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Updated: May 20, 2025
Its wide leaves we lap one over another, and tie them to the bamboo frame by withes of tough cogon grass." "Are you not afraid of fire?" I asked. Moro frankly said: "Yes, but as our house is so cheap, we can build a new one easily. However, in this warm climate we cook in a separate house, and we bathe out of doors. We do not smoke within our nipa houses; it is too dangerous."
The ground now broke and we went on down to a bold stream so deep that those of us riding ponies got wet above the knees and were almost swept down by the current. The cogon grass in this river bottom was the tallest I ever saw, some clumps being well over twenty feet high.
That whole day the party toiled silently through the dense cogon grass that covered the mesa. High above their heads waved the wiry, straw-colored spines. Its sharp edges cut into the flesh, tore through cloths, stinging and paining old wounds. Not a breath of air reached them through the impenetrable mass, and the sun beat down on them mercilessly.
Dense growths do occur in some valleys and ravines, and a few of the mountains, like Posoey, are heavily forested, but for the most part the western slopes of the Cordillera Central are covered with rank cogon grass.
The rice is set so thickly that when a plot is planted it presents to the eye a solid mass of green. It is hard to imagine a more beautiful sight than to look down on these fields, which rise in wave above wave of brilliant green, until at last they give way to the yellower billows of cogon grass which cover the mountain slopes.
On the trail to Ma-al is a large rock which marks the divide between the mountains and the open cogon lands. As the writer's party approached this stone one of the men removed some of his leg bands and placed them beside the rock, at the same time praying the busau to "take the present and do not let any of our party fall sick or be injured on the journey."
Occasionally he came to a little glade, a space clear of trees but hemmed in by the eternal jungle just the same. Here the way was choked with rank cogon grass, growing from eight to twelve feet high. He found this as mean a growth to pass through as any briar patch or cane-brake.
Cogon grass seems a useless parasite on the bosom of old Mother Earth, and yet it presents a compensation in its gorgeous white bloom, for, like the poppy, the cogon is a show-piece of nature, and she flaunts it in places where beauty is needed, too.
The domestic animals consist of a few chickens, dogs, an occasional cat and pig, and in the lower cogon lands, a few families possess horses. Some fish are secured from the river, while deer, wild pig, jungle fowl, and other game are taken with traps or secured by hunting. There seems never to have been a time when this tribe was organized under a single leader as was the case with the Bagobo.
Jimmie had never seen a field of buckwheat in blossom, or he might have compared the cogon stretches to fields in the United States at certain seasons of the year. Even in his haste, in the uncomfortable day, the boy stopped to gaze in wonder at the wonderful balete tree, which is a representative of the fig family.
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