Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 150, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1917 — Mountaineering In The Philippines [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Mountaineering In The Philippines

THIS morning I awoke to the crackle of resinous knots in the great fireplace. The air was cool and bracing. Outside, the breezes stirred the giant pines whose mastlike trunks reached high into the air in a vain attempt to look over the 1,000-foot cliff against which our log resthouse nestles in a bed of ferns, writes Maynard Owen Williams to the Christian Herald. We are on the mountain trail of Benguet, in northern Luzon, in the Philippines, resting in a resthouse which deserves the name. Roughing it in northern Luzon is what Irvin Cobb would call “de luxe.” Rich, flavory oyster stew, fricasseed chicken, tender peas, sweet potatoes, tea, blueberries and hot biscuit and honey are all we have had for lunch, but we had all we could eat, and the Filipino cook is the best cook and the tidiest housekeeper in the Philippines, which is going some. To appreciate the cool shade of the lofty pines and the clean, rustic charm of our pine palace of repose, we must shoot back to Manila and begin our trip by auto in the delightful cool of morning. Several men with whom I had expected to have interviews were either out of Manila or in the hospital, and things seemed to be moving in a circle. Then, one morning, I read that Director of Education Marquardt, Prof. R. M.McElroy of Princeton and others were to make a tour of inspection of the schools in the Igorrote and Ifugao districts north of Baguio, ,and I proceeded, as diplomatically as possible, to “butt In.” We are traveling In the wilds, where a few years ago head-hunters made gruesome collections. There are pythons here and wild boar and other game in plenty, none of which I have seen trace of as yet.

Motoring on Fine Roads. It is ten hours by auto from Manila to the summer capital of the Philippines at Baguio, 175 miles away and 5,000 feet higher up, where blankets are needed in summer. For 50 kilometers from Manila the big seven-passenger car in which Mr. Miller, his twelve-year-old son, Professor McElroy and myself traveled, rolled luxuriously over the fine roads through towering arches of coconut palms, mango trees and fire trees (which become a mass of red blossoms) over old Spanish bridges and modern concrete ones spanning shhdy, curving streams in which derricklike fishing nets rose above the boats, which lay idly at anchor in the warm radiance of the morning light. We passed thousands of nipa huts, with thatched /oofs, built up on stilts so as to keep them dry in the heavy rains, and to afford a shady retreat for the razor-backed porkers with long snouts like their wild ancestors, and the spindly legged game roosters with shiny plumage, slender necks and heads, and boastful crows—the sporting animals of the Islands. In every town there is a Catholic church, Its steeple topping the view and its; whitewashed or calclmined walls crumbling through the ravages of time in a humid climate. Farther on, towns are fewer, and the heat beats into one’s face in hot gusts, while the baked fields seem almost barren, except for cogon grass or weeds. For miles we did not see a house, and the only sign of life was the wavering rush of crowded motorcars, which dash by at frenzied speed. After passing a toll bridge, which collapses when the rainy season makes heavy bamboo rafts necessary, we turned aside from the main road and visited the North Luzon. Agricultural college at Las Munos. • Teaching the Natives Farming. LThe school is not a show place, but a workshop, and its director, Mr. Moe, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, is working with ideas rather than, expensive equipment. Tuition is free, and each boy .earns his food by working at productive labor at the rate of three cents an hour, with meals costing four cents each. The boys not only build their own buildings, but have set up a machine shop with a 'discarded traction engine, which cost SSO, dismounted and made to drive the machines. The moving picture machine and the stereopticon are used regularly, and six miles of irrigation canals bring water from the nearby hills. As yet it is a barren place, for if only one farm irrigates, the bug population of the county hold a convention and festival in its crop beds; but by co-operating with the homesteaders, additional fields are now being irrigated, and an era of prosperity is setting in. Nicholas Ruiz, a former teacher, at sll a month, made $2,500

last year through the knowledge he gained at Las Munos, and a higher standard of living is Inevitable. The school is not an experiment stalloil, but a college. Its extension work exerts a wide influence, however, as its graduates emigrate to the fertile plateau of Mindanao and many other places. After leaving Las Munos the road runs as straight as a die for miles on end. Then comes the famous Benguet road, 15 miles long, one of the finest mountain roads in the world, over which the sturdy automobile trucks carry freight and passengers from the hot plain to the cool summer resort. It was surveyed by army experts, who said it would cost $75,000. So far, it ♦as cost 40. times that amount, and frequent slides and washouts add to the total cost annually. Peculiarities of Baguio. Baguio is not a place, but a collection of places, separated by pineciad hills and lovely valleys. Mrs. McElroy was at Gamp John Hay, two miles from the hotel, and the professor and I set out after dinner to find her. The moon was bright and nearly full, the roads Inviting and the air delightful. Here and there the lights of a rambling residence 'shone from some rounded knoll above which the stately pines rose in silhouette against the glorious Southern Cross. After more than an hour of walking and a dozen questions, we arrived at the corral and, by accident, cam'e upon the cottage w’here she was staying. After a false start and a new start I made the four kilometers back to the hotel in 40 minutes.

I slept well, getting up at 2 a. m. and putting on a sweater coat and pulling the blankets closer around me. Shivering In the Philippines. Brr-rrr! We spent next morning selecting horses, or rather ponies, for our trip and visiting the dog market, where the Igorotes bought and sold half-starved canines with visions of a great feast off the protruding ribs. The Igorrotes are about as much like the cultured Filipinos as they are are like cultured Americans or cultured Japanese ; but the fact that the Igorrotes eat dogs has done as much to prejudice us against the Filipinos as has the story that the Chinese eat rats td turn us against the well-bred Chinese, who not only do not eat rats, but even have a distaste for caviar and limburger. Our first 12 kilometers from Baguio were made In a motorcar on a narrow trail, with primitive bridges and sharp turns. On the way we passed parties of Igorrotes returning from the mountain metropolis, leading gaunt dogs with cords in the middle of which a stick was tied, or black porkers with lead reins knotted through their ears. Our motorcar caused no surprise. Mr. Moss, whose 13 years among the mountain peoples makes him an authority, says that the Igorrotes would be surprised if the Americans did not surprise them.

Up the Mountain on Ponies. Mounting our small ponies, we rode for 18 kilometers over high trails, then on the hillside opposite, stood the log hut that was to house us for the night. A sharp gallop of a few minutes brought us to the resthouse at Camp Thirty, 30 kilometers from Baguio. Our evening meal was excellent and the big fire was a welcome companion. After dinner we stepped out into the moonlight. Someone said, “This is Sunday,” and the reverent answer was, “I don’t believe I ever worshiped God more truly than today!” I went out to see how my little buckskin pony was faring, and after he had rubbed his nose against my hand 1 left the dark stable and walked slowly to the rough hut that was home for the night. One great pine stood out black and mighty against the sky in which the last light of day lingered. As I entered the big room where the men sat around the bright fire,-1 noticed that I had been humming:

“Now the day Is over. Night is drawing nigh; Shadows of the evening Steel across the sky.” Up there, on the “long, long trail a-wlndlng back to the land of my dreams,” a song had spontaneously sprung to my lips. It was Sunday, and that was my evening hymn, high up on the mountainside, under the stars.

FART OF THE TRAIL TO THE MOUNTAIN TOPS