"They have to take chances on snakes. But you know a snake will scarcely ever strike unless alarmed or attacked. No snake will bite a sleeping man. Wild animals only attack for food, and man is left alone as much as possible."
"Haven't they pythons there? And a python could easily strangle and swallow a man."
"He could, but he doesn't," the Porto Rican pointed out; "rabbits are more his size, or a young fawn. The Negritos are safe enough, as far as that goes."
"What do they live on?"
"Fish, mostly, together with roots and berries; and they can get all they want with bow and arrow, or with a stone. They can throw a stone as straight as you could shoot a bullet."
"We ought to import some of them for baseball pitchers," suggested Hamilton with a grin. "But it really must have been an awful job enumerating them. And when it comes to poisoned arrows!—No thank you, I'd rather stick to old Kentucky. Are there many of them?"
"No," was the reply, "the Negrito is dying out, just as the aboriginal tribes all over the world are doing. There are only about twenty-three thousand of the Pygmies left now."
"But there are more natives than that in the Philippines?" queried the boy.
"Hundreds of thousands. You see there are really three different types of savages in the Philippines, according to the census reports. The aboriginal tribes are the Negritos, perhaps as close to primitive man as any people on earth; those are the ones I have been telling you about, and they are a race all to themselves, as different from the rest of the Filipinos as the negro is from the white man. The true Filipinos are Malays."
"Even the head-hunters?"