the caiman and
rip it up. If they meet with an accident, they bear it with supreme
resignation, simply exclaiming "_desgracia pa_"--it was a misfortune.

I can record with pleasure my happy recollection of many a
light-hearted, genial, and patient native who accompanied me on
my journeys in these Islands. Comparatively very few thorough-bred
natives travel beyond their own islands, although there is a constant
flow of half-castes to and from the adjacent colonies, Europe, etc.

The native is very slowly tempted to abandon the habits and traditional
customs of his forefathers, and his ambitionless felicity may be
envied by any true philosopher.

No one who has lived in the Colony for years could sketch the
real moral portrait of such a remarkable combination of virtues
and vices. The domesticated native's character is a succession of
surprises. The experience of each year modifies one's conclusions,
and the most exact definition of such an inscrutable being is, after
all, hypothetical. However, to a certain degree, the characteristic
indolence of these Islanders is less dependent on themselves
than on natural law, for the physical conditions surrounding them
undoubtedly tend to arrest their vigour of motion, energy of life,
and intellectual power.

The organic elements of the European differ widely from those of the
Philippine native, and each, for his own durability, requires his own
special environment. The half-breed partakes of both organisms, but has
the natural environment of the one. Sometimes artificial means--the
mode of life into which he is forced by his European parent--will
counteract in a measure natural law, but, left to himself, the tendency
will ever be towards an assimilation to the native. Original national
characteristics disappear in an exotic climate, and, in the course
of time, conform to the new laws of nature to which they are exposed.

It is an ascertained fact that the increase of energy introduced into
the Philippine native by blood mixture from Europe lasts only to the
second generation, whilst the effect remains for several generations
when there is a similarity of natural surroundings in the two races
crossed. Moreover, the peculiar physique of a Chinese or Japanese
progenitor is preserved in succeeding generations, long after the
Spanish descendant has merged into the conditions of his environment.

The Spanish Government strove in vain against natural law to
counteract physical con