of their houses, capable
of holding two or three thousand gallons of water. With the contents
of these tanks the rich people supply themselves with drinking water
during the dry season, and net a considerable income from its sale to
their less fortunate neighbors. The merely well-to-do people content
themselves with a galvanized iron tank, which may store from two
to six hundred gallons, which is seldom enough to last out the dry
season. In this case they buy water from the mountaineers, who fill
their _tinajas_, or twenty-gallon earthenware jars, with water from
mountain springs, and bring them to the nearest towns in bancas.

The poor people have no way whatever of storing rain-water, and
either beg a few quarts each day from the rich people to whom they
are feudally attached, or else they fall back upon the ground wells,
or _pozos_, which, even they know, breed fevers and dysentery.

By no means every house has its well. Sometimes there are only two
or three to a block. Sometimes the well is merely a shallow hole,
uncemented, to catch the seepage of the upper strata. Sometimes it is
a very deep stone-walled cavity. Rarely is there a pump or a windlass
or any other fixed aid for raising the water.

When a fire starts, therefore, with such an inadequate water supply,
nothing can be done except to tear down communicating houses or
roofs. Enterprising natives who live even at a considerable distance,
usually mount their ridge-poles and wet down their roofs if they can
get the water with which to do it.

In the immediate vicinity of the fire itself tumult reigns. Filipino
womankind, who are so alluringly feminine, are also femininely helpless
in a crisis, and if there be no men around to direct and sustain them,
often lose their heads entirely. They give way to lamentations,
gather up their babies, and flee to the homes of their nearest
relatives. Often they forget even their jewels and ready money,
which are locked in a wardrobe.

Meanwhile, if there be men folks about, they make a more systematic
effort to save things, and as all relatives and connections who are
out of danger themselves rush in at the first alarm, quite a little
may be rescued. The things which are traditional with us as showing
how people lose their heads at a fire are just as evident here as
in our own land. They throw dishes, glassware, and fine furniture
out of the windows, and carry down iron pots and pillows. The poor
gather their little st