658 
THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
town with plenty of snipe in them, and the domestic buffaloes lay about wallowing in 
mud pools and throwing water over their backs with their scoop-like ears. In one pool, 
several native women were bathing in company with the buffaloes. 
Especially interesting in the Philippines are the various stages in development and 
modification of pile-dwellings. All the native buildings are pile-dwellings or modifica- 
tions 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 considerations, it follows the ancient pattern of architec- 
ture with slavish exactness, and only by gradually introduced modifications of that plan 
arrives at last at a house supported directly on the ground. 
At Samboangan and at the neighbouring island of Basilan are settlements of a con- 
siderable number of a race called by the Spanish “Moros” (i.e., Mohammedans), 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 Samboangan, however, where the Moros 
seem somewhat more tamed by Spanish influence, 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, 
