THE QUIANGANES OF LUZON. 389 



persons, relatives or friends. They work a day for one, a second 

 day for another, and so on, till each one is given his turn the 

 owner of the field cultivated for the day having to board the 

 whole company. There are also day -laborers who work for the 

 wealthy, and besides their board receive wages in chickens or rice. 

 Their industry is not much developed. Their smiths make of iron 

 axes, lance-heads, knives for cutting rice, and short wood-knives. 

 Their best lance-heads and their gansas a kind of guitar, mounted 

 with bronze and copper come from the valley of Japao. They 

 make a flute of a reed, which they blow with their nostrils. 



The Quianganes recognize the classes of nobles and plebeians. 

 Nobility is a personal character and not hereditary. He is noble 

 who is rich, and among these again those are most eminent who 

 have distinguished themselves as head-hunters ; for the Quian- 

 ganes are a head-hunting tribe. But wealth alone is not sufficient 

 to make any one noble ; it is necessary also to go through a cer- 

 tain established ceremonial. The newly rich plebeian who would 

 enter the aristocratic class notifies the people of his own and the 

 neighboring villages of his intention, whereupon a general re- 

 joicing prevails in anticipation of the feasting and drinking that 

 are to come. The finest tree is selected from the wood and felled, 

 and from it is hewn a figure that looks as much as anything else 

 like an animal set erect, from which the legs have been cut off. 

 All the guests work upon this figure, while they are entertained 

 at the expense of the candidate for noble honors. When the 

 statue is finished, it is left lying in the woods, and the company 

 return to their homes. After the end of the field-work, the com- 

 pany go again to the woods for the statue, which is called Tagabi, 

 to take it to the candidate's village ; a task which is attended by 

 numerous ceremonies. The train joins in a festal march, on which 

 the host strews the road with rice. The transportation of the 

 Tagabi is not accomplished in a single day, for the party all go 

 back to their ranches after the first feast ; and it is not till the 

 third day that the ceremonial entry of the statue into the village 

 takes place. The figure is deposited under the house of the can- 

 didate, and the grand feast follows by which he is received into 

 the caste of the nobles ; but to remain there only as long as he is 

 wealthy : wherefore the nobles, to preserve the recognition of 

 their rank, are obliged to give from time to time ocular demon- 

 stration of their ability to hold it, by feasting the plebeians and 

 the poor. In this way they often fall into the hands of usurers ; 

 and they rarely keep their wealth together long enough to leave 

 it, with its accompanying nobility, to their sons. The sons, never- 

 theless, even if they have become plebeians, believe that they are 

 honored, and have a special pride in calling themselves sons of 

 nobles. 



