“Did any one get killed by hostile natives?” asked Hamilton, scenting a story.

“Several wounded, one badly, but no one killed.  But”—­and he waggled a finger warningly—­“there were plenty of places where the census was only estimated!  The blowpipe and the poison arrow are most dangerous.  Even with the soldiers taking the census and going with other census men, it was very risky among the uncivilized tribes.”

“They are really wild?” said Hamilton.

“I think the wildest people in the world, the most savage, are in those jungles.  My uncle had to go to the haunts of the Pygmies.”

“Pygmies!” exclaimed Hamilton in surprise.  “I didn’t know that the Stars and Stripes floated over Pygmy tribes!  I thought they were only in Africa!”

“The Negritos are pygmies,” answered the editor, “seldom over four feet ten inches for the man and the woman two or three inches shorter; they use their toes like fingers, they wear only a loin-cloth, their hair is fuzzy like a black bush, and they seldom use fire, even for cooking.”

“How do they live?” asked Hamilton.  “We have got used to thinking of the Red Indians as a part of the United States races, but the Pygmies seem outlandish.  Have they huts or do they live in caves, or how?”

“Nothing!” was the answer.  “A few have rough huts, but most of them wander in the forests.”

“But where do they sleep?”

“On the ground.”

“I should think they would be afraid of wild beasts,” the boy remarked.

“There are very few in the Philippines,” was the reply.

“How about snakes, then?” queried the lad.

“They have to take chances on snakes.  But you know a snake will scarcely ever strike unless alarmed or attacked.  No snake will bite a sleeping man.  Wild animals only attack for food, and man is left alone as much as possible.”

“Haven’t they pythons there?  And a python could easily strangle and swallow a man.”

“He could, but he doesn’t,” the Porto Rican pointed out; “rabbits are more his size, or a young fawn.  The Negritos are safe enough, as far as that goes.”

“What do they live on?”

“Fish, mostly, together with roots and berries; and they can get all they want with bow and arrow, or with a stone.  They can throw a stone as straight as you could shoot a bullet.”

“We ought to import some of them for baseball pitchers,” suggested Hamilton with a grin.  “But it really must have been an awful job enumerating them.  And when it comes to poisoned arrows!—­No thank you, I’d rather stick to old Kentucky.  Are there many of them?”

“No,” was the reply, “the Negrito is dying out, just as the aboriginal tribes all over the world are doing.  There are only about twenty-three thousand of the Pygmies left now.”

“But there are more natives than that in the Philippines?” queried the boy.

“Hundreds of thousands.  You see there are really three different types of savages in the Philippines, according to the census reports.  The aboriginal tribes are the Negritos, perhaps as close to primitive man as any people on earth; those are the ones I have been telling you about, and they are a race all to themselves, as different from the rest of the Filipinos as the negro is from the white man.  The true Filipinos are Malays.”