68 
COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL 
villages are sometimes included, and the population mis¬ 
leadingly estimated at a quarter of a million or more. 
The Christianized natives of the Philippines are for 
the most part a simple race,—docile, easy-going, credulous, 
rather excitable, and very superstitious. The Spaniards 
say that they are as easily led by Europeans who take 
pains to understand them as the horse or the buffalo. 
They are, in fact, led, guided, and virtually governed by 
the Catholic priesthood, who may be truly said to have 
originally conquered them, and to have maintained them 
ever since in subjection. This has made them less 
dignified and polished than some of the true Malays, but 
they yet have many estimable qualities. They are a 
good-natured, cheerful, contented, and hospitable people; 
and though, when first visited by the Portuguese and 
Spaniards, they were inferior in civilisation to the Malays 
and Javanese, they may now be considered as equal if 
not superior to them. Of all Asiatic people they are 
perhaps those who have made the most advance under 
European rule. Mr. W. G-. Palgrave calls them “ as in¬ 
dustrious, steady, and persevering a race as any under a 
tropical sun.” 
Most of these people wear a national costume some¬ 
what resembling that of the Malays; the women a 
“ camisa ” and “ saya,” and the men a shirt hanging out¬ 
side the trousers like a blouse. On festa days and other 
holidays they are often very expensively clad in pina of 
fine texture freely embroidered. Their amusements, with 
one exception, are of a harmless and simple order. Plays, 
secular or semi - religious, the latter preponderating, 
dances, festas, and processions with as much music as can 
conveniently be introduced, for a brass band is a sine 
qud non in every Tagal village : these are the chief. The 
exception is cock-fighting—•“ une veritable passion que 
