For Some Time Past I Had Heard Rumours Of An Extraordinary Tribe Of Negritos Who Lived Further Back In The Mountains, And Were Named Buquils, And Whose Women Were Reported To Have Beards.

Vic, whom I always found to be most truthful in everything, and who rarely exaggerated, declared it was true, and furthermore told me that these Buquils had long smooth hair, which proved that they could not have been Negritos.

Besides, I learnt that they were quite a tall people. Nowhere in the whole world is there such a diversity of races as in the Philippines, and so it would be quite impossible even to guess what they were. Vic had once seen some of them himself when they came on a visit to the lower mountains. Though I thought the story, as to the women having beards, a fable, I determined to visit them before I left these mountains, and the old Negrito chief, who also told me that the women really did have beards, offered to lend me some of his people to carry my things. But one day Vic heard that his lather was dying, and when I tried to cheer him up he sobbed in a mixture of broken Spanish and English, "One thousand senoritas can get, one thousand children can get, but lose one father more cannot get." On this account I had to return to Florida Blanca, and besides we were all very bad with constant attacks of fever, and in this village we could at all events get bread, milk and eggs to recuperate us.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 84 of 217
Words from 22922 to 23185 of 59060