To a visitor from a western civilization there is no more
striking spectacle than a group or caravan of carriers in
the mountainous districts of Luzon. The first man,
usually the head man, wears a loin cloth and a home-
made straw hat about the size and shape of an archery
target. Behind him comes a long line of naked, bronze
human beings, each with a bamboo frame on his back,
fastened to his body by narrow shoulder straps, and a
broad band of either leather or Manila rope around the
forehead. Nearly all the weight is thrown upon the
forehead, a mode of carrying entirely unknown to Eng-
land or America. In this district the roads exist only
in name. They are hardly bridle paths. Many of them
are what in western vernacular would be termed
"blazes."

This northern district of Luzon deserves thorough ex-
ploitation by competent specialists. It is up here, not
far from La Trinidad, that they have found a large out-
crop of gold-bearing quartz, which is worked by the
natives in the most primitive style possible. They break
off a piece of the quartz comminute it upon a rock with a
round piece of the same material, and then grind it to a
powder sweeping this into a basin of water, and there
washing away the particles of stone until nothing is left
in the bottom, but a few grains of gold. Some of the
more intelligent natives heat the quartz rock in a bonfire
and throw it, when red hot, into a pail of water. The



MANILA AND THE PHILIPPINES. 79

rock behaves as glass does under the same circumstances,
crackling and crumbling into a mass of brittle and fria-
ble fragments. Working this 'way a man and his wife
can make a dollar's worth of gold a week which they
sell to the Spanish speculators, at one-half of its real
value. But fifty cents a week makes a very good living
for a man in that part of the world. He can have two
pair of trousers a year, and his wife can have two skirts.
