged 
against it, only to break or be beaten back like waves 
against a rocky shore. Here it was the scarlet wave of 
the British line; there the Colonial troops; elsewhere the 
wild Highlanders of the Black Watch, that beat vainly 
against it. The dogged Englishmen and our own brave 
countrymen still struggled on in the face of hopeless 
defeat, and the Highlanders, in a fury of rage, strove 
to chop a passage through the abattis with broadswords 
till the half of them were killed outright and the wailing 
pipes called away the torn remnant of the brave regi- 
ment. 
If we Rangers gained less glory, we had the greater 
safety and performed more effective service fighting after 
our owm fashion behind trees, and killing more French- 
men with our careful, infrequent shots than our regular 
troops with storm of aimless volleys. You may wonder 
that, with all this opportunity, I did not seek a chance, 
of being killed, but with the sight of such mangling and 
maiming and havoc of death before me, men writhing in 
the agony of frightful wounds among gory heaps of slain. 
I was of a different mind concerning life, and concluded 
I would rather live with a broken heart than die of a 
broken head, and was glad enough when we got the 
order to retreat. But this did not come till a thousand 
of our brave men lay dead or mangled on the bloody 
field. Amid the scattering volleys of French bullets that 
whistled over our heads, I came upon a grievously 
wounded American soldier, and, stoppings to offer such 
help as I could give, which was but a drink of water, 
for the poor fellow was at the point of death, I discov- 
ered he was no other than poor Billy Jarvis. He re- 
vived a little with the draught, and it was plain he rec- 
ognized me. for he tried to speak, but I could make 
nothing of his gasping whisper, and with a great sigh 
his last breath went out. Then I covered his face with 
his. hat and hurried after my company, wondering 
vaguely in a whirl of thoughts what it was he would 
have told me if death had not sealed his lips. 
The retreat of our army up the lake was a sad con- 
'trast to. its proud advance. The torn banners drooped 
over thinned, dispirited ranks and many a sorely v/ound- 
ed man. The sli^gish oars beat no martial strains now, 
for the verdant shores echoed.the melancholy wail of the 
pipes, lamenting the dead clansmen. The reflections of 
scarlet coats and red banners reminded one not, of flicker- 
ing fire, but dropping blood. 
[to B5 gONTINUEO.] 
