396 A NATURALIST ON THE "CHALLENGER." 



Especially interesting in the Philippines are the various 

 stages in development and modification of pile-dwellings. All 

 the native buildings are pile-dwellings or modifications of them, 

 and some of the better houses, built under European influence, 

 are evidently copied directly from the same models. 



Pile-dwellings are first invented as an expedient for raising 

 houses in the water for protection ; but when the race which for 

 generations has thus dwelt surrounded by water takes to living 

 on dry land, actuated somewhat no doubt by sanitary consider- 

 ations, it follows the ancient pattern of architecture with slavish 

 exactness, and only by gradually introduced modifications of that 

 plan, arrives at last at a house supported directly on the grouDd. 



At Zamboanga and at the neighbouring island of Basilan, 

 which we also visited, are settlements of a considerable number 

 of a race called by the Spanish " Moros " {i.e., Mahommedans), 

 who keep themselves strictly apart from the Bisayan and other 

 Malay races, amongst which they here dwell. The Moros at 

 Basilan still build their pile-dwellings out in the sea, so that 

 they can only be approached by boats. At Zamboanga, however, 

 where the Moros seem somewhat more tamed by Spanish influ- 

 ence, they have so far come on shore with their houses, that 

 these are built in a row along the beach, and at low tide are not 

 entirely surrounded with water, whilst the shore can always be 

 reached from them by means of a plank. The main inhabitants 

 of the Philippines, in the course of successive generations, have 

 taken their houses altogether on shore, except where here and 

 there there are houses in swampy ground, which form a sort of 

 gradation between the two conditions. 



The Moros or " Lutaos " are said to have settled in Minclonao 

 in the seventeenth century, and to have considered themselves 

 until quite recently, as subjects of the Sultan of Ternate* They 

 are a fierce and warlike race, pirates by profession at all events 

 not lono- a^o at Basilan and Mindonao, and still so at the Sulu 

 Islands. They seem but half subjected to the Spanish rule.f The 



* Dr. Th. Waitz, " Anthropologic der Naturvolker," 5 te Th. l tes Hft. 

 Die Malaien, Leipzig, 1865, s. 56. 



t Since the above was written, the Sulu Islanders have during this 

 year, 1878, submitted to Spanish rule on receipt of a sum of money. • An 



