with a decidedly Flemish facade,
and a detached pagoda-like belfry. Its streets are overgrown with fine
soft grass, and its houses had somehow or other an air of comfort and
ease. Here we made quite a stop, first of all quenching our thirst with
_bubud_, beer, cocoanut milk, anything, everything, for we had ridden
nearly all the way so far in the sun. We then sat down to an excellent
breakfast, and smoked and lounged about until two, when fresh ponies
were brought, and we set off on a side trip to Campote, where we were
to have our first contact with the real wild man, the Ilongot. [12]

CHAPTER VI

The Ilongots and their country.--Efforts of our Government
to reach these people.--The forest trail.--Our first contact
with the wild man.

These people, the Ilongots, although very few in number, only six
thousand, stretch from Nueva Vizcaya to the Pacific Coast, inhabiting
an immense region of forested and all but inaccessible mountains. Over
these they roam without any specially fixed habitation. They have the
reputation, and apparently deserve it, of being cruel and treacherous,
as they certainly are shy and wild. It was these people who killed
Doctor Jones, of the Marshall Field Museum, after he had been with
them eight or nine months. So recently as 1907 they made a descent on
Dupax, killing people and taking their heads. When they mean to kill a
man fairly, according to their ideas, they hand him a fish. This is a
signal that he must be on his guard: to refuse the fish is of no use,
because by so doing one puts one's self beyond the pale, and may be
killed in any fashion. We heard a story here of a Negrito stealing a
pig from two Ilongots who had a Negrito brother-in-law. Failing to
recover the pig, they decided that they must have a Negrito head,
and so took their brother-in-law's. Pig-stealing, by the way, in
the mountain country is regarded much as horse-stealing used to be
out West. Besides the spear and head knife, the Ilongots, like the
Negritos, with whom they have intermarried to a certain extent, use
the bow and arrow, and are correspondingly dreaded. For it seems to be
believed in Luzon that bow-and-arrow savages are more dangerous than
spear-and-ax-men; that the use of this projectile weapon, the arrow,
induces craftiness, hard to contend against. An Ilongot can silently
shoot you in the back, after you have passed. A spear-man has to get
closer, and can not use an ambush so readily. [1