Women carry as large burdens as do the men.  They have two commonly employed transportation baskets, neither of which have I seen a man even so much as pick up.  These are the shallow, pan-shaped lu’-wa and the deeper, larger tay-ya-an’.  In these two baskets, and also at times in the man’s ki-ma’-ta, the women carry the same things as are borne by the men.  Not infrequently the woman uses her two baskets together at the same time —­ the tay-ya-an’ setting in the lu’-wa, as is shown in Pls.  CXIX and CXXI.  When she carries the ki-ma’-ta she places the middle of the connecting pole, the pal-tang on her head, with one basket before her and the other behind.  At all times the woman wears on her head beneath her burden a small grass ring 5 or 6 inches in diameter, called a “ki’-kan.”  Its chief function is that of a cushion, though when her burden is a fang’-a of water the ki’-kan becomes also a base —­ without which the round-bottomed olla could not be balanced on her head without the support of her hands.

The woman’s rain protector is often brought home from the camote gardens bottom up on the woman’s head full of camote vines as food for the pigs, or with long, dry grass for their bedding.  And, as has been noted, all day long during April and May, when there were no camote vines, women and little girls were going about bearing their small scoop-shaped sug-fi’ gathering wild vegetation for the hogs.

Almost all of the water used in Bontoc is carried from the river to the pueblo, a distance ranging from a quarter to half a mile.  The women and girls of a dozen years or more probably transport three-fourths of the water used about the house.  It is carried in 4 to 6 gallon ollas borne on the head of the woman or shoulder of the man.  Women totally blind, and many others nearly blind, are seen alone at the river getting water.

About half the women and many of the men who go to the river daily for water carry babes.  Children from 1 to 4 years old are frequently carried to and from the sementeras by their parents, and at all times of the day men, women, and children carry babes about the pueblo.  They are commonly carried on the back, sitting in a blanket which is slung over one shoulder, passing under the other, and tied across the breast.  Frequently the babe is shifted forward, sitting astride the hip.  At times, though rarely, it is carried in front of the person.  A frequent sight is that of a woman with a babe in the blanket on her back and an older child astride her hip supported by her encircling arm.

When one sees a woman returning from the river to the pueblo at sundown a child on her back and a 6-gallon jar of water on her head, and knows that she toiled ten or twelve hours that day in the field with her back bent and her eyes on the earth like a quadruped, and yet finds her strong and joyful, he believes in the future of the mountain people of Luzon if they are guided wisely —­ they have the strength and courage to toil and the elasticity of mind and spirit necessary for development.