cession danced
its way, beating on the striped shields with their drum-sticks and
on their _bangibang_. This last is a kind of wooden stick, made of
resonant hard wood, coated over with chicken blood. It is extremely
old. It is curved slightly and is about two feet long, and is held in
one hand suspended by a _bejuco_ string so that the vibrations are
not interfered with. It is beaten with a drum-stick, as is also the
shield. The _gansa_, or brass gong, the usual musical instrument of
the Ifugaos, is never used in the funeral of a beheaded man. The two
men who headed each procession carried two spears each. Behind came a
man carrying a spear and shield. The two in front faced the on-coming
procession, stepping most of the time backward, making thrusts toward
the two who bore the spears and shields. The bearers of spear and
shield made thrusts at them, the whole being a dance which in some
respects resembles one of the head-dances of the Bontoc Igorots. From
the high place on the trail where I was, they looked, in the distance,
like nothing so much as columns of centipedes or files of ants all
creeping slowly along the dikes of the rice-paddies toward the central
place. It usually takes an hour for such a procession to cover one
mile. The beating of shield and stick could easily be heard across
the wide valley on that still morning.

"Arriving at Aliguyen's house, we found him sitting on a block
facing the sun, lying against his shield, which was supported
by the side of the house. The body was in a terrible state of
decomposition. It was swollen to three times its living girth. Great
blisters had collected under the epidermis, which broke from time
to time, a brownish red fluid escaping. The spear wound in his
neck was plugged by a wooden spear-head. In each hand Aliguyen
held a wooden spear. No attempt whatever had been made to prevent
decomposition of the body or the entrance to it of flies. From the
mouth gas bubbled out continually. Two old women on each side with
penholder-shaped loom-sticks about two feet long continually poked
at Aliguyen's face and the wound to wake him up. From time to time
they caught the grewsome head by the hair and shook it violently,
shouting, Who-oo-oo! Aliguyen, wake up! Open your eyes! Look down
on Kurug. [Kurug being the _rancheria_ from which came Aliguyen's
murderer.] Take his father and his mother, his wife and his children,
and his first cousins and his second cousins, and his rel