Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/534

528 the party emerged from the forest into the open country. The greatest difficulty and peril was lack of food, which can not be carried in sufficient quantities to sustain the entire journey.

In January, 1909, a very important exploration was made by Governor Bryant, escorted by Captain Hunt with a detachment of soldiers, and accompanied by Mr. Murphy and Dr. M. L. Miller, chief of the ethnological survey. The party left Dupah, January 7, and traversed the wholly unknown country lying to the southwest. The course of the wild gorge of the "Kaseknan" river, the head of the Kagayan, was developed, several important communities of Ilongot were discovered and visited without hostilities and the first knowledge obtained of much of this region. After struggling for ten days with the difficulties of jungle, ravine and densely covered mountains, the party reached Baler on the Pacific coast.

In May, 1909, the writer, accompanied by Lieutenant Coon and six native soldiers, reached a small community of Ilongot east of Pantabangan, called "Patakgao." This community seemed to be composed of renegades and outlaws from several other communities. Certainly their hand was against every man. They were charged by a small group of Ilongot living near Pantabangan with the murder of two of their number a few weeks earlier and they themselves professed to be harried and persecuted by unfriendly Ilongot to the north and east of them. They had wounds to exhibit received in a chance fray a few days before with a hunting party from near Baler. Altogether, their wayward and hazardous life was a most interesting exhibit of the anarchy and retaliation that reign in primitive Malayan communities which are totally "in want of a common judge with authority." A series of measurements was obtained by me at Patagkao and vocabulary and notes extended.

With the above remarks as to what has been accomplished in throwing light upon these people some description of them will be given. For information of their location and condition I am indebted to several others, and particularly to Mr. Murphy, otherwise the facts are the results of my own investigation.

Ilongot can not be said to live in villages, for their houses are not closely grouped, but are scattered about within hallooing distance on the slopes of canons where clearings have been made. Each little locality has its name and is usually occupied by families with blood or social ties between them, and several such localities within a few hours' travel of one another form a friendly group. Outside of this group all other Ilongot as well as all other peoples are blood enemies, to be hunted, murdered and decapitated as occasion permits.

The most considerable body of Ilongot appears to be those living east of the towns of Nueva Vizcaya from Mount Palali south, along a high-wooded range to the district of "Biruk," nearly east of Karanglan.