At the divide we crossed from Pangasinan into Nueva Vizcaya.  And with the crossing began the forest just mentioned, and a long descent for us.  Our immediate destination was Amugan, our first rest halt.  It is of absolutely no use to try to describe this part of the trip.  If the confusion of trees, vines, orchids, tree ferns, foliage plants, creepers, was bewildering, so was the impression produced.  But we saw many examples of the most beautiful begonia in existence, in full blossom, gorgeous spheres of dark scarlet hanging above and around us.  According to Mr. Worcester, all attempts to transplant it have failed.  Its blossoms would be sometimes twenty and thirty feet in the air.  Nothing could exceed the glory of these masses of flowers, sometimes a foot and more in diameter, as projected by the rays of the early morning sun against the dark green background, the whole glistening and dripping in the rain-like dew.  Tree ferns abounded; we passed one that must have been over sixty feet high.  At one halt the ground about was aflame with yellow orchids, growing out of the ground.  And there was one plant that I recognized myself, unaided, the wild tomato, a little thing of eight or nine inches, but holding up its head with all the rest of them.  As always, on this trip, however, it was the splendor of the country that held the attention, the wild incoherent mountain masses thrown together apparently without order or system, buttressed peaks, mighty flanks riven to the core by deep valleys, radiating spurs, re-entrant gorges, the limit of vision filled by crenellated ranges in all the serenity of their distant majesty.  And then, as our trail wound in and out, different aspects of the same elements would present themselves, until really the faculty of admiration became exhausted.  And so on down we went, to be greeted as we neared Amugan by a sound of tom-toms; it was a party that had come out to welcome us, carrying the American flag and beating the gansa (tom-tom) by way of music.  The gansa, made of bronze, in shape resembles a circular pan about twelve or thirteen inches in diameter, with a border of about two inches turned up at right angles to the face.  On the march it is hung from a string and beaten with a stick.  At a halt it is beaten with the open hand.

After crossing a coffee plantation, we reached a little settlement, where we off-saddled and took a bite after six hours’ riding.  The half-dozen houses of this tiny village are of the usual Filipino type, and the very few inhabitants were dressed after the fashion of the Christianized provinces.  Nevertheless, we here first encountered the savage we had come up to see; for not only did they have the gansa, but they offered us a canao.  This is a feast of which we shall have splendid examples later on, with dancing, beating of gansas, drinking and so on, and the sacrifice of a pig.