Sometimes large pieces of raw carabao meat are laid on high racks near the dwelling and “dried” in the sun.  There are several such racks in Bontoc, and one can know a long distance from them whether they hold “dried” meat.  If one pueblo, in the area exceeds another in the strength and unpleasantness of its “dried” meat it is Mayinit, where on the occasion of a visit there a very small piece of meat jammed on a stick-like a “taffy stick” —­ and joyfully sucked by a 2-year-old babe successfully bombarded and depopulated our camp.

Various meats, called “it-tag’,” as carabao and pork, are “preserved” by salting down in large bejuco-bound gourds, called “fa’-lay,” or in tightly covered ollas, called “tu-u’-nan.”  All pueblos in the area (except Ambawan, which has an unexplained taboo against eating carabao) thus store away meats, but Bitwagan, Sadanga, and Tukukan habitually salt large quantities in the fa’-lay.  Meats are kept thus two or three years, though of course the odor is vile.

The dog ranks last in the list of regular flesh foods of the Bontoc man.  In the Benguet area it ranks second, pork receiving the first place.  The Ibilao does not eat dog —­ his dog is a hunter and guard, giving alarm of the approaching enemy.

In Bontoc the dog is eaten only on ceremonial occasions.  Funerals and marriages are probably more often celebrated by a dog feast than are any other of their ceremonials.  The animal’s mouth is held closed and his legs secured while he is killed by cutting the throat.  Then his tail is cut off close to the body —­ why, I could not learn, but I once saw it, and am told it always is so.  The animal is singed in the fire and the crisped hair rubbed off with sticks and hands, after which it is cut up and boiled, and then further cut up and eaten as is the carabao meat.

Young babies are sometimes fed hard-boiled fresh eggs, but the Igorot otherwise does not eat “fresh” eggs, though he does eat large numbers of stale ones.  He prefers to wait, as one of them said, “until there is something in the egg to eat.”  He invariably brings stale or developing eggs to the American until he is told to bring fresh ones.  It is not alone the Igorot who has this peculiar preference —­ the same condition exists widespread in the Archipelago.

Locusts, or cho’-chon, are gathered, cooked, and eaten by the Igorot, as by all other natives in the Islands.  They are greatly relished, but may be had in Bontoc only irregularly —­ perhaps once or twice for a week or ten days each year, or once in two years.  They are cooked in boiling water and later dried, whereupon they become crisp and sweet.  By some Igorot they are stored away, but I can not say whether they are kept in Bontoc any considerable time after cooking.