THE MATERIAL SIDES OF LIFE 83 
as Luzon. While loose groups like the Mandaya, 
Manobo, and Bukidnon each aggregate twenty-five to 
fifty thousand souls, these live very much scattered over 
really enormous stretches of country. The Bagobo 
area in Mindanao may be fairly compared with that of 
the Bontok or Ifugao; but the Bagobo population is 
estimated to be only one-seventh and one-fifteenth as 
great respectively. 
However, numerous as they are, the Igorot and ad- 
jacent peoples are rude in their general culture, and the 
question therefore arises whether their fine irrigation 
system is an invention of therr own or an importation; 
and if the latter, were its introducers they themselves 
when they first came to the Philippines, or some other 
people? As for the general question of local invention or 
importation, there can be little doubt. The idea of 
terrace irrigation was familiar to other Filipino groups 
and to many of. the inhabitants of the East Indies 
generally. If nations like the Tagalog and Pampanga 
did not build the endless step fields of the Ifugao, it is 
because they possessed sufficient lowlands. The word 
Tagalog is said to mean, ‘‘those of the alog,” the lands 
that are converted into marsh after a storm; whereas 
the name Pampanga is derived from pangan, a river 
bank. Most of the Pampanga country, in fact, is a vast 
swamp in the rainy season and stands more in need of 
drainage than of having water fed into the fields. 
Almost everywhere along the immediate coast heavily 
watered lowlands were available. Elsewhere in 
Malaysia a similar condition prevails. In Java, which 
is a rather narrow and distinctly mountainous island, 
whose population early became heavy, the same thing 
occurs as in Luzon. There are too many people for the 
bulk of them to live actually on the river mouths. 
The majority therefore dwell at some elevation and 
