f living--free of taxes, military service, and social
restraint--as being more congenial to their tastes.

Being in the Bataan Province some years ago, I rode across the
mountain range to the opposite coast with a military friend. On our
way we approached a Negrito _real_, and hearing strange noises and
extraordinary calls, we stopped to consult as to the prudence of riding
up to the settlement. We decided to go there, and were fortunate enough
to be present at a wedding. The young bride, who might have been about
thirteen years of age, was being pursued by her future spouse as she
pretended to run away, and it need hardly be said that he succeeded in
bringing her in by feigned force. She struggled, and again got away,
and a second time she was caught. Then an old man with grey hair came
forward and dragged the young man up a bamboo ladder. An old woman
grasped the bride, and both followed the bridegroom. The aged sire
then gave them a douche with a cocoa-nut shell full of water, and
they all descended. The happy pair knelt down, and the elder having
placed their heads together, they were man and wife. We endeavoured
to find out which hut was allotted to the newly-married couple,
but we were given to understand that until the sun had reappeared
five times they would spend their honeymoon in the mountains. After
the ceremony was concluded, several present began to make their usual
mountain-call. In the lowlands, the same peculiar cry serves to bring
home straggling domestic animals to their nocturnal resting-place.

There is something picturesque about a well-formed, healthy Negrita
damsel, with jet-black piercing eyes, and her hair in one perfect
ball of close curls. The men are not of a handsome type; some of them
have a hale, swarthy appearance, but many of them present a sickly,
emaciated aspect. A Negrita matron past thirty is perhaps one of the
least attractive objects in humanity.

They live principally on fish, roots, and mountain rice, but they
occasionally make a raid on the neighbouring valleys and carry off
the herds. So great was their cattle-stealing propensity in Spanish
times, that several semi-official expeditions were sent to punish
the marauders, particularly on the Cordillera de Zambales, on the
west side of Luzon Island.

The husbandry of the Negritos is the most primitive imaginable. It
consists of scraping the surface of the earth--without clearance of
forest--and throwing the seed. They never