poles, thus making rice-flour, which they baked
in clean banana-leaves and sweetened with brown sugar molded in the
shells of cocoanuts.

Sometimes a Moro boat would drop into the bay, and the strange-looking
savages in their tight-fitting, gaudy clothes would file through town
with spices, bark, and cloth for sale. From Bohol came the curious
thatched _bancas_, with their grass sails and bamboo outriggers, with
cargoes of pottery, woven hats, _bohoka_, and rattan. On the _fiesta_
days, Subanos from the mountains brought in strips of dried tobacco,
ready to be rolled up into long cigars, _camotes_, coffee-berries,
chocolate, and eggs, and squatted at the entrance to the cockpit in
an improvised _mercado_ with the people from the shore, who offered
clams and _guinimos_ for sale.

And once a month the town would be awakened by the siren whistle
of the little hemp-boat from Cebu. This whistle was the signal
for the small boys to extract the reluctant carabao from the cool,
sticky wallow, and yoke him to the creaking bamboo cart. Then from
the storehouses the fragrant _picos_ of hemp would be piled on,
and the longsuffering beast of burden, aided and abetted by a rope
run through his nose, would haul the load down to the beach. While
naked laborers were toiling with the cargo, carrying it upon their
shoulders through the surf, the Spanish captain and the mate, with
rakishly-tilted Tam o'Shanter caps, would light their cigarettes,
stroll over to Ramon's warehouse where the hemp was being weighed,
and, seated on sour-smelling sacks of _copra_, chat with old Ramon,
partaking later of a dinner of _balenciona_, chicken and red-peppers,
cheese and guava.

Much of the village life centers around the river. Here in the early
morning come the girls and women wrapped in robes of red and yellow
stripes, and with their hair unbound. In family parties the whole
village takes a morning bath, the young men poising their athletic
bodies on an overhanging bank and plunging down into the cool depths
below, the children splashing in the shallow water, and the women
breast-deep in the stream, washing their long hair.

Here also, during the morning hours, the women take their
washing. Tying the _chemise_ below the arms, they squat down near the
shore and beat the wet mass with a wooden paddle on a rock. Meanwhile
the children build extensive palaces of pebbles on the bank; the
carabaos, up to their noses in the river, dream in the refreshi