We went down the splendid Benguet Road, following the bed of the Bued River [8] to the railway, a drop of over 4,000 feet in thirteen miles.  Strange to say, the stream had not risen at all, a fortunate circumstance, as one hundred and sixty bridges are crossed in the drop, and at times a rise will wash out not only the bridges, but all semblance of a road. [9] At the railway we turned south over the great plain of Pangasinan.  This, in respect of roads, is the show province of the Archipelago and deserves its reputation, one hundred and twenty miles having been built.  Those we passed over this day would have been called good in France even.  Our passage was of the nature of a progress, thanks to the presence of the Governor-General.  Simple bamboo arches crossing the road greeted us everywhere, Mr. Forbes punctiliously raising his hat under every one.  All the villages had decorated their houses; handkerchiefs, petticoats, red table-cloths, anything and everything had been hung out of the windows by way of flags and banners.  Across the front of the municipal building of one village was stretched a banner with this inscription, “En honor de la venida del Gobernador General y de su Comitiva” ("In honor of the arrival of the Governor-General and of his retinue"), and then below on the next band, “Deseamos iener un pozo artesiano” ("We should like to have an Artesian well"), which led Mr. Worcester to remark that four years before the banner would have demanded “independencia” (independence), and not an Artesian well.

Even in Pangasinan, good roads must come to an end, and ours did as we neared the Agno River.  For this blessed river is a curse to its neighborhood, and rises in flood from a stream say seventy-five yards wide to a rushing lake, if the expression be permitted, half a mile and more across.  Our car finally refused to move; its wheels simply turned in situ, so deep was the sand.  There was nothing for it but to walk to the river bank, where we were met with many apologies.  A bamboo bridge had been built across the stream a few days before so that our cars might cross, but yesterday’s rain had washed it down, and would we try to cross on rafts?  We looked at the rafts, bamboo platforms built over large bancas (canoes, double-enders cut out of a single log), the bamboos being lashed together with bejuco (rattan, the native substitute for nails), and decided that no self-respecting motor would stand such transportation, but would go to the bottom first by overturning.  So we got our stuff aboard the rafts, were poled over, and made the rest of the journey to Tayug, our first considerable halt, in carromatas (the native two-wheeled, springless cart).  Fortunately the distance was short, the carromata being an instrument of torture happily overlooked by the Spanish Inquisition.