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Updated: June 2, 2025
Here Gallman found, to his amazement, that he could understand the speech of these people. Not trusting his own ear in the matter, he sent Comhit about to talk to them, and reported afterward that both not only had understood what was said, but had made their own selves understood.
Now, if there is anything else hotter on the face of the earth than a walk through the cogon in the dry season with the sun shining vertically down, it has yet to be discovered. At Payawan we were met by Captain Jeff D. Gallman, P. C, Lieutenant-Governor of the Sub-province of Ifugao, accompanied by one of his chieftains, who made a splendid picture in his barbaric finery.
But the Ifugaos, thanks to Gallman, as already said, have abandoned head-hunting, and the skulls in hand, if kept at all, are now hidden inside their owner's houses, their places being taken by carabao heads and horns.
Worcester and Gallman held councils with the head men of the various rancherías present; Pack inspected; and the rest of us moved about, looking on at whatever interested us. As elsewhere, but few clothes are seen: the women wear a short striped skirt sarong-wise, but bare the bosom. However, they are beginning to cover it, just as a few of them had regular umbrellas.
We had a long and hard day before us, but we did not know it when we set out from Tabuk at about seven in the morning. Gallman, Harris, and I kept together; our first business was to cross a vast, roughly circular plain fifteen miles in diameter, and densely overgrown with a rough, reedy grass two feet and more high.
The fact that these men returned safely unaccompanied by Gallman or any other American is the best possible proof of the positive results already achieved by our Government in civilizing the highlanders. We ride to Bontok. Bat-nets. Character of the country. Ambawan. Difficulties of the trail. Bird-scarers. Talubin. Bishop Carroll of Vigan. We reach Bontok. "The Star-Spangled Banner."
But, thanks to Gallman, head-hunting in the Ifugao country is now a thing of the past. The town stands on the top of a bastion-like terrace, thrust avalanche-wise and immense between its pinnacled mountain walls; the site is not only of great beauty, but of great natural strength, like nearly all the other considerable settlements we saw on this journey.
Our last three miles were a triumphal procession columns, gansas, bubud, spears, shouts, escorts, flags. Every now and then a halt; a bamboo filled with bubud would be handed up, and everybody had to take a pull. Once I noticed Gallman in front hastily return the bamboo, and reach desperately for his water-bottle; the next man did the same thing.
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