A boy dashes by
with several girls in laughing pursuit, and it is not at all likely
that he escapes them with all his belongings. Many of the younger
married women carry babies; some carry on their heads baskets filled
with weeds used as food for the pigs, and all have their small rump
baskets filled with "greens" or snails or fish.
A man may carry on his shoulder a huge short log of wood cut in the
mountains, the wood partially supported on the shoulder by his spear;
or he perhaps carries a large bunch of dry grass to be thrown into the
pigpen as bedding; or he comes swinging along empty handed save for
his spear used as a staff. Most of the returning men and boys carry
the empty topil, the small, square, covered basket in which rice for
the noon meal is carried to the sementera; sometimes a boy carries a
bunch of three or four, and he dangles them open from their strings
as he dances along.
For an hour or more the procession continues -- one almost-naked
figure following another -- all dirty, most of them doubtless tired,
and yet seemingly happy and content with the finish of their day of
toil. It is long after dark before the last straggler is in.
Harvesting
Rice harvesting in Bontoc is a delightful and picturesque sight to
an American, and a most serious religious matter to the Igorot.
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