Unofficial letters of an official's wife [by] Edith Moses.

UNOFFICIAL LETTERS OF

the trails we meet men and women carrying home
long strings of pork or beef and baskets of boiled
camotes. Our share of the spoils was a ham from
the prize four-hundred-pound hog, and it tasted
good in spite of our memories, for a piece of fresh
meat is a luxury at present in Benguet.
BAGUIO, April 28, 1902.
IT is Monday again, and a week since I have written you. I find I must spin out my tale very fine
if I write oftener than once a week. We have spent
most of our time in the saddle, and have explored
the country for miles around. This morning the
doctor's wife and I did a good-sized washing. Our
Igorrote washwoman, on account of the recent
tiyow, I suspect, has been mucho malo ever since.
She sits crouched over a fire, her head tied up in a
towel, and refuses to understand any language.
Clothes brought and laid at her feet, big shiny dollars held up before her, have awakened no sign of
intelligence in her dirty black face; so, having but
one riding habit apiece, necessity compelled us to
wash it, for we felt hardly respectable in a garment
in which we live from one week's end to the other.
Early this morning we set our Igorrote boys to
build a fire on the hillside below the house, and put
on a washboiler of water to heat. When we began
operations with an American washboard in a big
dish pan, a large crowd of spectators gathered, both
266