these services, is shown by the fact that any one can obtain a release
from them for a sum which at most is not more than three dollars. No
personal service is required of women. A little further on, important
details about the tax from official sources, which were placed at my
disposal in the colonial office, appear in a short special chapter.

[Fortunate factors.] In other countries, with an equally mild climate,
and an equally fertile soil, the natives, unless they had reached a
higher degree of civilization than that of the Philippine Islanders,
would have been ground down by native princes, or ruthlessly plundered
and destroyed by foreigners. In these isolated Islands, so richly
endowed by nature, where pressure from above, impulse from within,
and every stimulus from the outside are wanting, the satisfaction
of a few trifling wants is sufficient for an existence with ample
comfort. Of all countries in the world, the Philippines have the
greatest claim to be considered a lotos-eating Utopia. The traveller,
whose knowledge of the dolce far niente is derived from Naples,
has no real appreciation of it; it only blossoms under the shade of
palm-trees. These notes of travel will contain plenty of examples to
support this. One trip across the Pasig gives a foretaste of life
in the interior of the country. Low wooden cabins and bamboo huts,
surmounted with green foliage and blossoming flowers, are picturesquely
grouped with areca palms, and tall, feather-headed bamboos, upon its
banks. Sometimes the enclosures run down into the stream itself, some
of them being duck-grounds, and others bathing-places. The shore is
fringed with canoes, nets, rafts, and fishing apparatus. Heavily-laden
boats float down the stream, and small canoes ply from bank to bank
between the groups of bathers. The most lively traffic is to be seen
in the tiendas, large sheds, corresponding to the Javanese harongs,
which open upon the river, the great channel for traffic.