[Igorot-mining successful.] What Europeans yet appear unable to accomplish, the wild Igorots, who inhabit that trackless range of mountains, have carried on successfully for centuries, and to a proportionally larger extent; and this is the more remarkable as the metal in that district occurs only in the form of flints, which even in Europe can be made profitable only by particular management, and not without expense.

[Long-established and considerable.] The copper introduced into commerce by the Igorots from 1840 to 1855, partly in a raw state, partly manufactured, is estimated at three hundred piculs yearly.  The extent of their excavations, and the large existing masses of slag, also indicate the activity of their operations for a long period of time.

[Copper kettles attributed to Negritos.] In the Ethnographical Museum at Berlin is a copper kettle made by those wild tribes.  Meyer, who brought it, states that it was made by the Negritos in the interior of the island, and certainly with hammers of porphyry, as they have no iron; and that he further found, in the collection of the Captain General of the Philippines, a large shallow kettle of three and one-half feet in diameter, which had been bought for only three dollars; whence it may be inferred that, in the interior of the island, the copper occurs in large masses, and probably solid; for how could those rude, uncultivated negritos understand the art of smelting copper?

[Copper-working a pre-Spanish art.] The locality of these rich quarries was still unknown to the Governor, although the copper implements brought thence had, according to an official statement of his in 1833, been in use in Manila over two centuries.  It is now known that the copper-smiths are not Negritos but Igorots; and there can be no question that they practiced this art, and the still more difficult one of obtaining copper from flint, for a long period perhaps previous to the arrival of the Spaniards.  They may possibly have learnt them from the Chinese or Japanese.  The chief engineer, Santos [134], and many others with him, are of opinion that this race is descended from the Chinese or Japanese, from whom he insists that it acquired not only its features (several travellers mention the obliquely placed eyes of the Igorots), its idols, and some of its customs, but also the art of working in copper.  At all events, the fact that a wild people, living isolated in the mountains, should have made such progress in the science of smelting, is of so great interest that a description of their procedure by Santos (essentially only a repetition of an earlier account by Hernandez, in the Revista Minera, i. 112) will certainly be acceptable.