Our first business was to listen to reports and addresses.  So we all went upstairs in the Government House, the presidencia; the Governor-General, Mr. Worcester, and the presidente took their seats on a dais, while the rest of us, with the local Americans and some of the native inhabitants, formed the audience, and listened to a report read by the treasurer.  This made a great impression on us, so sensible and businesslike was it; not content with a statement, it went on to describe the affairs of the province, the possibilities of agriculture, and what could be accomplished if the people would turn to and work, and in particular it made no complaints.  Apparently this report alarmed the presidente, for he left his seat on the platform as soon as he decently could, and delivered a speech intended to traverse the treasurer’s report.  His concern was almost comic:  the idea of saying to the Governor-General that a great deal could be done locally by work, when there was a central Government at Manila!  Mr. Forbes, as usual, made in his turn a very sound speech, based on his observation in the province, on its fertility, its possibilities, the necessity of improving communications and of diversifying crops.  I noticed here, as elsewhere in the province, the excellence of the Spanish used in speeches.  As for the treasurer, we were informed that he had been taken in hand at an early age by the Americans and trained, so that in making his reports he had developed the ability to look upon the merits of the question in hand.  But he must feel himself to be a unique person!

We rested here in Bayombong through the heat of the day, part going to Governor Bryant’s house, the rest of us to that of Captain Browne, the local Inspector of Constabulary.  I have a grateful recollection of his hospitality, as well as of that of his brother officers, with whom we dined.  Nor must I forget the Standard Oil Company.  For had not Browne rigged up a shower, consisting of the Standard five-gallon tin?  A muchacho filled it with water and pulled it up over a pulley, and you got an excellent shower from the holes punched in the bottom.  In fact, the Standard five-gallon tin is as well known in the East as its contents, and is carefully preserved and used.  We had several opportunities to bless its existence.

Pleasant as was the nooning, it had to end:  we mounted and rode on to Solano.  On the way Bubud insisted on drinking from a dirty swamp by the roadside, although there was a limpid stream not fifty yards ahead which he could see as well as I. But there was nothing for it but the swamp; I accordingly let him have his way, only to find the bank slippery and the water deep, so that he went in up to his shoulders, with his hindquarters on the bank.  While I was trying to pull him back, he got in his hindquarters, and then, in further answer to my efforts, sat down in the water!  And such water!  Thick, greasy, smelly!  A carabao wallow it was.  He