172 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i, 1899
perched high on poles so as to be reached only by means of ladders. Their chiefship is nominally hereditary, though the will of the people is final ; trial by ordeal prevails ; theft is punished by fine or beating, and polygamy is forbidden ; wives are purchased from their fathers (indicating patriarchal rule) ; child marriage is common, and children may be betrothed before birth, while divorce is effected by a payment from the party desiring freedom ; among some of the tribe the marriage ceremony is highly elaborate ; the house of a decedent is torn down and his body buried in the forest, his utensils being broken over the grave ; while the corpse awaits burial the friends dread a flying monster, which is supposed to tear the thatch of houses and consume dead bod- ies within ; they imagine a future life for the good, located deep in the earth in seven stages, the death-giant taking the testimony from a louse on the body of the decedent as to whether he was good or bad, and, in the latter case, casting him into a fire to be completely annihilated ; the tide is ascribed to a gigantic crab, which lets the water into his hole when he comes out and forces it out again on his entry ; they tell that the monkey was once a lazy man at whom a companion threw a stick, which changed his shape and stuck into him in such a manner as to form his tail ; they have a syllabary with which they write on fresh joints of bamboo, in vertical columns. The Tagbanua of Busuanga have shamans who treat disease mystically ; in case of death the selec- tion of a place of inhumation is imputed to the deceased — different places are named while the pallbearers lift the corpse, when, if it seems heavy, the place named is considered unsatisfactory, while if it seems light the place is supposed to be preferred ; the body may be carried a long distance and may either be buried in the earth or deposited in a cave, though it may be placed on a platform ; the property of the de- ceased is left at the place of sepulture ; there are subsequent ceremonies, including the chanting of an archaic song, and this one is sometimes repeated after the ensuing rice harvest. The Mangy an of
Mindoro, another little-known tribe, were observed with special care. The men wear breechclouts, while the married women wear a curious structure of braided rattan coiled about the waist and hips, to which a bark clout is attached, while the unmarried women wear a similar cos- tume with the addition of a separate band of plantain peels about the thorax ; during the dry season they have no permanent habitations, but sleep in extemporized bowers of rattan or palm leaves, while in the rainy reason they huddle on platforms of poles protected by rude roofs of rattan leaves. The Mangyan of the mountains are physically superior to those of the lowlands ; their noses are flat, their heads covered with abundant black hair, sometimes slightly curly, suggesting
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