Typical Street in a Filipino Town.
Contrast the neglect here shown, with the care given the village streets in Bukidnon, yet the Filipinos desire to govern the Bukidnons.
A Typical Bukidnon Village Street.
I gave the Assembly and every one else interested in the matter a chance to attack me by incorporating in my annual report for 1910 every important statement made at the lecture in question and by adding various new ones for good measure, but there was no response! It is a time-honoured procedure, but one of somewhat doubtful real value, to build up a man of straw in order to have the pleasure of tearing it to pieces. I must decline to assume responsibility for statements which I did not make.
Blount says he thinks that Nueva Vizcaya is my
“‘brag’ province, in the matter of non-Christian anthropological specimens, both regarding their number and their variety.”[24]
With regret I must call attention to the fact that he thinks wrong. In Nueva Vizcaya as originally constituted there were representatives of three non-Christian tribes, to wit, the Ifugaos, numbering approximately a hundred and fifteen thousand; the Ilongots numbering perhaps five thousand; and the Isinayes, who were numerically unimportant.
Years before Blount wrote his book the number of wild tribes was reduced to two and that of their individuals to approximately seven thousand by changes in the provincial boundary. As we have seen, there are slightly more than one million non-Christian inhabitants in the archipelago. These facts are of interest chiefly for the reason that they show how grossly unreliable are his statements.