bua, a place of 10,875 inhabitants, is intersected by
several small streams, whose waters, pouring down from the eastern
hills, form a small lake, which empties itself into the river
Bicol. Just after passing the second bridge beyond Nabua the road,
inclining eastwards, wends in a straight line to Iriga, a place lying
to the south-west of the volcano of the same name.

[Remontados.] I visited a small settlement of pagans situated on the
slope of the volcano. The people of the plains call them indifferently
Igorots, Cimarrons, Remontados, Infieles, or Montesinos. None
of these names, however, with the exception of the two last, are
appropriate ones. The first is derived from the term applied in the
north of the Island to the mixed descendants of Chinese and Filipino
parents. The word Cimarron (French, marrow) is borrowed from the
American slave colonies, where it denoted negroes who escaped from
slavery and lived in a state of freedom; but here it is applied to
natives who prefer a wild existence to the comforts of village life,
which they consider are overbalanced by the servitude and bondage
which accompany them. The term Remontado explains itself, and has
the same signification as Cimarron. As the difference between the
two states--on account of the mildness of the climate, and the
ease with which the wants of the natives are supplied--is far less
than it would be in Europe, these self-constituted exiles are more
frequently to be met with than might be supposed; the cause of their
separation from their fellowmen sometimes being some offence against
the laws, sometimes annoying debts, and sometimes a mere aversion to
the duties and labors of village life. Every Filipino has an innate
inclination to abandon the hamlets and retire into the solitude of
the woods, or live isolated in the midst of his own fields; and it
is only the village prisons and the priests--the salaries of the
latter are proportionate to the number of their parishioners--that
prevent him from gradually turning the pueblos into visitas, [97]
and the latter into ranchos. Until a visit to other ranchos in the
neighborhood corrected my first impression, I took the inhabitants of
the slopes of the Iriga for cross-breeds between the low-landers and
negritos. The color of their skin was not black, but a dark brown,
scarcely any darker than that of Filipinos who have been much exposed
to the sun; and only a few of them had woolly hair. The negritos whom
I s