itant of the
lowlands, has a right to demand that it should be made, and kept,
readily accessible. Existing accommodations are nothing like adequate
for the crowds which desire to take advantage of them during the
season. Hotels are filled to overflowing. There are always several
different applicants for each government cottage. Many persons who
would be glad to spend the hot months in the Benguet mountains find
it impossible to do so, because they cannot obtain accommodation,
and at present many more are obliged to shorten their stay in order
to give others a chance.

In the early days, when we were facing unforeseen difficulties and
discouragements, I was for a time the one member of the Philippine
Commission who was really enthusiastically in favour of carrying
out the original plans for the summer capital. It was then the
fashion to charge me with responsibility for the policy of opening
up communication with the place and for the mistakes made in the
construction of the Benguet Road, although I had never had any control
over the road work and had been one of five at first, and later one
of nine, to vote for every appropriation found necessary in order to
complete it.

It was the enthusiasm of Mr. Forbes which at a critical time finally
saved the situation, and now that Baguio has arrived, and the wisdom of
the policy so long pursued in the face of manifold discouragements has
been demonstrated, my one fear is that he will get all the glory and
that I shall be denied credit for the part which I actually did play
in bringing about the determination to establish quick communication
with one of the most wonderful mountain health resorts to be found in
any tropical country, and in giving that determination effect. But I
have had a more than abundant reward of another sort. My wife, my son
and I myself, when seriously ill, have been restored to vigorous health
by brief sojourns at this one of the world's great health resorts.

It has been very much the fashion for Filipino politicians to rail at
Baguio, and now that the dangerous experiment of giving them control
of both houses of the legislature is being made, they may refuse to
appropriate the sums necessary to make possible the annual transfer
of the insular government to that place. The result of such a bit of
politics would be a marked increase in the present extraordinarily
low death rate among government officers and employees, American and
Filipino, [515] beg