The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1895-08-29
INTHEPHILIPPINES
Some Queer Phases Of Life In tho
Archipelago.
The Easy-Going Natives and Their Large
Families-A Fine Quality Of Silk
Is the Principal Article
Of Clothing.

The seekers OF strange modes OF life
snd the student of the habits of people
who have had little contact with civili-
zation and have primitive homes can be
satisfied by visit to almost any OF the
other larger islands than Luzon in the
Philippine archipelago. as, for instance,
Negros, Palawan, Mindanao and Sa-
mas. In any of these isl ands, says a
Manila letter in the New York Times,
there can be found tens Of thousands OF
natives who, like generations OF their
ancestors, have never left their little
island homes, and have not the faintest
idea that there is any world beyond
their islands. Here the race is mixed
and the residents are almost OF as
light compilations as the residents OF
Manila. The young men and women
are comely, and a great many Of the
women between the ages of sixteen and
twenty are of striking beauty. On
many islands there live the Bocals, who
are supposed to be the aborigines of the
archipelago, and to be of Malay origin.
They are an interesting race for any
anthropologist to study. Travellers
who have trotted about the globe say
that the Bocals in the Philippine islands
and the Panays in Borneo are about the
LATEST people that live They do alb
solutely nothing that is unnecessary
for living and dreaming. They have
immense families-often twenty chill
dren in house, and there are multi
tude of cases of parents having fifteen
and eighteen boys and girls. Every
family has its own house, but five dol,
lars will build large and superior
bamboo hut, and one dollar will make
a better domicile than thousands of the
Bocals own. The whole family, no mat.
ter how numerous, is crowded into one
room at night, the sleepers reclining on
heaps of dried banana leaves. Strange
TO say, the women are cleanly people.
They battle every day and are expert
swimmers They are proud of their
teeth, and take pains to frequently
polish them with rude brushes made of
the areca tree. The poorer people have
no other cooking utensils than an
earthen pot, and the aristocrats have
few cast-iron pans and big rough,
edIUueu QlSleS.
The substitute for cotton and wool
en- goods is called mouffia cloth, and
it is made from the mouffla plant,
which is species of hemp. The fiber
Of this plant is coarse, stiff and not at
all pliable. 1t is the white, inner sur
face of the long, thin shoots that is
used. The natives pull the fiber out,
wet the finger and twist the thread,
which, as a consequence, is uneven and
full of little lunches. Very little
moufi1a cloth is exported from the
island, as it has an extensive domestic
use. 1t takes an industrious woman
several weeks to make a strip of
mouf1ia cloth ten feet long and three
feet wide. Flax being almost unknown
on the island, the only other material
for cloth is silk. The Philippine for
ests are full of mulberries. and silk was
woven long before white men came to
the islands. Some Of the Philippine
silk is as fine as the finest China silk.
Much of it is deliberately brocaded, al
though the process requires an immense
amount of time, as the threads which
form the pattern have to be tied up
each time separately. The nambilla,
a square piece of brocaded silk, forms
the principal garment of the richer ma
tives on the smaller islands. This is six
feet wide by seven feet long, and re-
qu:res about seventeen months for its
manufacture. A Philippine weaver
takes her child on her back and weaves
for half an hour, then she goes down to
the stream and draws a jug of water.
or down to the seashore for swim in
the surf. After weaving few min
utes more, she again goes to the brook
or to the shore, and washes out some
single article of clothing, never wash
ing out more than one garment at
time, so during the day she probably
puts in about six hours at the loom.