idels, who have held to their ancient heathen rights, the
Moors, who retain the Mahometan religion of their first conquerors, and
the infinitely larger class of Catholics.

An important, though numerically small, element in the population of the
larger cities are the mestizos, or half-breeds, the result of admixture
either between the Chinese or the Spanish and the natives. These mestizos
occupy about the same social position as the mulattos of the United
States. But they are the richest and most enterprising among the native
population.

The most important personage is the cura, or parish priest. He is in most
instances a Spaniard by birth, and enrolled in one or other of the three
great religious orders, Augustinian, Franciscan, or Dominican, established
by the conquerors. At heart, however, he is usually as much, if not more,
of a native than the natives themselves. He is bound for life to the land
of his adoption. He has no social or domestic tie, no anticipated home
return, to bind him to any other place.

Next to the church, the greatest Sunday and holiday resort in a Philippine
village is the cock-pit, usually a large building wattled like a coarse
basket and surrounded by a high paling of the same description, which
forms a sort of courtyard, where cocks are kept waiting their turn to come
upon the stage, when their owners have succeeded in arranging a
satisfactory match. It is claimed that many a respectable Malay father has
been seen escaping from amid the ruins of his burning home bearing away in
his arms his favourite bird, while wife and children were left to shift
for themselves.

The diet of the Philippines has something to do, undoubtedly, with their
gentle and non-aggressive qualities. They eschew opium and spirituous
liquors. Their chief sustenance, morning, noon, and eve, is rice. The rice
crop seldom fails, not merely to support the population, but to leave a
large margin for export. Famine, that hideous shadow which broods over so
many a rice-subsisting population, is unknown here. Even scarcity is of
rare occurrence. In the worst of years hardly a sack of grain has to be
imported. It is this very abundance which stands in the way of what the
world calls progress. The Malay, like other children of the tropics,
limits his labour by the measure of his requirements, and that measure is
narrow indeed. Hence it is often difficult to obtain his services in the
development of the tobacco, coffee, hemp,