weaving beam, hooks on a wooden bow, in the arch of which the back of the lath is fitted.  Placing her feet against two pegs in the ground and bending her back, she, by means of the bow, stretches the material out straight.  A netting-needle, longer than the breadth of the web, serves instead of the weaver’s shuttle, but it can be pushed through only by considerable friction, and not always without breaking the chains of threads.  A lath of hard wood (caryota), sharpened like a knife, represents the trestle, and after every stroke it is placed upon the edge; after which the comb is pushed forward, a thread put through, and struck fast, and so forth.  The web consisted of threads of the abaca, which were not spun, but tied one to another.

[A giant fern hedge.] The huts I visited deserve no special description.  Composed of bamboos and palm-leaves, they are not essentially different from the dwellings of poor Filipinos; and in their neighborhood were small fields planted with batata, maize, caladium and sugar-cane, and enclosed by magnificent polypody ferns.  One of the highest of these, which I caused to be felled for the purpose, measured in the stem nine meters, thirty centimeters; in the crown, two meters, twelve centimeters; and its total length was eleven meters, forty-two centimeters or over thirty-six feet.

[Simple stringed instruments.] A young lad produced music on a kind of lute, called baringbau; consisting of the dry shaft of the scitamina stretched in the form of a bow by means of a thin tendril instead of gut.  Half a coco shell is fixed in the middle of the bow, which, when playing, is placed against the abdomen, and serves as a sounding board; and the string when struck with a short wand, gave out a pleasing humming sound, realizing the idea of the harp and plectrum in their simplest forms.  Others accompanied the musician on Jews’ harps of bamboos, as accurate as those of the Mintras on the Malay Peninsula; and there was one who played on a guitar, which he had himself made, but after a European pattern.  The hut contained no utensils besides bows, arrows, and a cooking pot.  The possessor of clothes bore them on his person.  I found the women as decently clad as the Filipino Christian women, and carrying, besides, a forest knife, or bolo.  As a mark of entire confidence, I was taken into the tobacco fields, which were well concealed and protected by foot-lances; and they appeared to be carefully looked after.

[The people and their crops.] The result of my familiarity with this people, both before and after this opportunity, may be briefly summed up:  They live on the higher slopes of the mountain, never, indeed, below 1,500 feet; each family by itself.  It is difficult to ascertain how many of them there may now be, as but little intercourse takes place amongst them.  In the part of the mountain belonging to the district of Goa, their number is estimated at about fifty men and twenty women, including the children:  but twenty years before the population was more numerous.  Their food consists principally of batata, besides some gabi (caladium).  A little maize is likewise cultivated, as well as some ubi (dioscorea), and a small quantity of sugar-cane for chewing.