This trip was most interesting but dreadfully wearing. Everywhere we were overwhelmed by the hospitality of our Filipino friends. We arrived at some new place nearly every morning, and the programme in each was much the same. After an early breakfast we hurried ashore, drove or walked about for a short time to see what the town was like, and then attended a popular meeting in its largest building, where we held long and frank converse with the people on local conditions, giving them every opportunity to air their views, with the result that the local orators, of whom there were usually more than a sufficiency, had an opportunity to bring their heavy guns into action. Then followed a recess in the course of which we partook of a very elaborate lunch, and when possible conferred privately with influential men, often learning things which they did not care to tell us in public. Then came another open meeting at which the actual organization of the province was effected and the officials were appointed and sworn in. After this there was a long formal dinner, with the endless courses which characterize such functions in the Philippines, and then came a ball which lasted till the wee small hours. When at last we got on board, tired out, our steamer sailed, and often brought us to some new place by sunrise. In several instances we did not pass the act organizing a given province at the time of our visit, but for one reason or another postponed action until a later date. We visited a number of places like Joló, Basilan, Zamboanga, Cotabato, Davao and Samar, where we had no intention of establishing civil government, in order to observe local conditions. We touched at Marinduque on our trip south, and found that nothing could then be done there, but the better element were anxious for a change, and we promised them that if they would bring about certain specified results before our return we would give them a provincial government. They undertook to do so, and kept their word. Needless to say we also kept ours. We had grave doubts as to the advisability of establishing civil governments in Cebú, Bohol and Batangas. In the first of these places the people were sullen and ugly. In the second there was a marked disinclination on the part of leading citizens to accept public office. There had been a little scattering rifle fire on the outskirts of the capital of the third very shortly before our arrival there, but the organization of all these provinces was recommended by the military authorities, and we decided to try an experiment which could do little harm, as we could return any one of them to military control in short order should such a course seem necessary. An effort has been made to make it appear that in organizing Cebú, Bohol and Batangas, we acted prematurely and upon our own initiative, thus complicating the situation for the military authorities. I will let Blount voice this complaint. He says in part:--