ly removed early; a process which causes
the leaves to increase considerably both in length and in breadth. A
woman places a board on the ground, and upon it a pine-apple-leaf with
the hollow side upwards. Sitting at one end of the board, she holds
the leaf firmly with her toes, and scrapes its outer surface with a
potsherd; not with the sharp fractured edge but with the blunt side
of the rim; and thus the leaf is reduced to rags. In this manner a
stratum of coarse longitudinal fiber is disclosed, and the operator,
placing her thumb-nail beneath it, lifts it up, and draws it away
in a compact strip; after which she scrapes again until a second
fine layer of fiber is laid bare. Then, turning the leaf round, she
scrapes its back, which now lies upwards, down to the layer of fiber,
which she seizes with her hand and draws at once, to its full length,
away from the back of the leaf. When the fiber has been washed, it is
dried in the sun. It is afterwards combed, with a suitable comb, like
women's hair, sorted into four classes, tied together, and treated like
the fiber of the lupi. In this crude manner are obtained the threads
for the celebrated web nipis de [Pina.] Pina, which is considered by
experts the finest in the world. Two shirts of this kind are in the
Berlin Ethnographical Museum (Nos. 291 and 292). Better woven samples
are in the Gewerbe Museum of Trade and Commerce. In the Philippines,
where the fineness of the work is best understood and appreciated,
richly-embroidered costumes of this description have fetched more
than $1,400 each. [102]

[Rain prevents another ascent.] At Buhi, which is not sufficiently
sheltered towards the north-east, it rained almost as much as at
Daraga. I had found out from the Igorots that a path could be forced
through the tall canes up to the summit; but the continual rain
prevented me; so I resolved to cross the Malinao, returning along the
coast to my quarters, and then, freshly equipped, descend the river
Bicol as far as Naga.

[Mountaineers' arrow poison.] Before we parted the Igorots prepared
for me some arrow poison from the bark of two trees. I happened
to see neither the leaves nor the blossoms, but only the bark. A
piece of bark was beaten to pieces, pressed dry, wetted, and again
pressed. This was done with the bare hand, which, however, sustained
no injury. The juice thus extracted looked like pea-soup, and was
warmed in an earthen vessel over a slow fire. During the proc