en
individuals of the opposing sides, though two often attack a single
opponent until he is rescued by a companion. The game is over when
the retreating side no longer advances to the combat.

The boys are constantly throwing reed spears, and they are fairly
expert spearmen several years before they have a steel-bladed spear
of their own. Frequently they roll the spherical grape fruit and
throw their reeds at the fruit as it passes.

Here, there, and everywhere, singly or in groups, boys perform the
Igorot dance step. A tin can in a boy's hands is irresistibly beaten in
rhythmic time, and the dance as surely follows the peculiar rhythmic
beating as the beating follows the possession of the can. As the
boys come stringing home at night from watching the palay fields,
they come dancing, rhythmically beating a can, or two sticks, or
their dinner basket, or beating time in the air -- as though they
held a gangsa[18]. The dance is in them, and they amuse themselves
with it constantly.

Both boys and girls are much in the river, where they swim and dive
with great frolic.

During the months of January and February, 1903, when there was much
wind, the boys were daily flying kites, but it is a pastime borrowed
of the Ilokano in the pueblo. Now and then a little fellow may be
seen with a small, very rude bow and arrow, which also is borrowed
from the Ilokano since the arrival of the Spaniard.

Puberty

Puberty is reached relatively late, usually between the fourteenth
and sixteenth years. No notice whatever is taken of it by the social
group. There is neither feast nor rite to mark the event either for
the individual or the group.

This nonobservance of the fact of puberty would be very remarkable,
since its observance is so widespread among primitive people,
were it not for the fact that the Igorot has developed the olag --
an institution calculated to emphasize the fact and significance
of puberty.

Life in olag

Though the o'-lag is primarily the sleeping place of all unmarried
girls, in the mind of the people it is, with startling consistency,
the mating place of the young people of marriageable age.

A common sight on a rest day in the pueblo is that of a young man
and woman, each with an arm around the other, loitering about under
the same blanket, talking and laughing, one often almost supporting
the other. There seems at all times to be the greatest freedom
and friendliness among the young people. I