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, 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.