[A land of opportunity.] Uncultivated land was free, and was at the service of any one willing to make it productive; if, however, it remained untilled for two years, it reverted to the crown. [55]

[Low taxes.] The only tax which the Filipinos pay is the poll-tax, known as the tributo, which originally, three hundred years ago, amounted to one dollar for every pair of adults, and in a country where all marry early, and the sexes are equally divided, really constituted a family-tax.  By degrees the tribute has been raised to two and one-sixteenth dollars.  An adult, therefore, male or female, pays one and one-thirty-second dollar, and that from his sixteenth to his sixtieth year.  Besides this, every man has to give forty days’ labor every year to the State.  This vassalage (polos y servicios) is divided into ordinary and extraordinary services:  the first consists of the duties appertaining to a watchman or messenger, in cleaning the courts of justice, and in other light labors; the second in road-making, and similar heavier kinds of work, for the benefit of villages and provinces.  The little use, however, that is made of these services, is shown by the fact that any one can obtain a release from them for a sum which at most is not more than three dollars.  No personal service is required of women.  A little further on, important details about the tax from official sources, which were placed at my disposal in the colonial office, appear in a short special chapter.

[Fortunate factors.] In other countries, with an equally mild climate, and an equally fertile soil, the natives, unless they had reached a higher degree of civilization than that of the Philippine Islanders, would have been ground down by native princes, or ruthlessly plundered and destroyed by foreigners.  In these isolated Islands, so richly endowed by nature, where pressure from above, impulse from within, and every stimulus from the outside are wanting, the satisfaction of a few trifling wants is sufficient for an existence with ample comfort.  Of all countries in the world, the Philippines have the greatest claim to be considered a lotos-eating Utopia.  The traveller, whose knowledge of the dolce far niente is derived from Naples, has no real appreciation of it; it only blossoms under the shade of palm-trees.  These notes of travel will contain plenty of examples to support this.  One trip across the Pasig gives a foretaste of life in the interior of the country.  Low wooden cabins and bamboo huts, surmounted with green foliage and blossoming flowers, are picturesquely grouped with areca palms, and tall, feather-headed bamboos, upon its banks.  Sometimes the enclosures run down into the stream itself, some of them being duck-grounds, and others bathing-places.  The shore is fringed with canoes, nets, rafts, and fishing apparatus.  Heavily-laden boats float down the stream, and small canoes ply from bank to bank between the groups of bathers.  The most lively traffic is to be seen in the tiendas, large sheds, corresponding to the Javanese harongs, which open upon the river, the great channel for traffic.