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The day closed with a baile, given by the Ilokanos living in Bontok. Many of these are leaving their narrow coastal plains on the shores of the China Sea and making their way through the passes to the interior, some of them going as far as the Cagayán country. It is only a question of time when they will have spread over the whole of Northern Luzon.
The sallyport gates are closed at eleven o'clock at night, after which hour there is neither ingress or egress, and on this point they are most absurdly particular. The natives of Luzon are much below the middle size.
In the evening we came to the foot of the mountains where begin the forests of gigantic trees, which cover almost all the centre of the island of Luzon. There we made our first halt, lighted our fires, and prepared our beds and our supper. I think that I have already described our beds, which use and fatigue always rendered agreeable to us, when no accident occurred to disturb our repose.
The point to which we had come, San Francisco, marks the beginning of the Juan Villaverde trail from the Central Valley of Luzon through the mountains before us, to the province of Nueva Vizcaya. All day the chain we were to pierce had been in sight, and I for one had been wondering where we were to find a practicable entrance, so forbiddingly vertical did the range appear to be.
There are many volcanoes in the islands, and they exist from the North of Luzon to the Sulus in the extreme South, a distance as great as from Scotland to Sicily. There is one on Luzon that bears a close resemblance both in appearance and phenomena to Vesuvius. The likeness in eruptions is startling.
Meanwhile the "San Juan," which had been despatched to Butuan, returned without having accomplished the full object of its mission, namely, to procure information regarding cinnamon. The captain reported having "found at the port of Botuan two Moro junks from Luzon," with which they traded for gold and wax.
He would deliver whatever had remained of the bodies of the religious and would be glad to have peace and friendship with the Luzon Islands and the Spaniards, and for his part, would endeavor to secure it. He said that if any other vessel came to his kingdom from Manila, he would give orders that it be well received and well treated.
Governor Don Francisco Tello, seeing that this corsair was making incursions among the islands, according to the information given him by certain captains and soldiers whom he had sent by land along the coasts of the island of Luzon, in order to prevent the enemy from landing men and from injuring the settlements, and from the information given by certain small single boats which had kept in sight of the enemy, discussed plans for meeting this necessity.
"Don't feel badly about it, gentlemen," laughed Commander Ennerling. "Jack Benson is the same lad who stole up under the battleship 'Luzon, and painted the name, 'Pollard, in sixfoot letters on the hull of the battleship as a reminder of his call. The lad is a sea-joker of the first order."
He was not only a great martyr to the cause of liberty, and to the advancement of his fellow men, but he was without doubt the greatest Filipino ever born, and his memory is cherished to-day by his people as we ourselves cherish the memory of Washington. Rizal was born on June 19th, 1861, in the pueblo of Calamba, in the province of Laguna, on the Island of Luzon.
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