Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/537

Rh pieces of the rattan an inch and a half in diameter with elaborately woven loops at the ends. These are swung from one tree top to another and serve as passage-ways for the men at work. To cross they stand on the slack cable, one hand grasping it on each side, and so, crouching, pass along it at a height above the ground of 80 to 100 feet. With this in mind, I could understand their replying to my inquiry as to when they prayed, by saying that they "prayed and sang to the spirits when they went to climb the trees." Their crops are mountain rice, camotes or sweet potatoes, gabi or taro, maize, squash, bananas, tapioca and, in some places, sugar cane and tobacco. They are good gardeners, although all their cultivation is by hand, their tools being a short hoe or trowel and a wooden planting stick, which is ornamented with very tasteful carving.

The houses of the Ilongot are of two sorts. Sometimes they are low wretched hovels, built two or three feet above the ground, with roofs of grass and sides of bark. But frequently the Ilongot build really well-constructed and creditable homes. These are set high above the ground, fully twelve feet, on a large number of posts or piles; the floor is made of carefully set strips of palma brava, the door-posts, lintels and exposed pieces of framework are curiously and tastefully carved. Such a dwelling is built large and spacious for the occupancy of several families and there is usually a hearth in each of the four corners of the big, single room. Such a house set on a conspicuous ridge and lifted by its piles high among the foliage of the surrounding jungle is a striking and almost an imposing sight.

The arms of the Ilongot are the spear, the jungle knife which they forge into a peculiar form, wide and curving at the point, a slender, bent shield of light wood and the bow and arrow. The use of the latter weapons is significant and here, as always in Malaysia, it indicates Negrito influence and mixture. They use a bow of palma brava and the ingenious jointed arrow of the Negrito with point attached by a long cord of rattan to the shaft, which separates and dragging behind the transfixed animal impedes his escape.

Both men and women wear the long rattan waist belt wound many times about the loins with clouts and skirts of beaten bark cloth. The men also use a curious rain hat not unlike a fireman's helmet, made of rattan and deerskin, the light frame neatly decorated with carving, and a deerskin rain coat to cover their backs in the dripping forest.

The physical type of the Ilongot is peculiar and rather unlike that of any other Philippine people. The men are small, with long bodies and very short legs, weak, effeminate faces, occasionally bearded. The hair is worn long, but usually coiled upon the head and held by a rattan net. The color of the Ilongot is brown and a little lighter than that of Malayans exposed to the sun by life on the water or in the plain. Their head hair is sometimes nearly straight, usually wavy and