On a subsequent visit to the Bogobos, however, the officer was greatly surprised to see what weight his words had carried and to note the effect of the Star Spangled Banner upon a savage mountain people. Soldiers were drilling under the green trees; modern sanitation had been adopted; sweeping, heretofore unknown, was a custom of the village; the highly objectionable skulls had been removed from the executive mansion; while every evening the chief and his standing army failed not to face the splendid Stars and Stripes as they were reverently lowered from a bamboo flagstaff, where during the day they floated over a village redeemed by them from seemingly hopeless savagery.
On our first visit to Zamboanga we remained a day only, for by evening our shore end was laid and the office established, so that at daybreak the next morning we sailed for Tukuran, Mindanao, thus deferring our intercourse with Zamboanga, though not terminating it. After laying a hundred-knot stretch of cable between there and Point Flecha, we began to take soundings, and for four days sailed back and forth between Tukuran and the Point, seeking water not too deep for cable laying, though in places the sea swallowed up our sounding wire for twelve hundred fathoms. Think of it--a mile and a quarter! And once the iron marker came up on a sun-baked deck icy-cold from its abysmal plunge.
But at last a suitable course was chosen, and on the afternoon of February 16th we anchored off Tukuran. A prettier bit of country it would be hard to find. Hills on every side--forest hills--as far as the eye could reach, while a road, looking from the ship like a narrow white ribbon, trailed from the shore straight up the green hills to a stone wall, behind which was stationed a company of American soldiers.
The next morning early most of us went ashore, despite the winding ribbon of a road which from the ship looked even more formidable than it really was. As we neared the land in the ship's launch two Moro boats anchored near the beach attracted our attention, the most absurdly picturesque crafts one could well imagine, with curving prows of rudely carved wood, outriggers of bamboo, and a thatched roof or awning at one end. A gaily coloured hat hung from one of the boats, and over each floated a red flag shaped like an isosceles triangle. These flags were finished by a white border ruffled on all around, such ruffles as we put on window-curtains in America, and over one of the crafts floated the striped red and white flag of the Mindanao Moro.