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FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Marcu 24, 1906. 













Set 
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1 NORE eae eC ewe 3 

—— — ———————— 



TLDS 
A Moro Princess. 
OrF to the northeast of Camp Vicars, in Moro- 
land, the plateau on which the camp stands ends 
abruptly in a precipice, at the foot of which, 300 
and more feet below, and bounded by it on two 
sides, lies Bayang, on whose farthermost point, 
stretching far out into Lake Lanao, is the cotta 
of Said y Ducimen, high priest, head man of the 
Bayang people and, until won over to us by the 
efforts of Captain Pershing, the most bitter, im- 
placable and persistent enemy we had in the 
Lanao Valley. 
We first crossed the trail of Said y Ducimen 
the morning after the Battle of Bayang, the deci- 
sive action which gave us our foothold in Moro- 
land, of which I have spoken in previous articles. 
This fight began at noon on May 2, 1902, and 
lasted until daylight the next morning. About 3 
o'clock that afternoon I was sent with a portion 
of my company—fifty-six men in all—tto capture 
a fort some 800 yards distant from where the 
main action up to that time had taken place, but 
the Moros in the fort didn’t seem to want to be 
captured; in fact, they objected so strenuously 
that after having spent over five hours in the 
nearest approach to Hades I ever want to en- 
counter we were finally relieved and I was di- 
rected to take what was left of the company back 
to our base for the night. 
It had begun to rain early in the evening and 
by this time we were all soaked to the skin. We 
had had nothing to eat since 6 o’clock that morn- 
ning; had been under a constant and grueling 
fire for hours, and, take it all in all, were about 
as miserable a set of men as you ever heard of. 
It was almost as unpleasant going back from 
as it was remaining on the firing line, and in- 
finitely more dangerous, for our base had been 
established in a fort, which we had taken earlier 
in the day, located on the top of a very high hill, 
whose slopes the Moros had literally honey- 
combed with carefully concealed pitfalls, seven or 
eight feet deep, the bottoms of which were plenti- 
fully supplied with sharpened stakes, business end 
up, ready to give a warm reception to him who 
was unfortunate enough to fall into one of them. 
I don’t believe I shall forget the absolute 
horror and misery of that night if I live to be a 
million years old. 
It was so dark that to say that you couldn’t 
have seen your hand before your face would be 
to convey an idea of comparative brilliancy, and 
the only way we could keep together at all was 
for each man to hold on to the clothing of the 
one ahead of him; and even then some one at 
the rear of the column letting go his hold for a 
sacond couldn’t find his leader again, and to- 
gether with all the men behind him went wan- 
dering over the country for hours; and they were 
not missed until daylight, when they were dis- 
covered a mile away from where they should 
have been, squatting in the grass like so many 
wet ducks, waiting for morning to come. 
There was a narrow trail leading from the 
firing line back to our base, down which the water 
rushed in a regular stream and this helped us a 
lot at first, for by keeping in the water we knew 
that we were on the trail. We lost it presently, 
however, and so struck out, straight ’cross coun- 
try toward the light which marked the top of the 
hill; and were finally halted by a sentry when 
within a yard of the twenty-foot moat surround- 
ing the fort. s 
Leaving the company where it was, I entered 
the fort and reported to the commanding officer, 
whom I found standing under a flimsy shelter 
of grass and bamboo up to his ankles in water, 
and whose first question was, “How many have 
you lost?” I told him I didn’t know exactly, but 
as nearly as I could figure out I had five dead 
and about fifteen wounded. 
Whew! Talk about explosions! The “old 
man” nearly took my head off. 
He called me all kinds of a fool, and said that 
the whole casualty list wouldn’t total up to 
twenty-five; but just the same, in the morning 
after it was all over and the returns in, he found 
that I was right and that the casualty list of the 
command footed up several times twenty-five. 
After he finished cussin’ me out for my “fool 
talk,” as he called it, the Colonel said, with an 
air of conferring the greatest favor in his gift 
upon me, that as my company had been the first 
in the fight he supposed it would want to be the 
last as well; to which end he was having the 
friendlies, of whom there were a number with us, 
make some scaling ladders, and had brought us 
back so that we could get a good night’s rest, 
and at daybreak I was to take the company and 
the ladders and go down and carry the fort by 
assault. 
A‘lovely thought to “get a good night’s rest,” 
wasn’t it? 
But of course I had to appear tickled to death 
over the prospect, which I tried to, and thanking 
the Colonel, rejoined my men and we took pos- 
session of the tents the company which relieved 
us had thoughtfully left standing. 
Heavens! what a night that was. 
Of course now that all these months have 
passed I can look back on it and smile, but it 
was no laughing matter then, I can assure you, 
and I never hated to see daylight come so badly 
in my life. 
Our experience during the afternoon had been 
very trying and the nervous strain so great: that 
we were all wrecks and IJ lay there under my 
canvas bedding roll, which I used as a tent, won- 
dering if I couldn’t develop typhoid or pneumonia 
before morning so as to get out of leading this 
assault, which the commanding officer had so 
thoughtfully saddled me with. You see, as com- 
manding the assaulting party it was “up to me” 
to be the first man on the walls of the fort, and 
it was a moral certainty that the first man there 
would receive the attention of the whole band 
of defenders inside. 
It had to be done, however, and there was no 
getting out of it; but I think I know exactly how 
a condemned man feels the night before his exe- 
cution. 
I was so completely worn out that I fell into a 
doze after awhile, in spite of the discomforts of 
lying in a puddle of water with various and sun- 
dry streams percolating through the canvas which 
covered me, and you may imagine my feelings 
when just at gray dawn my first sergeant awaked 
me and, saluting, said, “Sir, they have the white 
flag flvin’ down below.” And sure enough, there 
was Fort Pandapatan, just visible through the 
morning mist, with white flags flying from the five 
staffs on its walls, where last night had hung the 
war banners of a dozen Sultans and Dattos. 
ff to the east of the fort and down on what 
we afterward learned was Bayang, one small 
white flag was flying just at the edge of the 
woods. Later in the morning a friendly native 
was sent down there with a message from the 
commanding officer, directing the owner of the 
flag to come up and have a talk with him. 
Our messenger returned presently and reported 
that the owner of the flag refused to come, and 
had sent word in reply to the Colonel’s message 
PORISSIAN 1 

that he had only flown the white flag because he 
was willing to let us alone if we would let him 
alone. That he knew of no reason why he should 
leave his house and come to see us, nor did he 
want us to come down there bothering him; that 
so long as we kept away from Bayang he and his 
people would keep away from us, but that if we 
were looking for trouble he had a much stronger 
cotta than either of those we had taken the day 
before, and we could get all we wanted of it by 
coming down there. And this was our introduc- 
tion to Said y Ducimen—of whom more later. 
During the battle of Bayang, the Sultan of 
that name hed been killed together with many of 
his men, and shortly after we established Camp 
Vicars, a delegation from down there called upon 
us and informed us that they had elected a new 
Sultan, who they hoped would be satisfactory 
to us. 
The Moro rule of succession is a very compli- 
cated one, and although Pedro, Grande and sey- 
eral others tried to explain it to me, I could 
never follow it or understand it. That there is 
such a rule there can be no doubt, but it doesn’t 
work at all like those usually prevailing in Euro- 
pean countries. The oldest son does not always 
succeed to the title of his father, nor, for the mat- 
ter of that, do any of the children, although it 
sometimes happens that a son does succeed to his 
father’s title. It is just as apt, however, to be 
an uncle or a cousin or a nephew of the late ruler 
as anyone else, and I am inclined to believe that 
any of the immediate male relatives are eligible 
and may be chosen. 
Occasionally it happens that among those eligi- 
ble for selection there is one who, either by his 
reputation as a fighting man, his wealth, or some 
other distinguishing attribute is powerful enough 
to declare himself as the new ruler without go- 
ing through the formality of an election; but 
this is unusual and the more ordinary course is 
for the Dattos to get together and elect a suc- 
cessor from among those eligible. 
The man the Bayang people chose for their 
new Sultan was a weak sort of person of very 
high birth, whom they selected largely because of 
the wealth and influence of his father-in-law, 
Ahmi Bancuran, whose picture, together with 
that. of the new Sultan, was published in Forest 
AND STREAM of May 27, 1905. After his election 
the new Sultan lived at Bayang for a few weeks 
but soon became frightened at the hostile atti- 
tude of Said y Ducimen and fled to his wife’s 
people at Ouato, where he took up his residence. 
With the Sultan out of the way, Said y Duci- 
men began a series of petty annoyances toward 
us. He would never come out openly as our 
enemy, nor did he pose as our friend, but main- 
tained, so far as we could ever prove, his original 
attitude of strict armed neutrality, and it is sig- 
nificant that, from the day of the Battle of 
Bayang until this visit we made to Bancuran— 
of which I am going to tell you, if I ever get to 
it—not an American set foot in Bayang. He 
didn’t exactly have us bluffed, but we were per- 
fectly willing to let well enough alone. i. 
As I say, Said y Ducimen, or “Old Cy” as we 
called him, never came out openly against us, but 
just the same he allowed his cotta to be used as 
headquarters by the hostile element of the dis- 
trict, furnished guides for war parties from other 
parts of the valley when they came over to take 
pot shots at us in the night while we were peace- 
fully sleeping, allowed his young men to tear 
down our target butts as fast as we could put’ 
them up, and in a-thousand and one ways did all 
he could to harass us. 
