States races, but the Pygmies seem
outlandish. Have they huts or do they live in caves, or how?"

"Nothing!" was the answer. "A few have rough huts, but most of them
wander in the forests."

"But where do they sleep?"

"On the ground."

"I should think they would be afraid of wild beasts," the boy remarked.

"There are very few in the Philippines," was the reply.

"How about snakes, then?" queried the lad.

"They have to take chances on snakes. But you know a snake will scarcely
ever strike unless alarmed or attacked. No snake will bite a sleeping
man. Wild animals only attack for food, and man is left alone as much as
possible."

"Haven't they pythons there? And a python could easily strangle and
swallow a man."

"He could, but he doesn't," the Porto Rican pointed out; "rabbits are
more his size, or a young fawn. The Negritos are safe enough, as far as
that goes."

"What do they live on?"

"Fish, mostly, together with roots and berries; and they can get all
they want with bow and arrow, or with a stone. They can throw a stone as
straight as you could shoot a bullet."

"We ought to import some of them for baseball pitchers," suggested
Hamilton with a grin. "But it really must have been an awful job
enumerating them. And when it comes to poisoned arrows!--No thank you,
I'd rather stick to old Kentucky. Are there many of them?"

"No," was the reply, "the Negrito is dying out, just as the aboriginal
tribes all over the world are doing. There are only about twenty-three
thousand of the Pygmies left now."

"But there are more natives than that in the Philippines?" queried the
boy.

"Hundreds of thousands. You see there are really three different types
of savages in the Philippines, according to the census reports. The
aboriginal tribes are the Negritos, perhaps as close to primitive man as
any people on earth; those are the ones I have been telling you about,
and they are a race all to themselves, as different from the rest of
the Filipinos as the negro is from the white man. The true Filipinos are
Malays."

"Even the head-hunters?"

"Certainly. There are Filipinos of two grades,--apparently of two
periods of migration. The first came and settled the islands away a long
time back, driving the Pygmies to the forests, and occupying the coasts
themselves. These tribes, the Igorots, the Ilongots, the Bilans, and so
forth, are of the same general type as the head-hunters of Borneo, and
some,--like the Ilon