Professional wailers are employed, and the pandits go through many days of long-winded prayer, for which they receive most ample fees.
Moro Lantacas and Coat of Mail.
[To face p. 373.
They have regular cemeteries, and, after the burial, place on the grave the head of a cock with a hot cinder on the top of it. I am quite unable to explain what meaning is attached to this custom, but they are soaked in all sorts of superstitions, and thoroughly believe in amulets or talismen, as do the Tagals in their Anting-Anting.
Owing to the multitude of slaves they possess, they make considerable plantations of rice, maize, coffee, and cacao. They sell the surplus of this produce to Chinamen or Visayas settled in the coast towns, as also wax, gum, resin, jungle-produce, tortoise-shell, mother-of-pearl shell, balate and cinnamon. It is estimated that they sell produce to the value of a million dollars a year. They also employ their slaves in washing the sands for gold, and, according to Nieto, in mining for silver and other metal.
I have not seen this latter statement confirmed by any other author.
Their industries are the forging of swords, cris, and lance-heads, casting and boring their lantacas.
To bore these long guns they sink them in a pit, ramming in the earth so as to keep the piece in a truly vertical position. They then bore by hand, two or four men walking round and turning the bit with cross-bars. Some of these lantacas are worthy to be considered perfect works of art, and are highly decorated. I have seen several double-barrelled. (See Illustration.)
The Moro women employ their slaves in spinning and weaving. They make excellent stuffs of cotton and of abaca, dyeing them various colours with extracts of the woods grown in the country.