bows and arrows.

They are the lowest tribe in mentality on the Islands.

It was a terribly hot, tropical day and I had a sunstroke on the way up
the mountainside to this Negrito village.

I did not expect to get back alive.

For three solid hours under a killing tropical sun, without the proper
cork helmet and protection, a pile driver kept hammering down on my
head. I felt it at every step I took. Finally I dropped unconscious on
the trail. After several hours I was able to proceed to the top of the
mountain, where the Negritos were camped.

We got there about two o'clock and had lunch. As we ate about fifty
Negritos swarmed about us.

They were a horrible looking crowd; stark naked, filthy with dirt;
starved to skin and bones; and animal-like in every look and move.

I was so sick that I was not able to eat the lunch which had been
provided in baskets. I lay on my back trying to get back my strength.

As the rest of the expedition ate, the Negritos with hungry eyes,
crowded closer.

One hideous old man was in the forefront of the natives. He was so
hideous looking that he was sickeningly repulsive to me as I looked at
him crouched as he was like an animal with a streak of sunlight playing
on his face.

This streak of sunlight, with ruthless severity, made the ugly scabs of
dirt stand out on his old wrinkled face. That face had not felt the
touch of water in years. His whole body was covered with dirt and sores.
Wherever the sunlight struck on that black body it revealed scales like
those on a mangy dog. His body was also covered with gray hairs matted
into the dirt.

"That old codger represents the nearest thing to an animal that the
human being can reach," said McLaughlin, one of the oldest missionaries
on the island.

"You're right!" I said. "He looks as much like a Borneo Orangutan as any
human being I ever saw."

"And he lives like one, too; up in a tree in a nest of matted limbs and
grass," said another.

"I've traveled among the wild tribes of the world all my life and I have
seen the lowest human beings on earth; in Africa, South America,
Malaysia, Borneo, Java--Australia--everywhere," said a widely traveled
man in the crowd, "and I never saw a type as low in the scale as that
old fellow!"

So we discussed him as the lunch proceeded. He did not know, of course,
that we had consigned him to the lowest rung on the ladder of humanity,
so he just sat looking at us with his animal-like eyes as w