At first I thought that my riding lessons in Manila were not going to do me much good. We had had a most luxuriously easy time in the beginning. We left General Bell’s house in an Army ambulance, instead of on horses, for our first day’s journey on the “long trail.” General Bell was in command and he knew what he was doing. All he had to do was to issue orders; we obeyed. That is what it is to go camping with a soldier. One learns what discipline means.

We were permitted to take with us only such things as were absolutely necessary. Even then, the “absolute necessities” which we eventually discarded as useless impedimenta would have made a long list. Everything was done up in waterproof bundles and when we started out these were stuffed so full that they would hardly fasten, but they grew slimmer as time went on. The most important articles, we found, were our slickers and wraps. It was wet and cold and we had to have them, but all our toilet appurtenances together went easily into Miss Bubb’s saddlebags.

The first day we forded a river⁠—the same river⁠—several times, and, finally, we had to cross it on a raft which was so small that it could carry only one thing, or one person at a time. My sister, Miss Bubo and I sat on the bank above the ford for more than two hours waiting for all our things to get across. While we waited many natives came along driving carabaos, and it was amusing to see the two-wheeled, awkward carts hustled onto the swaying raft⁠—one thing after another falling into the river⁠—while each poor old carabao was forced to swim, dragged along by his master who held fast to a string attached to a ring in the animal’s nose. If I had been able to speak the dialect I would have said: “Your friend the Carabao, being a water-buffalo, could probably swim the river much more easily without your assistance.” I have had to look on and suffer at many things in the Philippine Islands merely because I was unable to speak a dozen-odd different dialects. In the provinces Spanish was seldom of any use because the common tao knows little or nothing of it, and it is with the common tao that one wishes there to communicate.