General Young, with his cavalry, and the Maccabebee scouts, continued in pursuit of Aguinaldo through the passes of the mountains, the latter having managed to run the gauntlet of our lines successfully by a very close shave. How narrowly he escaped is illustrated by the fact that after a fight we had at the Aringay River on November 19th, in which Major Batson was wounded while gallantly directing the crossing of the river, we remained that night in the town of Aringay, and at the very time we were "hustling for chow" in Aringay, Aguinaldo was in the village of Naguilian an hour or so distant, as was authoritatively ascertained long afterward from a captured diary of one of his staff officers. [270]
General Young proceeded up the coast road, in hot haste, taking one town, San Fernando de Union, after a brief engagement led by the general in person--imagine a brigadier-general leading a charge at the head of thirty-seven men!--but Aguinaldo had turned off to the right and taken to the mountains. General Lawton wired General Otis about that time, in effect, in announcing Aguinaldo's escape through our lines and his own tireless brigade-commander's bold dash in pursuit of him with an inadequate force of cavalry hampered by lack of horseshoes and nails for the same, "If Young does not catch Aguinaldo, he will at least make him very unhappy." The Young column garrisoned the towns along the route over which it went, occupying all the western part of Northern Luzon, hereafter described, and also later on rescued Lieutenant Gilmore of the navy, Mr. Albert Sonnichsen, previously an enlisted man and since a writer of some note, and other American prisoners who had been in the hands of the insurgents for many months. General Young finally made his headquarters at Vigan, in the province of Ilocos Sur, a fine town in a fine country. The Ilocanos are called "the Yankees of the Philippines," on account of their energy and industry. Vigan is on the China sea coast of Luzon (the west coast), about one hundred miles up the old Spanish coast road, or "King's Highway" (Camino Real), from Lingayen Gulf (where the hundred-and-twenty mile railroad from Manila to Dagupan ends) and about eighty miles from the extreme northern end of the island of Luzon. [271]