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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



of the name, may supply a correct outline ; but 

 even this must be filled up by remembrance, or 

 supplemented by engraving. Pity that for the 

 Philippines themselves no word-limner of note 

 exists, to my knowledge at least, except the 

 coarse, narrow-souled Jagor, of whose book, or 

 libel rather, it is enough to say that the letter- 

 press and the sketches are worthy of each other, 

 and each not likenesses but caricatures. The 

 want, however, is one that, for the time at least, 

 must remain unfulfilled ; the subject, even were 

 it accessible to my grasp, docs not come within 

 the scope of a writing like the present. 



For, when all is said and done, the prime his- 

 tory of a country lies not in the land itself but in 

 the inhabitants of the land ; where they are un- 

 worthy of the beauties around them, the fairest 

 scenery fails to charm ; as, on the contrary, a no- 

 ble people can cast a glamour of attractiveness 

 over the dullest landscape. The barren rocks of 

 Attica, the dreary plains of Rome, nay, the un- 

 sightly marshes of Holland, are loved for their 

 hero-children, while the gorgeous panoramas of 

 Rio and Valparaiso, Yosemite gorges, and Niag- 

 ara, chiefly suggest a feeling of dissatisfaction 

 with the unequal inferiority of their vanished 

 autochthones, or present occupants. The chief- 

 est, the almost exceptional spell of the Philippines 

 is situate, not in lake or volcano, forest or plain, 

 but in the races that form the bulk of the island 

 population, the " Indians" as Spanish guileless- 

 ne8S of ethnography persists in misnaming them, 

 the Malays of descent and fact. 



I said "almost exceptional," because rarely 

 is an intra-tropical people a satisfactory one to 

 eye or mind ; witness the average negro of West- 

 ern Africa, the Carib of Southern America, the 

 Sinhalee of Ceylon. Extreme heat, as extreme 

 cold, are both, though in different ways, gener- 

 ally unfavorable to a successful development, 

 physical or intellectual, of the human species. 

 But this cannot be said of the Philippine Malays, 

 who in bodily formation and mental character- 

 istics alike may fairly claim a place not among 

 the middling ones merely but almost the higher 

 names inscribed on the world's national scale ; 

 and though not exactly a superior are eminently 

 an estimable, preeminently an amiable race. 



Of the Spaniards, the conquerors and admin- 

 istrators of this great archipelago, in which, how- 

 ever, not ten thousand of their number have even 

 a passing residence throughout its whole extent ; 

 of the English, an honorable, and in numbers as 

 in wealth a not inconsiderable body ; of the more 

 numerous nor unimportant Chinese settlers domi- 



ciled here ; and of that curious aboriginal rem- 

 nant, the negritos, savages akin, it would seem, 

 to the natives of Andaman, and like them 

 shrinking, perhaps with prudential self-preserv- 

 ing instinct, from the contact of the " nobler," at 

 any rate the stronger, races, no direct notice shall 

 be taken here. Indeed, of the 8,000,000 — so runs 

 the exactest though only approximate census — 

 that inhabit the Philippines, Europeans, Chinese, 

 all foreigners whosoever taken together, do not 

 make up a hundredth part ; nor do the thinly- 

 scattered and unprolific negritos add much to the 

 extra-Malayan muster. Nor again, in a general 

 sketch like this, do the varieties offered by the 

 Pliilippino-Malayan population within itself re- 

 quire more than a passing indication. The chief 

 are three, which correspond with tolerable geo- 

 graphical exactness to a triple division of the 

 archipelago into Northern, Central, and Southern. 

 Thus, the Ilocan Malays occupy the north, the 

 Tagals the centre, and the Visaians the south. 

 Of these three sub-races, the first-named are the 

 largest and sturdiest in physical build, but of 

 lower mental average and less general adapta- 

 bility than the two others ; the second, a smaller- 

 statured, darker-complexioned, and sinewy race, 

 are distinguished above all others for energy of 

 character, intelligence, and perseverance ; the 

 Visaians, graceful even to beauty in form and 

 gentle in manner, differ little in natural capacity 

 and endowments from the better sort of their 

 congeners in Borneo. Derived from or ingrafted 

 on these three main branches are many lesser 

 sprays. Some, especially in North and Central 

 Luzon, owe their differentiation, if reliance can 

 be placed on the testimony of bodily lineaments 

 and historical evidence combined, to a strong in- 

 fusion of Chinese, Formosan, and even Japanese 

 blood ; others, the Bicols for instance on the east- 

 ern shores of the island, display an evidently 

 Polynesian or Papuan admixture ; while in the 

 huge southerly island of Mindanao, scarcely in- 

 ferior to Luzon itself in dimensions, a population 

 closely resembling the Dyaks of Borneo is re- 

 ported to exist. But the persistent, strongly- 

 marked Malay type, whether absolutely pure as 

 among the Visaians, or dashed with foreign strain, 

 here more, here less, as is the case among the 

 Tagals, Ilocans, and their sub-branches, predomi- 

 nates in all. 



Once recognized, that type can never be mis- 

 taken ; ■ and it alone would, even in the absence 

 of other testimony, suffice to assert the Mongolian 

 clanship of the Malay. The rounded head, the 

 small but expressive black eye, with its slight up- 



