aw at Angat and Mariveles knew nothing whatever about agriculture,
lived in the open air, and supported themselves upon the spontaneous
products of nature; but the half-savages of the Iriga dwell in decent
huts, and cultivate several vegetables and a little sugar-cane. No
pure negritos, as far as I could ascertain, are to be met with in
Camarines. A thickly-populated province, only sparsely dotted with
lofty hills, would be ill-suited for the residence of a nomadic
hunting race ignorant of agriculture.

[Iriga settlements.] The ranchos on the Iriga are very accessible,
and their inhabitants carry on a friendly intercourse with the
lowlanders; indeed, if they didn't, they would have been long
ago exterminated. In spite of these neighborly communications,
however, they have preserved many of their own primitive manners and
customs. The men go about naked with the exception of a cloth about the
loins; and the women are equally unclad, some of them perhaps wearing
an apron reaching from the hip to the knee. [98] In the larger ranchos
the women were decently clad in the usual Filipino fashion. Their
household belongings consisted of a few articles made of bamboo, a
few calabashes of coconut-shell, and an earthen cooking-pot, and bows
and arrows. [Poison arrows.] These latter are made very carefully,
the shaft from reeds, the point from a sharp-cut bamboo, or from a
palm-tree, with one to three sharp points. In pig-hunting iron-pointed
poison arrows are used. [Crucifixes.] Although the Igorots are not
Christians, they decorate their huts with crucifixes, which they use
as talismans. If they were of no virtue, an old man remarked to me, the
Spaniards would not employ them so numerously. [99] The largest rancho
I visited was nominally under the charge of a captain, who, however,
had little real power. At my desire he called to some naked boys idly
squatting about on the trees, who required considerable persuasion
before they obeyed his summons; but a few small presents--brazen
earrings and combs for the women, and cigars for the men--soon put
me on capital terms with them.

[Mt. Iriga.] After a vain attempt to reach the top of the Iriga volcano
I started for Buhi, a place situated on the southern shore of the lake
of that name. Ten minutes after leaving Iriga I reached a spot where
the ground sounded hollow beneath my horse's feet. A succession of
small hillocks, about fifty feet high, bordered each side of the road;
and towa