a fate that sometimes
overtakes the traveller in a country where an innocent stream may
become a raging torrent almost while one is looking at it.

We slept that night in a rest-house just across the river from Tabuk,
and next morning the party divided, Mr. Worcester, Dr. Strong,
Governor Pack, and Lieutenant-Governor Villamor to continue the
mountain trip into Apayao, while the remainder of us, having been
invited to accompany Mr. Worcester only as far as Tabuk, went on to
the Cagayan River. It may be of interest, however, to say a few words
here about the Apayao country, my authority being the "Seventh Annual
Report of the Secretary of the Interior to the Philippine Commission"
for the fiscal year 1907-1908.

This country was first visited by Mr. Worcester in 1906. The Spanish
Government never having succeeded in gaining a foothold in it. "During
the insurrection Lieutenant Gilmore, of the United States Navy, and
his fellow-captives were taken into the southern part of it and there
abandoned." "So far as is known, no white man had ever penetrated
the southern and central portions of Apayao until" Mr. Worcester,
suitably accompanied and escorted, crossed the Cordillera, in 1906,
from North Ilokos. A later expedition, commanded by a Constabulary
officer, was attacked, not necessarily from any hostility to it
as such, but because it was accompanied by natives hostile to a
_rancheria_ (Guenned) approached on the way. A punitive expedition,
led by the same officer, afterward met with some success, but American
popularity suffered in consequence. The Apayao country is the only
sub-province under a native Governor, and its Governor, Senor Blas
Villamor, is the only Filipino that has ever shown any interest in
or sympathy for the highlanders. His task has been a difficult one;
for example, his only line of communication, the Abulug River, runs
through a territory inhabited by Negritos, who had been so abused
by the Christian natives on the one hand, and whose heads had been
so diligently sought by the wild Tinguians of the mountains, on the
other, that they had acquired the habit of greeting strangers with
poisoned arrows. His mountain region itself was inhabited by inveterate
head-hunters, most of whom had never even seen a white man. Conditions
are improving, however; the raids against the Christian and Negrito
inhabitants of the lowlands of Cagayan have been completely checked,
and Mr. Worcester hopes that head-hunting