We waited in vain three days for the storm to end and then rode
on. Mr. Scheerer, who accompanied us, had sent ahead to arrange for
lunch at the house of a rich Igorot named Acop, but when we arrived at
this man's place, soaked, cold, and hungry, we found it shut up. He
had not received the message and was away from home. Investigation
showed that our only resource in the commissary line were some
wads of sticky, unsalted, boiled rice which our Igorot carriers had
inside their hats, in contact with their frowsy hair. We bolted as
much of this as the Igorots could spare, killing its rather high
flavour with cayenne peppers picked beside the trail, and continued
our journey. In descending a steep hill my horse stumbled and while
attempting to recover himself drove a sharp stone into his hoof and
turned a complete somersault, throwing me over his head on to the
rocks. When I got him up he was dead lame, and I walked the rest of
the way to Ambuklao, where we arrived just at sunset.
This once prosperous little Igorot hamlet had been burned by the
Spaniards, for no apparent reason, during their flight from the
province in 1906, and we found only two houses standing. They were
naturally crowded. I was so dead with fatigue that I threw my saddle on
the ground, and using it as a pillow, lay down in a couple of inches
of water and fell sound asleep.
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