beauties, and consume their suppers.

The most noticeable traits in the Philippine Indians appear to be
their hospitality, good-nature, and _bonhommie_ which very many
of them have. Their tempers are quick; but, like all of that sort,
after effervescing, soon subside into quiet again.

Very frequently have I been invited to enter their houses in the
country, when loitering about during the heat of the sun, under
the protection of an immense and thick sombrero which prevented me
suffering much from the exposure; and on going into one of them,
after the host or hostess had accommodated me with a seat on the
_banco_ of bamboo, a cigarillo, or the _buyo_, which is universally
chewed by them, and composed of the betel nut and lime spread over an
envelope of leaf, such as nearly all Asiatics use, has been offered
by the handsome, though swarthy, hands of the hostess or of a grown-up
daughter: or, if their rice was cooking at the time, often have I been
invited to share it, and have sometimes so made a most excellent and
hearty meal, using the natural aid of the fingers in place of a spoon,
or other of the customary aids for eating. After eating they always
wash their hands and mouths, so cleanly are their habits.

So long as any white man behaves properly towards them, and treats
them as human beings should be treated, their character will evince
many good points; but should they be beaten or abused without a
cause, or for something that they do not understand, as they but too
frequently are when composing the crews of ships, the masters of which
are seldom able to speak to them in their own language or in Spanish:
who can blame them if the knife is drawn from its sheath, and their
own arm avenges the maltreatment of some brutal shipmaster or his
mates for the wrong they have suffered at their hands? In all I have
seen or had to do with them they have never appeared as aggressors,
and it has only been when the white men, despising their dark skins,
have ventured on unjustifiable conduct, that I have heard of their
hands being raised to revenge it.

When they know that they are in the wrong, however, should the
harshest measures be used towards them, I have never known or heard
of their having had recourse to the knife, and I have frequently seen
them suffer very severe bodily chastisement for very slight causes
of offence.

They are easily kept in order by gentleness, but have spirit enough to
resent ill-treatment if un