NARRATIVE OF THE CRUISE. 
659 
have taken their houses altogether on shore, except that occasionally 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 Mindanao in the seventeenth 
century, and to have considered themselves until quite recently as subjects of the Sultan 
of Ternate . 1 They are a fierce and warlike race ; pirates by profession at all events not 
long ago at Basilan and Mindanao, and still so at the Sulu Islands. They seem but half 
subjected to the Spanish rule. The men are short and broad shouldered, with powerful 
chests and thick-set bodies, and extremely active ; their features are of the Malay type, 
but peculiar ; their eyes are remarkably bright ; their colour is light yellowish brown ; 
they have often a slight beard and moustache ; they wear bright coloured shirts and 
rather tight fitting trousers, buttoned close round the leg at the ankle. The Moro 
women are short and -small, and delicate limbed, most of them very handsome when 
young ; many of them are very light coloured in complexion ; their eyes, like the men’s, 
being extremely bright. They are fond of bright yellows and reds in their dress, and are 
very fully clad. The men are armed with circular shields and spears, and also used, 
formerly at least, suits of armour made of plates of buffalo horn, linked together with 
wire, which are very rare objects in ethnological museums. 
At Port Isabella, Basilan Island, the Moro houses are constructed on piles in a small 
lagoon-like offset of the channel between this island and the small outlying island of 
Malamaui. The houses are entirely isolated from the shore by the water. They stand 
together, and a wide rickety platform connects many of them with one another . 2 At 
Samboangan the Moro houses are also built in a group. The main house in each case is 
usually supported on three rows of piles, but various additions and out-buildings are 
supported on irregularly added piles ; there is always a platform before the entrance, and 
sometimes one for canoes behind. It was odd to see a horse left tied by its Moro owner 
to the door-post, standing up to its belly in the water, through the rising of the tide. 
The houses of the other native inhabitants throughout the towns of Samboangan and 
Ilo Ilo are mostly of closely similar pattern, and they stand in like manner on piles, though 
on dry ground, and have a platform usually at one end, which is reached by a short 
steep ladder, with widely separated and irregular rounds, up which the house dogs, from 
practice, run as nimbly and easily as the children and their mothers. The platforms are 
now used for drying clothes upon, and such purposes. 
The first process of modification of the pile-dwelling gone on shore, is the putting up 
of a fence of palm leaves in the lower part of the spaces between the piles supporting the 
house. A pen is thus formed in which pigs or other animals are kept. Then well-made 
mats or reed walls are put up, entirely enclosing the space between the piles, with a 
1 Dr. Th. Waitz, Anthropologic tier Naturvolker, Th. v. Hft. 1, Die Malaien, p. 56, Leipzig, 1865. 
For an account of the inhabitants of the Sulu Islands, the same race as the Moros, with descriptions and figures 
of their houses, see Wilkes, Narrative of the U.S. Exploring Expedition, vol. v. chap, ix., New York, 1856. 
