Old villages have increased greatly in size, and numerous new ones have been established. All have spacious plazas and streets which are beautifully kept. The mountains are almost depopulated. The hardy old fighters who used to frequent them have become peaceful agriculturists. Houses are neat and clean. Yards are fenced, planted with useful crops, and well cultivated. Each house has its own sanitary arrangements. No domestic animals are allowed to run at large in towns.
Rich, cultivated fields surround the villages and each year stretch farther and farther out over the neighbouring prairies. Coffee production is increasing by leaps and bounds, and blight is disappearing from the plantations as the result of intensive cultivation. The people are well fed and prosperous. Their condition steadily improves. They have been taught the value of their products, and encouraged to insist on receiving it.
Practically every village has its schoolhouse and its schoolmaster’s house, voluntarily built free of charge by the inhabitants. Children are sent to school by their parents and learn rapidly. On my second visit I found the boys trying to play baseball, using joints of bamboo for bats, and big, thick-skinned oranges for balls. I sent to each of the more important towns a complete baseball outfit, and now the boys certainly know, and can play, the game.
These results have been accomplished practically without bloodshed or rough treatment of any sort. Only in the rarest instances, and in dealing with the very worst of the hill men, who were professional murderers, has a shot been fired.
When the subprovince was invaded by bands of savages from the mountains of Butuan and from the neighbouring Moro Province, the people requested firearms so that they might protect themselves. Some twenty-five old carbines were furnished them, and they organized an effective force which pursued the evil-doers and policed them up very effectively.
Marámag, one of the most recently established villages, is in the very heart of Mindanao. Two years ago a good many of its leading citizens were living in tree-houses. During August, 1912, I found them cutting the grass on their plaza with a lawn-mower!
Another thing which has made me rub my eyes and wonder if I were awake was the discovery that the people of this subprovince were clothing themselves and their children in garments purchased from Montgomery, Ward & Co., of Chicago, Illinois, U. S. A.! The explanation is simple. The Cagayan shopkeepers persist in cheating them at every opportunity, and the house of Montgomery, Ward & Co. does not. Although Chicago is far away, the mail service is nevertheless good!
Death has just summoned Leoncio, one of the most remarkable men who has yet arisen among the Bukidnon people. We found him an absolutely illiterate heathen. With no other instruction than that given him by lieutenant-governors Lewis and Fortich, he learned to lay out and build roads and trails on any desired grade, to construct bridges which will be standing twenty years hence, and to erect public buildings which would be a credit to any man compelled to use such materials as those available in Bukidnon.
At the time of his death he was just finishing a bridge three hundred feet long across the rushing Culaman River. This structure has a galvanized iron roof, contributed by the enthusiastic residents of Sumilao.
The healthful rivalry between towns is one of the delightful things about Bukidnon. Each desires to have better buildings, better streets, better bridges, better roads and better schools than its neighbours.