to his feet, and shouted at them until they became more afraid of him than of the sea, and pulled for dear life until we were out of danger.  Upon arrival at the ship we watched with interest the progress of other boats through the surf, and were alarmed to see the men in one madly divesting themselves of their clothing.  When it finally came alongside its occupants made flying leaps for the gangway, and we discovered that a great hole had been knocked in its bottom, and that raincoats, ordinary coats, and trousers had been jammed into this opening in order to keep the rapidly sinking craft afloat for a few moments.

In the Cagayan valley we had a taste of real tropical heat.  Never have I seen a man suffer more than did Mr. Taft at Ilagan on the day when we established a provincial government for Isabela, and the night that followed still lingers in my memory.  The air was suffocating.  My bed was in a corner.  I dragged it out between a window and a door and threw both wide open.  Still I could not sleep.  Slipping off my pajamas, I seated myself on the broad window sill.  The heat was intolerable.  I poured water over myself and resumed my seat in the window.  The water would not evaporate.  I sat there until morning, as I could not endure the heat lying down.

Such conditions are unknown throughout the greater part of the archipelago, where cool sea breezes temper the heat at all times.  In the Cagayan valley an immense plain is bordered by ranges of high mountains to the east and the west.  They seem to shut off both monsoons to a considerable extent, and there very trying heat is by no means unusual.

On September 1, 1901, the first day of the second year of actual service of the commission, a complete central civil government was established.  Commissioner Wright was appointed secretary of commerce and police; Commissioner Ide, secretary of finance and justice; Commissioner Moses, secretary of public instruction, and I myself secretary of the interior.  The commission was strengthened by the addition of three Filipino members:  Senor Benito Legarda, Senor Jose R. de Luzuriaga, and Dr. T. H. Pardo de Tavera, all of whom were men of exceptional ability and had rendered distinguished service in the establishment of peace and order.

Except for the addition of one more Filipino on July 6, 1908, the organization of the commission has remained unchanged up to the present time, although there have been numerous changes in its personnel.  The task which lay before it was to enact a code of laws adapted to the peculiar conditions existing in the Philippines, and this was indeed a herculean undertaking.  Its members laboured unremittingly.  Governor Taft and General Wright were towers of strength in the early days.  The rest of us did what we could, and I, for one, am very proud of the result.  Certainly no one can ever claim that the commission was not industrious.  Before it finally ceased to be the legislative body of the islands it had passed some eighteen hundred acts.  Obviously, as it is not my purpose to write an encyclopedia of law, I cannot discuss them in detail, and must content myself with here barely mentioning a few of the more important results obtained, leaving the more detailed discussion of some of them for later chapters.