agayan Valley. We made our first halt at Nanong,
where everybody brought in gifts of chickens, eggs, and _camotes_
and received beads, red cloth, pins and needles in return. What made
a particular impression here was the number of children brought in,
all wide-eyed, sloe-eyed, and some of them extremely pretty. The
remainder of the day we spent going down the left bank of the Chico,
encountered again at Nanong. Shortly after leaving this point two
large monkeys, brown with white breasts, appeared on the edge of
the trail, apparently protesting with the utmost indignation against
our presence in those parts. Harris remarked that once passing this
point alone he had run into eighteen of them, and that for a time he
thought they were going to dispute his passage. These were the only
animals we saw on the whole trip, not counting a few birds. The valley
opened hereabouts, and on the other bank, the right, a sharp-edged
terrace came into view, fully three hundred feet above the river and
continuing for miles as far as the eye could see. This must be an
unusually good example of river terrace. On our side the trail was cut
out of the cliff, solid rock, with a straight drop to the river below,
a stretch of two of the hottest miles conceivable, what with the full
blaze of the sun and the heat radiated and reflected from the face
of the cliff. I was so weak from the water I had drunk the other day
that I dismounted and walked the whole way, so that, if knocked out
by the heat, I should at least not fall off my pony; a tumble on the
wrong side would have brought the journey to a very sudden end. But,
fortunately, nothing happened, and we at last got down to the level
of the river again, only to find it half in flood and fording out of
the question. We were on the upstream side of a huge dome of rock,
rising from the river itself, the only way around which was to
cross twice. The rest of the party coming up with the _cargadores_,
we had to wait until bamboo rafts could be built, the raft really
being nothing but a flat bundle lashed together with _bejuco_. In
this case our rafts were so small that under the weight of only one
man and his kit they immediately became submarines, so that one got
partially wet crossing. Our horses and ponies were swum over.

We were six hours making the two passages; still we were in luck,
for had the stream been really up, we should simply have had to camp
on its bank and wait for the waters to fall,