CIRCUIT RIDING IN THE PHILIPPINES would have already heard about it during the five or six weeks' session just held in Cagayan Province, where their headquarters was situated. As it turned out they had no case of any kind pending. They were simply and genuinely anxious to comfort their stockholders in Paris and Madrid by helping to restore public order and the regular administration of justice. Nor was financial anxiety the only reason for their courtesy. The company's agents were nearly all Europeans, with families. They were interested in reducing to a minimum the danger to themselves and their families from assassination and arson. " In the days of the Empire," as the period of military regime in the Philippines is fondly called by those who were there then, I could, as a military officer, simply have sent ' for the Tobacco Company's Agent, borrowed his boat for as long as might be necessary and given him a certificate afterwards specifying the boat and how long it had been used. The next Quartermaster coming that way with funds would pay the bill. But alas, those halcyon days were gone forever! You could no longer be a benevolent despot, and say "Lex regis voluntas," or "this is pro bono publico and 'goes,' whether you like it or not." You had to be benevolent along prescribed lines according to the Lex Scripta. Wherefore, great was my joy at the proffer of the launch. It seemed a substantial point to be gained, if the courts of the newly inaugurated government could open, from the very beginning, at the time fixed by law, and continue to do so there after in each province, twice a year. We had but one adventure on this trip, though it took some three days to go the forty miles. At a sharp bend in the river the current proved too swift for the steam strength of our little launch. She was caught in the grip of it and carried whirling round and round some hundred of yards down stream, until we finally succeeded in pulling her into the bank by catching hold of overhanging limbs, tugging with boat
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hooks, and the like. At this junction the padrone very sensibly remarked that even if he could manage to get up a little more steam pressure than before, still, further attempts would be unwise, because if the same thing should again happen, driftwood and other things might get mixed up in the propeller and break it; and they could not get another propeller anywhere nearer than Hong Kong. It was a wonder some such catastrophe had not already happened. However, there was a tobacco hacienda, near the river, managed by a fine, hale, and hearty old Englishman, famed for his hos pitality in all the region round about. Thither we were conducted. Our host and his son between them managed to provide us with dry garments until our own could be dried. (The main baggage had been left behind to come up on a freight boat.) Then we had a bountiful supper, including wild duck and venison, killed that day in the neighborhood. At its conclusion the wife of mine host, a Portugese lady, together with her two daughters, discoursed sweet music on piano and violin until about ten or eleven o'clock, when everybody turned in for the night. Next morning bright and early — I mean early, not bright, for it was still raining as no one in America ever saw rain come down — we started to finish the rest of our trip to the Capital of Isabela province, a town called Ilagan, on horseback. This we did without further accident or incident. Having now travelled as it were, gentle reader, from the Ilocos Norte Court House to that of Cagayan, and thence to Isabela, the third provinces of the First District, you may say, with heartless nonchalance, "Oh, it could have been worse." But after a glimpse at the journey from Ilagan to my fourth provincial Capital, Bayombong, in the province of Nueva Viscaya, during the rainy season, it is confidently hoped that you will not repeat the remark just quoted. From Ilagan to Bayombong is about ninety miles. The first third of the way you are swimming rivers, mostly. After that
