[The Bicols.] The Bicols are found only in this district and in a few islands lying immediately in front of it.  Of their coming hither no information is to be obtained from the comprehensive but confused histories of the Spanish monks.  Morga considers them to be natives of the island; on the other hand, it is asserted by tradition that the inhabitants of Manila and its vicinity are descended from Malays who have migrated thither, and from the inhabitants of other islands and more distant provinces. [107] Their speech is midway between that of the Tagalogs and the Bisayans, and they themselves appear, in both their manners and customs, to be a half-breed between these two races.  Physically and mentally they are inferior to the Tagalogs, and superior to the inhabitants of the eastern Bisayan Islands. [Bicol language.] Bicol is spoken only in the two Camarines, Albay, Luzon, the Islands of Masbate, Burias, Ticao, and Catanduanes, and in the smaller adjoining islands.  The inhabitants of the volcanic mountain Isarog and its immediate neighborhood speak it in the greatest purity.  Thence towards the west the Bicol dialect becomes more and more like Tagalog, and towards the east like Bisayan, until by degrees, even before reaching the boundaries of their ethnographical districts, it merges into these two kindred languages.

[Rice cultivation.] In South Camarines the sowing of the rice in beds begins in June or July, always at the commencement of the rainy season; but in fields artificially watered, earlier, because thus the fruit ripens at a time when, the store in the country being small, its price is high.  Although the rice fields could very well give two crops yearly, they are tilled only once.  It is planted out in August, with intervals of a hand’s-breadth between each row and each individual plant; and within four months the rice is ripe.  The fields are never fertilized, and but seldom ploughed; the weeds and the stubble being generally trodden into the already soaked ground by a dozen carabaos, and the soil afterwards simply rolled with a cylinder furnished with sharp points, or loosened with the harrow (sorod).  Besides the agricultural implements named above, there are the Spanish hatchet (azadon) and a rake of bamboo (kag-kag) in use.  The harvest is effected in a peculiar manner.  The rice which is soonest ripe is cut for ten per cent, that is, the laborer receives for his toil the tenth bundle for himself.  At this time of year rice is very scarce, want is imminent, and labor reasonable.  The more fields, however, that ripen, the higher become the reapers’ wages, rising to twenty, thirty, forty, even fifty per cent; indeed, the executive sometimes consider it to be necessary to force the people to do harvest by corporal punishment and imprisonment, in order to prevent a large portion of the crop from rotting on the stalk.  Nevertheless, in very fruitful years a part of the harvest is lost.  The rice is cut halm by halm (as in Java) with a peculiarly-formed knife, or, failing such, with the sharp-edged flap of a mussel [108] found in the ditches of the rice-fields, which one has only to stoop to pick up.