[Kupang iron-foundry.] On the following day I paid a visit to Kupang, an iron-foundry lying to the N.N.E of Angat, escorted by two armed men, whose services I was pressed to accept, as the district had a bad reputation for robberies.  After travelling three or four miles in a northerly direction, we crossed the Banauon, at that time a mere brook meandering through shingle, but in the rainy season an impetuous stream more than a hundred feet broad; and in a couple of hours we reached the iron-works, an immense shed lying in the middle of the forest, with a couple of wings at each end, in which the manager, an Englishman, who had been wrecked some years before in Samar, lived with his wife, a pretty mestiza.  If I laid down my handkerchief, my pencil, or any other object, the wife immediately locked them up to protect them from the kleptomania of her servants.  These poor people, whose enterprise was not a very successful one, had to lead a wretched life.  Two years before my visit a band of twenty-seven robbers burst into the place, sacked the house, and threw its mistress, who was alone with her maid at the time, out of the window.  She fortunately alighted without receiving any serious hurt, but the maid, whom terror caused to jump out of the window also, died of the injuries she received.  The robbers, who turned out to be miners and residents in Angat, were easily caught, and, when I was there, had already spent a couple of years in prison awaiting their trial.

[A negrito family.] I met a negrito family here who had friendly relations with the people in the iron-works, and were in the habit of exchanging the produce of the forest with them for provisions.  The father of this family accompanied me on a hunting expedition.  He was armed with a bow and a couple of arrows.  The arrows had spear-shaped iron points a couple of inches long; one of them had been dipped into arrow-poison, a mixture that looked like black tar.  The women had guitars (tabaua) similar to those used by the Mintras in the Malay peninsula.  They were made of pieces of bamboo a foot long, to which strings of split chair-cane were fastened. [61]

[Unwelcome hospitality.] Upon my return, to avoid spending the night at the wretched convento where I had left my servant with my luggage, I took the advice of my friends at the iron-works and started late, in order to arrive at the priest’s after ten o’clock at night; for I knew that the padre shut up his house at ten, and that I could therefore sleep, without offending him, beneath the roof of a wealthy mestizo, an acquaintance of theirs.  About half-past ten I reached the latter’s house, and sat down to table with the merry women of the family, who were just having their supper.  Suddenly my friend the parson made his appearance from an inner room, where with a couple of Augustinian friars, he had been playing cards with the master of the house.  He immediately began to compliment me upon my good fortune, “for had you been but one minute later,” said he, “you certainly wouldn’t have got into the convento.”