Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/536

530, toward the province of Isabela, we have the Ilongot communities in which Dr. Jones worked, and lost his life, Dumabato Kagadyangan and others. It may be that these Ilongot communicate with the Tagalog town of Kasiguran. In all of these communities together there are probably only a couple of thousand souls at most. Few communities have as many as twenty houses or 200 souls; the most are isolated groups of four or five married couples and their immediate relations. The harsh nature of their country, unsanitary life, occasional epidemics and most of all their perpetual warfare contribute toward their diminution rather than their increase.

Like other primitive Malayan people who live in the forest, the Ilongot support life by cultivating a forest clearing or "kaingin." The great trees are girdled, men ascend their smooth clean trunks a hundred feet or more and daringly lop away their branches and stems that the life of the tree may be destroyed and the sunlight be admitted to the earth below. At Patakgao I was shown some beautiful long