For, with free communication and diminishing hostility, interchange of commodities must needs take place.  Indeed, the relations existing between rancherias are nothing but our own system of high protection carried to a logical extreme by imposing a prohibitive tariff on heads!  Fundamentally, granted an extremely limited food-supply, every stranger is an enemy, and the shortest way to be rid of the difficulty involved in his presence is to reduce him to the impossibility of eating.

On reaching the top of Tinglayan Hill, which we did shortly after leaving the poor people just mentioned, we saw a man coming towards us accompanied by thirty or forty boys not more than ten or eleven years of age, all gee-stringed, and eight of them carrying head-axes on their hips.  When the man got up, he handed Mr. Worcester a bamboo about a yard long.  Mr. Worcester drank and then passed it on back to us, the best stuff, it seemed to us that hot morning, we had ever tasted.  We were now in the basi country; this being a sort of fermented sugar-cane juice, judiciously diluted with water. [39] The boys now formed a sort of column with the ax-bearers immediately in front of Mr. Worcester as a guard of honor, and we got a good look at them, well-built, erect, of a light brown, with black flowing hair.  They were as healthy-looking as possible, and, what is more, intelligent of countenance—­by all odds the brightest, most cheerful lot of youngsters we had yet seen.  As we moved off they set up a chant, clear and wild, beginning with a high note and concluding with as deep a one as their young voices could compass.  The thing was as beautiful as it was wild, and astonishing from the number and range of notes used.

Marching thus, we came upon a large gathering of men, women, and children, to whom various gifts of cloth, pins, beads, etc., were made.  Here Gallman found, to his amazement, that he could understand the speech of these people.  Not trusting his own ear in the matter, he sent Comhit about to talk to them, and reported afterward that both not only had understood what was said, but had made their own selves understood.  Neither of them could make out a word in the poor village we had just passed through, nor anywhere else on the road in the Bontok country.

We now began the long descent to Tinglayan, seven miles, most of us walking and leading our ponies.  At Tinglayan, instead of the usual cheerful crowd waiting to welcome us, we found only a few extremely sullen men and women, who held themselves persistently aloof.  There were no children, neither were chickens nor eggs offered—­a bad sign.  This reception was due entirely to the refusal of the authorities to give up the Constabulary private that had but recently shot and killed the head man of the rancheria, as already explained.  However, in time, Mr. Worcester prevailed on the few present to accept gifts, and we affected not to notice the character of our reception,