From Banawe we rode to Bontok, thirty-five miles, in one day, May 7th. This day it rained, the only rain we had during the whole trip, although the season was now on. But the disturbance in question was due to a typhoon far to the southward; and as it passed off into the China Sea, so did the day finally clear. Our first business this morning was to cross the pass on Polis Mountain, some 6,400 feet above sea-level, the highest elevation we reached. As we rode out of Banawe we could see on the wooded sky-line to our right front a cut as though of a road through the forest; it was not a road, of course, but an opening normal to the crest of the ridge. Across this a net is stretched, and the bats, flying in swarms by night to clear the top, drop into the cut on reaching it, and so are caught in the net in flying across. We saw several such bat-traps during our trip. In this way these highlanders eke out their meager supply of meat. The bat in question is not the animal we are familiar with, but the immensely larger fruit bat, the flesh of which is readily eaten. Our trail took us up, and sharply; by nine o'clock we had crowned the pass, and stopped for chow and rest. In front of us, as we looked back, plunged the deepest, sharpest valley yet seen, around the head of which we had ridden and across which we could look down on the Ifugao country we had just come from; down one side and up the other could be traced the remains of the old Spanish trail, a miracle of stupidity. To the right (west), but out of sight, lay Sapao, where the rice-terraces have received their greatest development, rising from the valley we were gazing into some 3,000 feet up the slope. Sapao, too, is the seat of the Ifugao steel industry, so that for many reasons I was sorry it was off our itinerary. The point where we were resting has some interest from its associations, for our troops reached it in their pursuit of Aguinaldo, at the end of a long day of rain, and had to spend the night without food or fire or sleep. It was not possible to light a pipe even, a _noche triste_ indeed. Most of the men stood up all night, this being better than lying down in the mud; to march on was impossible, as the country was then trailless, except for the Spanish trail mentioned, to attempt which by night would have been suicide. A tropical forest can be pretty dreary in bad weather, almost as dreary as a Florida cypress swamp on a rainy Sunday.