DRYING SUGAR.
Large pans containing the sugar are set in the sun to evaporate the moisture. No refining or clarifying machinery has been introduced into the Philippine Islands.
FORESTS AND TIMBER.
The forest products of the islands are perhaps of greater value than their mineral resources. Timber not only exists in almost exhaustless quantity, but—considering the whole group, which extends nearly a thousand miles from north to south—in unprecedented diversity, embracing sixty varieties of the most valuable woods, several of which are so hard that they cannot be cut with ordinary saws, some so heavy that they sink in water, and two or three so durable as to afford ground for the claim that they outlast iron and steel when placed in the ground or under water. Several of these woods are unknown elsewhere, and, altogether, they are admirably suited for various decorative purposes and for the manufacture of fine implements and furniture.
THE STRANGE WAGONS OF ALBAY.
The eighty-odd different tribes who inhabit the Philippines have varying dialects, manners, and customs. The peculiar house-roofed wagons, shown in the above illustration, are found in only one locality.
Here also are pepper, cinnamon, wax, and gums of various sorts, cloves, tea, and vanilla, while all tropical fruits, such as cocoanuts, bananas, lemons, limes, oranges of several varieties, pineapples, citrons, bread-fruits, custard apples, pawpaws, and mangroves nourish, and most of them grow wild, though, of course, they are not equal to the cultivated fruit. There are fifty-odd varieties of the banana in the archipelago, from the midget, which makes but a single mouthful, to the huge fruit eighteen inches long. There seems to be no limit to which tropical fruits and farm products can be cultivated.
The animal and bird life of the Philippines offer a field of interesting research to naturalists. There are no important carnivorous animals. A small wild-cat and two species of civet-cats constitute about all that belong to that class. The house-cats of the Philippines have curious fish-hook crooks in the ends of their tails. There are several species of deer in the archipelago. Hogs run wild in large numbers. The large water buffalo (carabao) has been domesticated and is the chief beast of burden with the natives. The timarau is another small species of buffalo, very wild and entirely untamable; and, though numerous in certain places, is hard to find, and when brought to bay dies fighting.