been more unpromising, have offered more difficulties?  There were those thousands of savages shut up in their all but inaccessible mountains.  Why not leave them there, to take one another’s heads when occasion offered?  They raised nothing but rice and sweet potatoes, anyway, and not enough of those to keep from going hungry.  Why concern one’s self about them, when there was already so much to be done elsewhere?

To Mr. Worcester’s everlasting honor, be it said, he took no such view.  On the contrary, he went to work, and that after a simple fashion, but then, all great things are simple!  The first thing was to see the people himself; and then came the beginning of the solution, to push practicable roads and trails through the country.  Once these established, communication and interchange would follow, and the way would be cleared for the betterment of relations and the removal of misunderstandings.  Today an American may ride through the country alone, unarmed and unmolested; [46] twenty years ago a Spaniard trying the same thing would have lost his head within the first five miles.  And this difference is fundamentally due to the fact, already mentioned, of the honesty of our relations with these simple mountaineers.  We have their confidence and their esteem and their respect, and this in spite of the necessity under which our authorities have constantly labored of punishing them when necessary and of insisting upon law and order wherever our jurisdiction prevails.  The lesson has been hard to learn, but it has been driven home.  The truth of the matter is, that a great missionary work has been begun; missionary not in the limited sense of forcing upon the understanding of a yet circumscribed people a religion unintelligible to them, but in the sense of teaching peace and harmony, respect for order, obedience to law, regard for the rights of others.

A beginning accordingly has been made, but what is to be the end?  We should not stay for an answer, could we but feel sure that but one answer were possible.  But we can not feel sure on this head; the people of the Islands, whether civilized or uncivilized, have not yet gone far enough to proceed alone.  To drop the work now, nay, to lessen it, would merely be inviting a return to former evil conditions.  No greater disaster could befall these highlanders to-day than a change entailing a diminution of the interest and sympathy felt for them at the seat of government.  It is best to be plain about this matter:  the Filipinos of the lowlands dislike the highlander as much as they fear and dread him.  They apparently can not bear the idea that but three or four hundred years ago they too were barbarians; [47] for this reason the consideration of the highlander is distasteful and offensive to them.  The appropriations of the Philippine Assembly for the necessary administration of the Mountain Province are none too great; they would cease entirely could the Assembly have its own