There Were A
Great Number Of Bamboos In The Surrounding Country, And They Were
Continually Snapping With Loud Reports, Which I Would Often Imagine
To Be The Reports Of A Rifle Until I Got Used To Them.
Wild pig were
very plentiful, and at night they would often grub up the ground a few
yards from my hut.
One night I was skinning a bird, with Vic looking
on, when we heard some animal growling close by, and Vic without any
warning seized my gun (which I always kept loaded with buckshot) and
fired into the darkness. He said that it was a "tigre," and called
out excitedly that he had killed it, but although we hunted about
with a light for some time, we saw no signs of it. No doubt it was
some animal of the cat family. Vic, as in fact all Filipinos, had
a mortal dread of snakes, and he would never venture out at night
without a torch made of lighted bamboo, as he said they were very
plentiful at night. The large hornbills ("Gasalo") were very hard
to stalk, and as they generally frequented the tallest trees they
were out of shot. They usually flew about in flocks, and made a most
extraordinary noise, rather like a whole farmyard full of turkeys,
guinea fowls and dogs. The whirring noise they made with their wings
was not unlike the shunting of a locomotive. I had often before heard
of the curious habit of the male in plastering up the female with mud
in the hollow of a tree, leaving only a small hole through which he
fed her until the single egg was hatched and the young one was ready to
fly. Vic knew this, and further informed me that the smaller species,
named here "Talactic," had the same custom of plastering up the female.
Many evenings, when I had finished my work, I would get Vic to teach
me the Pampanga, dialect, and wrote down a large vocabulary of words,
and when some years afterwards I compared them word for word with
other dialects and languages throughout the Malay Archipelago,
I found that, with a few exceptions, there was not the slightest
affinity between them.
CHAPTER 6
A Chapter of Accidents.
A Severe Bout of Malaria in the Wilds - The "Seamy Side" of
Exploration - Unfortunate Shooting of the Chief's Dog - Filipino
Credulity - Stories of the Buquils and their Bearded Women -
Expedition Planned - Succession of CONTRETEMPS - Start for the Buquil
Country - Scenes on the Way - A Negrito Mother's Method of Giving
Drink to Her Baby - Exhausting Marches Amid Striking Scenery - The
Worst Over - A Bolt from the Blue - Negritos in a Fury - Violent
Scenes at a Negrito Council of War - They Decide on Reprisals -
Further Progress Barred in Consequence - Return to Florida Blanca.
As I mentioned before, this was the unhealthy season in the
Philippines, and Vic assured me that these lower mountains were even
more unhealthy than the flat country. I myself soon arrived at a
similar conclusion, as a regular epidemic of malaria now set in among
my pigmy friends, the Negritos, and the old chief told us that his
favourite son was dying with it; next my neighbour and his wife were
prostrated with it, and when they had slightly recovered, they left
their hut and returned to Florida Blanca.
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