ippine population. Without these exhibits,
and on seeing only the educated Filipinos who formed the Philippine
Commission, the American people at home might well have asked--Is
not American civilization a superfluity in those islands?

The inhabitants of these Islands were by no means savages, entirely
unreclaimed from barbarism before the Spanish advent in the 16th
century. They had a culture of their own, towards which the Malay
settlers themselves appear to have contributed very little. In the
nascent pre-Spanish civilization, Japanese immigrants were almost
the only agriculturists, mine-workers, manufacturers, gold-seekers,
goldsmiths, and masters of the industrial arts in general. Pagsanjan
(Laguna) was their great industrial centre. Malolos (Bulacan) was
also an important Japanese trading base. Whilst working the mines of
Ilocos their exemplary industry must undoubtedly have influenced the
character of the Ilocanos. Away down in the Bicol country of Camarines,
the Japanese pushed their trade, and from their great settlement in
Taal their traffic must have extended over the whole province, first
called by the Spaniards Taal y Balayan, but since named Batangas. From
the Japanese, the Malays learnt the manufacture of arms, and the
Igorrotes the art of metal-working. Along the coasts of the large
inhabited islands the Chinese travelled as traders or middlemen, at
great personal risk of attack by individual robbers, bartering the
goods of manufacturers for native produce, which chiefly consisted
of sinamay cloth, shark-fin, balate (trepang), edible birds'-nests,
gold in grain, and siguey-shells, for which there was a demand in Siam
for use as money. Every north-east monsoon brought down the junks
to barter leisurely until the south-west monsoon should waft them
back, and neither Chinese nor Japanese made the least attempt, nor
apparently had the least desire, to govern the Islands or to overrule
the natives. Without coercion, the Malay settlers would appear to
have unconsciously submitted to the influence of the superior talent
or astuteness of the sedulous races with whom they became merged and
whose customs they adopted, proof of which can be traced to the present
day. [76] Presumably the busy, industrious immigrants had neither time
nor inclination for sanguinary conflicts, for those recorded appear
to be confined to the raids of the migratory mountaineers and an
occasional attack by some ambitious Borneo buccaneer.