Page:The National Geographic Magazine Vol 16 1905.djvu/184

garded as the equivalent of villages. The average size of a barrio or village in the Philippine Islands is 500 people.

The streets, as a rule, are not paved, and the roads generally are in poor condition, especially in the rainy season. For potable water, except in Manila, reliance is placed on wells and cisterns, and very little attention has ever been paid to sanitation. The houses of people of means are built of stone, brick, or wood, and their homes are provided with all available comforts. But it is safe to say that nine-tenths of the houses in the Philippines are built of bamboo, thatched with nipa, cogon, or other grasses, and are admirably adapted to the climate and to the condition of the occupants.

Owing to their long subjugation to friar and civil power, all parts of the islands have received a similar grade of culture. A town in the Cagayan Valley presents the same style of architecture, the same surrounding barrios, has the same kind of stores and similarly dressed people as a Christian municipality on the Island of Mindanao. In spite, however, of these facts the population has remained separated into practically the original tribes or groups, each speaking a different idiom and feeling strongly its separateness from the other.

An examination of the map showing the distribution of the tribes or peoples of the Philippine Islands shows that, generally speaking, the various tribes have kept very closely to themselves. To show how closely, it may be said that, after eliminating from consideration the municipalities in the provinces of Benguet and L,epanto-Bontoc and those of the comandancias, in 179 municipalities every male 21 years and over was of one Christian tribe, while 94 towns contained only one person different from the prevailing tribe. In 620 municipalities, or nearly two-thirds of all, at least 99 per cent of the men were of one tribe, and in 820 at least 90 per cent were of one tribe.

There is one tribe, and one only, which seems to possess a migratory, colonizing disposition; that is the Ilocano, and even they, whenever they have invaded the territory of other tribes, have mixed with them very little, forming villages by themselves.

Of the total native population of 6,931,548, 3,443,816 were males and 3,487,732 were females, the proportions between the sexes being 49.7 per cent males and 50.3 percent females.

The average age of the people of the Philippine Islands is 23.9 years. This is 2.4 years less than the average age of the people of the United States, which is 26.3 years, and is greater than that of the negroes in the United States, 23.2 years. The average age of the brown people in the Philippines was 23.8 years, a trifle less than that of the total population. The average age of the Chinese was 33.4 years, much less than that of the same people in the United States, which was 40 years. The average age of the white people in the Philippines was 30.3 years.

Although the Filipino families have been diminished in size by insurrections and cholera, the average family consists of 4.7 persons, and this is still about equal to that of the United States. The largest families are found among the Cagayan and Visayan tribes, and the smallest among the Ilocanos. About one-sixth of the population is comprised in families of 5 members. Families of 8, 9, and 10 persons form in each case a smaller proportion of the population than do families of similar size in the United States, Porto Rico, and Cuba;