We continued our journey on the 10th, leaving Van Schaick behind, and also Cootes, both of whom had been taken ill, not seriously, but enough to make it safer to fall out than to go on.  On this day, the relations between neighboring rancherias being uncertain, we changed cargadoros at the outskirts of each village we came to.  We could undoubtedly have taken the same set of men through, but it was thought best not to try it.  At the same time, the mere fact of our riding through unmolested, and still more the fact that Gallman was taking a party of Ifugaos with him to show them the country, is proof positive that peace is making its way in the North, just as it has already done farther south.

Our first day the going was very hilly, and very hot; we dismounted frequently so as to spare our cattle over the steepest ups and downs.  As before, not only was the scenery that unfolded itself, as we rose from the valley of the Rio Chico, of great beauty, but it increased in beauty the farther north we travelled.  And I can not but regret again my inability to give some idea, however faint, of these mountains and valleys and rivers, especially of those that paraded themselves before us on the second day’s ride.

About four hours out (the hour, and not the mile, being the unit of the highlands), as we were nearing the top of a ridge, a party of young women and girls came out of the wood on our left, each with a banana-leaf skirt on, no less and no more.  They had simply stripped off one side of the leaf, and, after splitting the other into ribbons, had wrapped the stem about their waists, and there they were, each with a sufficient skirt.  One of them had apparently never seen a horse before, and showed so much interest that Pack gallantly offered to let her mount his and take a ride.  When the remainder of her party understood from her motions that she was actually going to bestride that monster, they set up a chorus of ear-piercing shrieks and screams and laid hold on their insane sister, and besought her with lamentations not to risk her life.  During the struggle, Mr. Worcester came up and produced a diversion by offering red cloth, and, moving to the top of the ridge for the distribution, we found there some twenty-five or thirty more damsels, of all ages from grandmother to mere tot, and all banana-skirted.  Mr. Worcester said that in all his experience he had never seen the like before.  Heiser, in the meantime, had got out his camera and tried to form a group with the children in front and the older ones back.  But when they realized that the effect of this would be to conceal all but the heads and shoulders of those in rear, the group broke up almost automatically, giving way to a line with arms linked, which no amount of effort on anyone’s part succeeded in breaking.  Each one was resolved to be in the picture at full length!  In the crowd, looking on, was a man carrying an albino, a child two or three years of age, with absolutely fair white