them off, but it was of no use, and so we rode with our faces turned to a dim haze of low mountains bounding the plain on the east, and themselves dominated by still another range, the Sierra Madre, so distant as to look like a bank of immovable blue cloud.  For miles our plodding seemed to bring them no nearer.  If we could only get out of that sea of olive-gray grass, on which the heavy, stifling air seemed to press, and reach those nearer mountains!  Twice the path led us into sinks or depressions fully ninety or one hundred feet below the level of the plain; why these could not have been avoided when the path was first struck out is hard to imagine, unless it was to get to water.  For one of these sinks boasted of a clear, bold stream with all of its course underground save the part in the depression.  In both were full-grown trees and grateful shade.  Had we not been pressed to get through, it would have been interesting to explore these huge sinks; but we passed on, the flies, which had abandoned us on our descent, rejoining us when we climbed out on the other side.  In time we reached our mountains, arid, bare, eroded, wind-bitten, and made our way slowly and painfully up and through the pass, our trail hereabouts being nothing but a trench so deep and narrow that part of the way we could not keep our feet in the stirrups.  As we neared the crest of the range the pass disappeared, and for the last half-mile or so we attacked the ridge directly.  When we got to the top, we found a gallant breeze blowing, and, spreading out before us, the vast plains of the Cagayan Valley.  Far over in the east, and apparently no nearer than ever, rose the blue, cloud-like mountains of the Sierra Madre, now showing like a wall, which indeed they are, and one which no man has so far succeeded in scaling.  But not a sign of life, of man or beast, caught our eye.  And yet this valley is an empire in itself; its axial stream, the Rio Grande de Cagayan, or Ibanag, the “Philippine Tagus” of the ancient chronicles, the longest river of the Archipelago, by overflowing its banks every year, renews the fertility of the soil wherever its waters can reach.  We stood here on the ridge a long time, resting and looking.  Below us green ribbons, following the undulations of the plain, marked the trail of various water-courses; but, apart from this evidence of Nature’s living forces, somehow or other the entire landscape was silent and desolate.  We now began the descent, leading our ponies, for it was too steep to ride, and at last came to a stream where we found shade and grass, and, better yet, the advance guard of the party with food and drink ready.  Our next stage was over rolling country, covered with fine short grass; once over this, the ground broke in our front, and we made the descent, finally coming out on the lowest floor of the valley at Enrile, two or three miles from the river.  Night was falling as we made our way through its grass-grown streets, finding the air heavy, the people dull-looking, and everything commonplace:  we had already begun to miss our mountains.