the water at our breasts, and halted only
once in that rapid march of fifteen miles.

About a quarter of a mile from the town we met a man who was standing
guard against a surprise by the ladrones. Nothing could well have been
much more grotesque and nothing could much better illustrate the
absolutely primitive condition of the Filipinos in the interior of the
islands than the appearance of this guard. A pair of knee pants, a
conical grass hat, and a hemp shirt formed his entire apparel. A long
flat wooden shield, a bolo, and a long bamboo spear with a sharp,
flat, iron point, completed his equipment for battle.

Here stood the first and the twentieth centuries side by side. The
Filipino who had advanced only a stage beyond the condition of
primitive man with his knife, spear, and wooden shield, stood side by
side with the American soldier, a representative of modern life with
his magazine rifle, his canteen, his knapsack,--with every article of
his clothing made to give him the highest possible efficiency as the
unit of a military organization.

A few yards farther on we met another guard equipped similarly to the
first. Upon reaching the town, news had just been received that a
detachment of troops from another post had intercepted the ladrones
and fought a skirmish with them. The ladrones had escaped and we set
out in pursuit of them on a chase wilder than a Quixotic dream. We
wound our way into the mountains behind the town, inquiring at every
grass hut we passed whether the band of ladrones had passed that way,
but only once was even a trace of them found. Then it was learned that
at a certain place they had separated into groups of three or four and
gone glimmering through the dream of things that were. This place was
in a secluded nook of the mountains where in years gone by some
adventurous Spaniard had erected a primitive water mill to grind his
sugar-cane. We had now marched about twenty miles and the feet of the
pedagogues were a mass of blisters. They had reached the point where
that form of military maneuvering called "hiking" ceased to possess
any alluring charms. So a native was persuaded to come out of his lone
mountain hut and hitch up his carabao and cart. He was then made to
get on the carabao's back, while the aforesaid pedagogues lay down on
the sugar-cane pulp that had been put into the body of the cart, and
the driver was instructed to start for the post we had left hours
before, and not to st