y happen to be snatched
away. The various religious ideas of these pagans are intangible and
indeterminate. The forest seems to be the abiding-place of gods. Some
tribes will offer feasts to these divinities, either leaving the
flesh and rice out in the woods to find that it has disappeared next
morning, or, in many cases, eating it themselves, provided that the
god, who has been earnestly invited, fails to come. The god of disease
is also recognized, and natives living on the coast have been known,
in the time of cholera, to fill canoes with rice and fruit in order
to appease this deity, and leave the boats to drift out with the tide.

Among the Bagobos, curious traditions and religious rites exist. Every
Bagobo thinks he has two souls or spirits; one a good one, and the
other altogether to the bad. To them the summit of Mount Apo is the
throne of the great Devil King, who watches over the crater with
his wife. The crater is the entry-way to hell, and no one can ascend
the mountain if he has not previously offered up a human sacrifice,
so that the Devil King may have a taste of human flesh and blood,
and being satiated, will desire no more. Cannibalism has existed in
these regions more as a religious orgy than a means of sustenance. A
dish was made consisting of the quivering vitals of the victim,
mixed with sweet potatoes, rice, or fruit.

Upon the death of any member of the tribe the house in which he lived
is burned. The body is placed within a hollow tree, and stands for
several days, while a barbaric feast is held around it. The Samales
bury their dead upon a coral island, placing them in grottoes, which
they visit annually with harvest offerings.

Chapter VII.

A Lost Tribe and the Servants of Mohammed.

Wandering, always wandering through the mountains and forests since
the years began,--destined to wander till the forests fall.

Throughout the archipelago, in the dense mountain woods, sleeping
in trees or on the ground, straying away in search of game, without
a fixed place of abode, live the Negritos, aborigines, the pigmy
vagrants of the Philippines. These little men, molesting no one,
yet considering the rest of mankind as their enemy, and wishing only
to be left alone, have hidden in the unexplored interior. Where
they have come from is a mystery. It might have been that, in the
ages past, the chain of islands from Luzon to Borneo was a part of
Asia, an extensive mountain system populated b