shall have taken a head, shall have killed his man, have
remarkable standards of honor and virtue in some respects, and
formally visit the death penalty as the punishment for adultery.
Because roads or means of communication have been poor the people have
mingled but little, and there are three dozen different dialects. In
the course of a half day's journey by rail I found three different
languages spoken by the people along the route. The original
inhabitants were Negritos, a race of pigmy blacks, of whom only a
remnant remains, but the Filipino proper is a Malayan.

Filipinos are unique in that they alone among all the native peoples
of Asia have accepted Christianity. Fortunate in being without the
gold of Mexico or Peru, the Philippines did not attract the more
brutal Spanish adventurers who, about the time of Magellan's
discovery, were harrying wealthier peoples with fire and sword.
Instead of the soldier or the adventurer, it was the priest, his soul
aflame with love for his church, who came to the Philippines, and the
impression made by his virtues was not negatived by the bloody crimes
of fellow Spaniards mad with lust of treasure. The result is that to
this day probably 90 per cent, of the Filipinos are Catholics. Before
the priests came, the people worshipped their ancestors, as do other
peoples in the Far East.

The only Asiatics who have accepted Christianity, the Filipinos are
also the only Asiatics among whom women are not regarded as degraded
and inferior beings. "If the Spaniards had done nothing else here," as
a high American official in Manila said to me, "though, as a matter of
fact, we are beginning to recognize that they did a great deal, they
would deserve well of history for what they have accomplished for the
elevation of woman through the introduction of Christianity. No other
religion regards woman as man's equal."

The testimony I heard in the Philippines indicated that the female
partner in the household is, if anything, superior in authority to the
man. She is active in all the little business {165} affairs of the
family, and white people sometimes arrange with Filipino wives for the
employment of husbands!

The resources of the islands, as I have already said, are magnificent
and alluring. In the provinces through which I travelled, less than 10
per cent. of the land seemed to be under cultivation, and statistics
show that this is the general condition. A small area has sufficed to
pr