six inches long. A mile or so farther on, we halted and dismounted
near a little _ranchería_, Butbut by name, in a corner of the hills,
the people of which had been assembled for the "Commission." These
were the only physically degraded-looking people we saw on the trip;
small of stature, feeble-looking and spiritless. The reason was not
far to seek: it is probable that they live hungry, through lack of
suitable ground for rice-cultivation, and because their neighbors
are hostile. Now, I take it on myself to say that it is just this
sort of thing that will come to an end if Mr. Worcester is allowed to
carry out his policies. For, with free communication and diminishing
hostility, interchange of commodities must needs take place. Indeed,
the relations existing between _rancherías_ are nothing but our own
system of high protection carried to a logical extreme by imposing
a prohibitive tariff on heads! Fundamentally, granted an extremely
limited food-supply, every stranger is an enemy, and the shortest
way to be rid of the difficulty involved in his presence is to reduce
him to the impossibility of eating.

On reaching the top of Tinglayan Hill, which we did shortly after
leaving the poor people just mentioned, we saw a man coming towards us
accompanied by thirty or forty boys not more than ten or eleven years
of age, all gee-stringed, and eight of them carrying head-axes on their
hips. When the man got up, he handed Mr. Worcester a bamboo about a
yard long. Mr. Worcester drank and then passed it on back to us, the
best stuff, it seemed to us that hot morning, we had ever tasted. We
were now in the _basi_ country; this being a sort of fermented
sugar-cane juice, judiciously diluted with water. [39] The boys now
formed a sort of column with the ax-bearers immediately in front of
Mr. Worcester as a guard of honor, and we got a good look at them,
well-built, erect, of a light brown, with black flowing hair. They