We found conditions exactly as described in the Spanish report.  The country was gently rolling, its elevation ranging from forty-five hundred to fifty-two hundred feet.  The hills were covered with short, thick grass, and with magnificent pine trees, which for the most part grew at considerable distance from each other, while along the streams there were wonderful tree ferns and luxuriant tangles of beautiful tropical vegetation.  It took us but a short time to decide that here was an ideal site for a future city, if water could be found in sufficient quantity.

We revisited each of the several springs discovered and described by the Spanish committee, but decided that they would be inadequate to supply a town of any great size.  Mr. Scheerer now came to the front and guided us to the very thing that we were looking for, but had hardly dared hope to find; namely, a magnificent spring of crystal-clear water.  At that time it was flowing nearly a million gallons per day.  It burst forth from a hillside in such a manner as to make its protection from surface drainage easy, and we decided that there was nothing lacking to make Baguio an admirable site for the future summer capital and health resort of the Philippines.

It was obvious that the construction of a highway from San Fernando, in Union, to Baguio would involve considerable expense, and we asked Mr. Scheerer about other possible lines of communication.  A study of the Spanish maps had led us to consider two:  one up the valley of the Agno River, and the other up that of the Bued River.  The latter route had the great advantage of affording direct communication with the end of the railway line at Dagupan.

Mr. Scheerer took us to a point which commanded a view for some distance down the Bued River valley, and conditions looked rather favourable.  Mr. Higgins undertook to make a trip down this valley to the plains of Pangasinan, reporting to us on his arrival at Manila, so we returned to that place and awaited advices from him.  He was furnished with a guard of soldiers from Trinidad, and attempted to go down the river bed, but encountered unexpected difficulties, and his progress was finally checked by a box canon from which he escaped with difficulty, spending a night without food or water on a chilly mountain top known as “Thumb Peak.”  The following morning he managed to cross to a high mountain called Santo Tomas, whence he returned to Baguio.  He was, however, of the opinion that the trip down the canon could be made without special difficulty by a party suitably provided with food and tentage.

Convinced by our report that active measures should be taken to establish communication with this wonderful region, the commission, on September 12, 1900, appropriated $5000 Mexican, “for the purpose of making a survey to ascertain the most advantageous route for a railway into the mountains of Benguet, Island of Luzon, and the probable cost thereof.”