650
THE GREEN BAG
boisterous river. If these articles had not gone to the botton> as indicated, their cus todian probably would have. The next day we reached a river where, ordinarily, a ferry was maintained by the provincial authorities. It had, however, been swept away by an avalanche of water several days before. It began to look as if I would have to do what I had seen no less a person than General Lawton do two years before, when we were hot on Aguinaldo's trail, viz., stop and wait for the river to go down. But no. The everlasting resourcefulness of the American soldier came to the rescue. (Our men had learned something of native customs since General Lawton crossed the Agno in '99.) One of Captain Chrisman's men espied an "hombre " 1 by the river side, with a caribao.2 The soldier pressed the hombre into service, made him take his bolo 3 and make a raft by cutting down some half dozen bamboo poles about six inches in diameter and tying them together at both ends with rattan. The raft once completed, a scene ensued which I have always poig nantly regretted not having been able to kodak, all negligible baggage having of necessity been left behind. It was the spectacle of my acutely modern 70-space keyboard Remington crossing that river by a method of transportation at least as primi tive as that which was customary in the days of Abraham. Brower and I surveyed the raft and held a consultation. Under no circumstances must his typewriter get wet. 1 Pronounced in soldier-Spanish umbry—accent on first syllable. It means an adult male native. 1 Water buffalo, the plow-animal and generalutility beast of burden of the Philippines. This creature on account of his great web-looking hoofs can plow in a rice paddy where a mule would sink up to his belly, and can swim indefinitely with out fatigue. 3 A short sword, or machete, or whatever one may wish to liken it to, worn hung to a belt at the left hip by all Filipino peasants and used for every thing from chopping down sugar cane or trees, to decapitating one's enemy, and from opening a standard oil can, to assassination.
While these bamboo rafts cannot sink, they can get submerged several inches or more, according to the weight superimposed. Accordingly, before starting across, Brower places his machine on the raft, as carefully as Daniel Boone would have placed his rifle, then takes his stand astraddle of it — Colossus-of-Rhodes-like — with one hand on the handle ready to lift the typewriter, in case the frail craft should, under stress of cargo, settle below the water line. Pas senger and freight being now aboard and ready, the hombre squats down in phleg matic comfort at the front end of the raft, catches hold of the caribao's tail, -and says something to him which being interpreted into the dialect of his happier brotherpeasant of the Georgia cotton fields would be; " Git up, mule!" The caribao strikes out, as comfortably as a mule plowing, and as unhesitatingly as a tug towing a lumber schooner, and tows the raft and contents across without mishap, his tail acting as the tow rope. This first load deposited, everything else is ferried over likewise in due time, horses led across, swimming. Nothing of note happened along the mountain trail through the region where the head hunters live, except this; late in the afternoon .of the last day of the journey, we were climbing a steep ascent, single file of course, every man dismounted, and lead ing his horse to save his strength. Brower and I were at the rear of the column. He was the very last man and I next. We two stopped to take a shot at a deer. While we tarried our escort and pack train, following the trail, turned a sharp curve far up the mountain and were lost to view and hearing. I fired. Whether I hit the deer or not will never be known. Interested in watching the shot, Brower had thrown the reins over his horse's head, so as not to be disturbed by the animal's eager nibbling at the scant vegetation peeping here and there about the path. As the report of the gun rang out, the horse became frightened, wheeled about, and started at a trot down the perilously
