gots--to this day carry out the savage custom that
'no young man can be accepted in marriage until he has presented his
bride with a human head.'"

"That is certainly savage," Hamilton agreed; "one never thinks that sort
of thing can be going on still, and certainly not under the American
flag!"

"It is, though," the Porto Rican replied. "The third group," he
continued, "the Moros and so forth, are all Mohammedans, and they seem
to have come to the islands after the semi-civilization of the Malay
archipelago and its submission to Mohammedanism. The Moros are haughty
and assume the air of conquerors. As the Igorots drove the Negritos to
the forest and thence to the wild interior, so the Moros drove the
Igorots. They are largely pure Malay, warlike and cruel, but shrewd and
capable of culture. They assume an over-lordship over all other tribes
and their Dattos can generally enforce it."

"It seems strange," the boy said, "to think of going among those savages
and asking them the same questions that United States citizens were
asked, writing the answers on the same kind of schedules, and counting
these ferocious head-hunters on a tabulating machine."

"Of course," the editor reminded him, "the Philippine census last time
was taken by the War Department, although the Bureau is even now
considering what will be the best way to attack the problem should it
have to take the next Philippine census, as it probably will. But while
it was primitive, the work wasn't so very different. They were able to
use advance schedules, for example."

The boy stared, and his informant laughed outright.

"They were a little different," he explained, "and it was during the
enumeration of the Igorots and similar tribes. It was soon found that
they could count up to ten but no further. A certain number of them
could grasp the idea of ten groups of ten. So a bundle of sticks was
sent to each village and each man was made to cut notches in these
sticks up to ten to show how many children, or pigs, or chickens he had.
In some of the villages so my uncle told me, the supervisor had a
branding iron made with which he had branded on the tally sticks the
figure of a pig, or a house, or a chicken or whatever it might be."

"That is about as far back, I should think, as any one could go, in the
way of census-taking," the boy said. "I thought some of my up-country
negro farmers were barbaric--especially when I came across some
voodooism, but now I s