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lages, and cultivated lowlands, and are mostly Roman Catholics, though a considerable number remain faithful to the creed of Mohammed. In the mountainous interior we find what is probably the original race, the Oceanic Negroes, a black-complexioned, negroish people, closely resembling in their persons and customs the Papuan Alfoories. They are chiefly heathens, practicing a wild and crude idolatry, or otherwise observing no religious form at all, though not free from degrading superstitions. Among the industrial population a foremost place must be given to the Chinese immigrants, who, however, do not settle permanently in the islands; while the Mestizos, or half-breeds, who are mostly of Chinese fathers and native mothers, exhibit a remarkable degree of activity, enterprise and industry. Spaniards are few in this Spanish colony, except in the military and naval service.

DAMPIER.

Dampier visited these islands in 1686, as pilot on board the Cygnet, a privateer, or buccaneering vessel, commanded by Captain Swan. They were kindly received by the natives, though their piratical character seems to have been suspected. They obtained a supply of fresh provisions; and Dampier for the first time saw the bread-fruit tree, the staff of life to so many of the Polynesian tribes. At the flying proas, or sailing canoes of the natives, the visitors were greatly astonished. They were admirably built, and so swift that Dampier was persuaded that one of them would sail twenty-four miles an hour; and another had accomplished the distance between Guahan and Manilla, or 400 leagues, in four days.

Dampier describes the trees of Mindanao with some degree of particularity. In his time they were curiosities, and scarcely known to Europeans, even by repute; but now we are all familiar with the properties of the bread-fruit and the cocoa-nut, the nutmeg and the banana, the durian and the plantain.

HIS ACCOUNT OF THE PLANTAIN.

The plantain he boldly terms the king of all fruit. He will brook no rivals near its throne, not even the cocoanut palm, gracefulest of all vegetable wonders, which wins the admiration of every cultivated eye with its slender, shapely column and lifted crown of plumes. The tree that bears the plantain is, he says, about three feet or three and a half feet around and ten or twelve feet high. It is not raised from seed, but from the roots of old trees of the same kind. If these young suckers are taken out of the ground and · planted in another place they will not fructify for fifteen months, but if allowed to remain in their own soil they will fructify in twelve. As soon as the fruit is ripe the tree decays, but several young ones are ready to take its place. On first emerging from the ground it springs up with two leaves, and by the time it is a foot in height two more spring up inside the first couple, and shortly afterwards two more within them; and so the brave work goes on. By the time

it is a month old a small stem about the size of a man's arm is discernible, as well as eight or ten leaves, some of which are four or five feet high. The first leaves, however, are not more than twelve inches long and six broad; the stem that bears them is no bigger than a man's finger, but the leaves increase in size as

the tree increases in height. The old leaves spread off as the young spring on the inside, and their tops droop downwards, being of a greater length and breadth in proportion as they are nearer to the roots. At last they decay and drop off, but the young leaves always blooming at the top preserve the green and flourishing aspect of the tree.

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Thus the body of the tree seems to be made up of many thick skins, growing one over another, and when it is full grown, out of the top springs a strong stem, harder in substance than any other part of the trunk.

This stem shoots forth at the heart of the tree, is as big, says Dampier, and as long as a man's arm, and, all clustering around, grows the fruit—and such fruit! The Spaniards give it the first place among the productions of Pomona as most conducive to life. It grows in a pod about six or seven inches long, and is of the size of a man's arm-a favorite comparison, we may observe, with Dampier. The pod, shell or rind is soft, and when ripe is as yellow as gold. The fruit within is no harder than butter in winter, and resembles good yellow butter in color. It is of a delicate taste, and melts in one's mouth like marmalade. It is all pure pulp, without any seed, stone or kernel. Europeans when they settle in America learn to esteem it so highly that when they make a new plantation they usually begin with a good "plantain walk," as they call it, or a "field of plantains," and as their family increases, so do they enlarge their plantain walk, keeping one man purposely to prune the trees and gather the fruit as it reaches maturity. For some, or other of the trees, are always bearing throughout the year, and frequently

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