[117] i.e., A distance of two palm-lengths.
[118] A dish made in the Philippines from the inner and harder shell of the cocoanut.--See Echegaray's Diccionario etimológico, and Noceda and Sanlucar's Vocabulario de la lengua tagala.
[119] See beliefs and superstitions of the North American Indians in regard to eclipses in Jesuit Relations (Cleveland reissue), vi, p. 223, xii, pp. 31, 73, xxii, p. 295.
[120] The principal articles of food are rice, for which corn is sometimes substituted, fish, chickens, vegetables, wild fruits, and cocoanut oil. The natives are fond of chickens and eggs, and most families raise poultry for the table. Pork is forbidden by their faith, and the use of venison, or the flesh of the carabao, ox, sheep, or goat, is limited, the Moros being apparently not fond of meat. See Census of Philippines, i, p. 564.
[121] Cogon (Imperata koenigii) is a species of grass of general natural growth, the young shoots of which afford excellent food for cattle. The grass is used in some localities as a substitute for nipa, where the latter does not grow, in thatching roofs. The name "cogon" is applied to many coarse, rank-growing grasses. See Census of Philippines, iv, p. 118.
[122] We give the verses in the original language with the Spanish translation of Father Pablo Cavallería, and add the English translation of the latter, which is necessarily crude.
[123] An authority among the Moros, after the panglima, and as well a name denoting nobility of race and blood. See Cartas de ... la mision de Filipinas (Manila, 1887), p. 34, note.
[124] The letter occupies pp. 326-349, and is accompanied by an ethnographical map (which we do not reproduce) made by the fathers of the Society of Jesuits. Our extract relates to the ethnology of Mindanao, and occupies pp. 336-349.
[125] Dr. Barrows (Census of Philippines, i, pp. 462, 463), says in speaking of the tribes of Mindanao that the term Indonesian has been applied to some of them to explain their higher stature and finer physique, which means that they are connected with people of mixed Caucasian blood, who were in primitive times distributed across the Malay Archipelago, and who find their purest living type in the Polynesians. He does not accept the evidence, as the perceptible gain in height among such peoples is not apparently accompanied by the other distinguishing marks of the Caucasian or Polynesian, and consequently regards them as Malayan. See also Le Roy's Philippine Life (New York, 1905), p. 20.