Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1895-06-22

of killing mariners who CHANGED to be cast
away on their shores BY nature they are
gentle and kindly. Their morals are an
Improvement on those of most white peo-
pie. Sexual improprieties are almost I'M
heard of ameng them. Marriages between
cousins they consider an outrage on de-
cency.
Customs of the Little People.
The sight and hearing of these pigmies
is extremely delicate the former sense
being more developed among tribes in the
jLrgles and the latter among the people
who live on the coast The coast jewellers
in the darkest nights pierce with harpoon
the turtles which come to breathe at the
surface of the water, having no guide but
the slight noise made by the reptiles in
doirg so. The dwarfs are short lived. fifty
years among them being extreme old age.
The wife Of a chief has an authority
among the women which corresponds to
her husbands authority over the men.
She keeps these privileges when a widow,
If she has children, otherwise she loses
them. From eleven to thirteen years of
age is for both sexes a period of rigid
abstinence, during which they must not
eat turtle, pork, fish or honey-articies of
diet which, under ordinary circumstances,
are their staple food.
Some of the customs of the dwarfs are
very odd, according to the testimony Of
M. de Quatrefages, to whose newly publish
ed work the writer is indebted for much
of his information about these little people.
When a child dies it's body is exhuned at
the end Of three months The father Claims
the bones and paints the skull yellow.
The bones are divided into fragments and
made into necklaces, which are distrib-
uted among friends of the family for
souvenirs. On the Andamans the pigmies
to keep it alive. They say that they got
it originally from a god but it may have
been obtained from one or two volcanoes in
the neighborhood. 1t is surmised that
hoir Itoy dor Qfn hoy
to make fire in the customary manner
of savages by rubbing two sticks together.
They have legend of the deluge-a great
flood which, owing to neglect of Divine
destroyed all living things. Two men and
two women who CHANGED to be in canoe
alone escaped, and they were the progeni-
tors of the subsequent race. 1t is worth
mentioning. by the way, that the so-called
Wild Man of Borneo. exhibited in cage
by Barnum many years ago, was little
negro from the Malay archipelago.
Luzon, the largest of the Philippines, is
almost twice the size of Ireland, being 40
miles long by 100 miles wide. The group,
which embraces over 800 islands, has a
population of about 100000 and an area
Of 5000 square miles. The people are
mostly Malays, being split up into several
nations, the most numerous of which num-
bers 2,000,080. They speak twenty distinct
languages on Luzon alone.
The Chinese are the chief merchants and
shopkeepers of the Philippines. They
rived before the Spaniards, but their num-
bers have been kept down by restrictive
laws and periodical masSacres. The en-
forcement of unjust regulations against
them have caused them frequently to rebel,
and thus the Spaniards have obtained an
excuse for 'slaughtering them wholesale.
In 1862 they Joined the English, for which
offense the governor afterward ordered that
all Cinnamon on the islands should be
hanged. This order was to a great extent
carried out.
The small islands of Tonouil and RaIa-
quinn were formerly the haunts of desper-
ate pirates, but they were dispersed in 1S4S
Since then the Sooloo isles have been their
headquarters. The Sooloo pirates are even
now the scourge of those seas. Many Euro
pean vessels have been taken by Them
the crews being enslaved or killed. Their
fleets have sometimes numbered as many
twenty or thirty large boats, carrying
from eighty to one hundred men each, and
not even the biggest merchantmen would
have any chance against them