ensuing crop is being energetically pushed. This labor now engages a majority of the people, young and old, and has reduced the school attendance nearly a half since the middle of July. Weekly reports are required from all schools and are generally promptly forwarded.

Tour.-I have made a tour of the province and have visited every place except Badoc, which I shall inspect en route to Abra about the 13th and 14th.

Groups. I shall review the towns as they are situated geographically, with Laoag as the center. There are three "groups" in the province, of which that of the south is most important. It embraces Laoag, with 31,000 people in jurisdiction, San Nicolas, 10,000; Batac, 10,000; Paoay, 8,000, and Badoc, 11,000.

Laoag.-Laoag has two good stone central schools, one each for boys and girls and three auxiliary bamboo schools in the north, west, and east parts of the city, each with a boys' and girls' department. The central boys' school has three native masters and the central girls' school has two maestras. Mr. William Edmonds teaches English, arithmetic in English, and calisthenics in all schools in turn, and has made good progress, as will be seen by his report in this mail. The total enrollment is about 900 in city schools. The great deficiency at Laoag is that of suitable school furniture, and bamboo tables are not steady enough to give good results in writing. Blackboards are also needed in every school in the province.

Lack of schoolhouses.-The schoolhouses throughout the province are utterly inadequate to accommodate more children than usually attend now, and do not exist in some towns, and, as will be seen by the detailed accounts later, are only travesties on American ideas of a school, with the exception of Laoag, and this exception only holds as to the work of Mr. Edmonds, three native teachers of the central schools, and one native teacher at the East school. There are many teachers outside who are trying to do their best, but they are as children groping in the dark, and can only advance when led along the road by an American teacher.

Local board.—Laoag has also a local school board of five residents, appointed by the commanding officer of the Twentieth Infantry prior to my arrival. This board meets often and tries to aid in the work, but as yet hardly grasps the idea that it is an advisory board, and rather estimates that it is a directing body. However, I do not doubt but that when the work is more advanced that a board will be of good use in encouraging the interest of the people generally.

Relations with Army.-Colonel Huggins, Third Cavalry, the military governor of Ilocos Norte, has visited the schools several times, ordered me to be furnished with escorts where I desired them, and aids me in many ways. Major Brown, Fifth Infantry, military governor of Abra, has been prompt to advise and assist as to matters in that province, and Mr. Chapman, teacher at Bangued, has also wired me cordially.

First group, Paoay and Currimao.-On my landing in Ilocos Norte, July 14, at Currimao, I inspected two barrios of rural schools there. I found two bamboo sheds, in which the Spanish alphabet and a little Ilocano were being taught to some 100 children by two native teachers, who get 5 cents, American, monthly, from each child. This barrio is the only port in the province half the time and is destined to grow larger. It belongs to Paoay, which is 7 miles distant. Paoay has a good stone school for both sexes, which, however, is almost bare of school furniture, and the 150 children who attend are compelled to sit perched on crazy benches and packed like sardines. There are 2 male and 2 female native teachers at Paoay, who get very low wages, and consequently take very little interest in the work.

Batac.-Batac, 3 miles farther toward Laoag and 10 miles from this place, has 2 bamboo schools. It is a town of 2,000 people and is rapidly increasing in population. It has 2 native teachers.

Badoc.-Badoc, 10 miles south of Batac, is a large town with 2 native schools. I have not yet visited this place.

San Nicolas.-San Nicolas, a large place, is a mile from Laoag, across the Cauit River, and has one good stone school for boys and a new bamboo school for girls. There are 5 male and 3 female teachers instructing nearly 600 children. This is one of the most successful and progressive school towns in the province. The presidente offers to assure quarters for a lady teacher.

American teachers.-I will only say here that each town in the province should have one male American teacher. At Laoag there should be two, and two lady teachers should also be at Laoag. The lady for San Nicolas could also live in Laoag much of the time, and go daily to San Nicolas. This would make 16 male and 3 women teachers of English in this province. Their services will be appreciated.

Second group.-The towns of the second or northern group are smaller, but quite energetic.

Bacarra.-Bacarra, 4 miles north of Laoag, has a stone school for poys and a bam

boo one for girls, two male and two female native teachers. It has some 2,500 people in the pueblo.

Vintar.-Vintar, another place with a good double stone schoolhouse and four native teachers, is about as large as Bacarra, from which it is distant 3 miles east. It is 5 miles northeast of Laoag. There is also a barrio school near Vintar, with two teachers. Pasuquin.-Pasuquin, 6 miles north of Bacarra, has about 1,500 in the town and some 5,000 in the jurisdiction. It has two stone schools and four teachers. For buildings, attendance, and interest it ranks high for such a small place. Twenty miles farther up the coast and near Cape Bojeador is Nagportian, a small and poor town. The schools are huddled in an old house, the floor is the only bench, and the only school furniture are two old worn-out blackboards. But the four native teachers are working away, the head master and maestra being energetic, and the master, although 47 years old, has learned considerable English from a grammar, and teaches it. Davila.-At Davila, a barrio of Nagportian, there is a school of 35 boys and 25 girls conducted on methods of the fifteenth century, but pleased beyond measure at my visit and advice. The writing lessons were conducted on bamboo leaves. This barrio is 3 miles north of Bojeador light-house and has some 250 population. Bangui.--Ten miles farther east is Bangui, which is 40 miles from Laoag and the remotest town in Ilocos Norte. It is a good place of some 1,500 people, with 4,000 in the jurisdiction, and has a stone school poorly furnished, but with energetic teachers, four in number. I visited the northern towns from July 20 to 26.

Third group.-The five towns of the eastern group seem more apathetic in school work than those of the first two. These places were more hostile than the coast towns and suffered more in consequence. Except Dingras, they are poor at present, have few resources, and a small number of educated men.

San Miguel.-San Miguel, 5 miles east of Laoag, has an energetic presidente who is practically rebuilding the double stone school-house and has also put a bamboo shed up for temporary use. He wishes an American male teacher very much. There are two native teachers.

Piddig.-Piddig, some five miles northeast of San Miguel, is at present in the throes of an epidemic of dysentery. On one day 16 deaths occurred and the rate is still large. The people conceal their sick cases until too late to be cured, as they seem to be unable to realize the benefits of medicine. Lieutenant Stoney, A. A. S., has offered his services gratis and has treated many, and has also a native doctor. This incident shows the baleful effects of ignorance. The boys' school here is in a bamboo shed, but the master is a very bright young man who speaks English fairly well. The girls' school occupies the upper stairway hall of a native house. It does not amount to anything as a school, as the master speaks nothing but Ilocano and seems to have little or no education. A scout (American) teaches English nearly every day in the boys' school. Piddig has some 1,500 in the town and 6,000 in its limits.

Solsona.-Six miles southeast of Piddig is Solsona, a small town of about 1,000 people, with a bamboo double school and two teachers. The male teacher is above the average and has a class of four boys in plane geometry. But, as in all schools except those under direct American influence, the old memorizing system is followed, and no thinking is required of the pupils. This school is fairly provided with maps and charts, although they are little used.

Dingras.-Dingras is a large town of 3,000 people with some 10,000 in the jurisdiction, 4 miles southeast of San Miguel, with a very good presidente, a good stone double school, and two good native teachers. They seem anxious to learn American ideas of teaching. I regard Dingras as a place where two lady teachers could be very useful at least half the year.

Banna-Banna, 7 miles south of Dingras, is a small place of some 500, on a hill overlooking some Igorrote rancherias. It has two small schools, which are huddled up in two private houses, with few books and two middle-aged native teachers. (man and wife) teaching a medley of Spanish and Ilocano and a few English words. An unfinished school, left as it was the day the last American lieutenant departed, shows the little interest taken by the people in the work. This town needs an energetic American teacher badly. The natives can not get anything done, and no one else in the place cares. The garrison is of native scouts, and the few white men (scouts) are too busy to look after school matters. Banna is on the border of the Igorrote rancherias and can be made a center for their elevation from their present

savagery.

Detailed reports.-At the close of this month detailed reports will be submitted upon all towns, native teachers, pay, attendance, and other matters. The ensuing normal school will determine the competency of many teachers, or the reverse, and until then I feel that more detailed recommendations would be of little value.

On May 22, 1901, the officer in command at Jolo wrote to the adjutant-general, Department of Mindanoa and Jolo, as follows:

SIR: I have the honor herewith to invite attention to section 16 of Act No. 74, of the United States Philippine Commission, establishing a department of public instruction in the Philippines, and to urgently request that action be taken that the requirements of the said section 16 be held as not in force and effect in the Sulu archipelago with its Mohammedan population. The Al Koran, a monotheism, is the most colossal forgery of the Christian religion ever perpetrated since the foundation of Christianity. It teaches that it is the duty of those of that faith to convert all peoples to become followers and believers in Mohammedanism. To make a convert means to defend the convert; to do this requires force, and the use of force means conflict to end in war with these fanatical people. The intelligent universal world does not recognize the Al Koran as true, but that its doctrines are false, and that a false doctrine may not be encouraged and fostered by being taught in the United States public schools in the Philippines, I have to most earnestly request early action in the case in the premises for the manifest public good.

Mr. Gerow D. Brill, appointed principal of the school of agriculture, having visited the island of Negros, made the following statement:

Land.-On the east coast of the island of Negros, the land rises very gradually from the coast to the foot of the mountain range. Most of the soil of this section is a brown loam, very fertile and easily worked. It contains so much humus that it may be worked while quite wet without baking. In a few places the clay subsoil comes nearer the surface, making the land too wet for cane growing.

On the west coast in many cases the mountains extend almost to the sea and terminate very abruptly, thus giving little room for sugar plantations.

Most

At that part of the island between Bacolod and Valle Hermosa, the land for half the distance across the island is taken up for sugar plantations; but around La Castellana the buildings on many of them are burned and no work is being done on the plantations. Beyond La Castellana the land is higher, more rolling, and, with the exception of one or two stretches of forest, is covered with tall, coarse grass. of it has been cultivated, but some is so stony and irregular that cultivation under present conditions would not pay. However, it is admirably suited for grazing, provided better grasses were introduced. The sides of the mountains are heavily wooded, extending down nearly to the sea on the west coast.

Some of the planters say that there are large tracts of fine sugar land, belonging to the government, on the southeast and northwest coasts. The reason given why they had not been taken up was that heretofore these sections had been infested with ladrones. Very little seems to be known of the interior of the island, either by foreigners or natives. There is no path across the island except at the point where the telegraph line crosses the mountains, and even this is a very difficult one. There are practically no roads on the island except some short stretches connecting a few coast towns, and most of these have no bridges over the streams.

Sugar.-Negros is considered the best sugar country of the entire archipelago. The sugar crop is of more value than all the other agricultural products of the island combined. The yield of sugar is from 30 to 100 piculs of 137 pounds per hectare of land. The lesser amount is from some of the older plantations along the coast, which have been cultivated for nearly thirty years. On these plantations the yield was said to be double this at first. This sugar, however, is of a higher quality than that of the new plantations. On the older plantations near the coast the cane has to be reset each year, while on the higher and newer plantations it is only reset once in three or four years.

The rainfall is sufficient to grow a good crop without irrigation except in very dry years, provided the cane is set at the proper time. In a dry season the irrigation pays well, and yet I heard of only one plantation where it was practiced. On many it would be very easy to do, as many streams come down from the mountains. No fertilizer is used for sugar growing, except that on the older plantations the manure is drawn from buffalo pens and spread on the fields nearest the buildings. Even on the plantations on which the cane has to be reset each year the ground, as a rule, is allowed to lie idle a year between crops, and, as the cultivation is so clean, few weeds come up to cover the ground. Some leguminous crop, as clover, sown in the cane at the last cultivation, would give much pasture for the buffalo and cattle and greatly increase the fertility of the soil, with no expense but the cost of the seed.

Sugar should exhaust the plant food in the soil the least of any crop, if properly managed, and stalks and leaves or their ashes returned to it. The plant can get all the elements contained in the sugar from the air and water. This is one reason why

sugar growing has been so fostered in Germany and France, and later in the United States.

Tools. For plowing the land and cultivating the soil, as well as maize and rice, a very crude plow of Chinese style is the only tool used except an equally crude harrow made of sections of the bamboo pinned together with the branches left projecting 5 or 6 inches. The point and moldboard of the plow are of very rough castings, and all the rest is of wood and made at home. The two iron castings cost about $2.25 Mexican. On two plantations foreign plows were being used and gave excellent satisfaction, except that each point cost $2 Mexican, or nearly as much as the two castings for the Chinese plow. In the United States they would cost from 50 to 65 cents Mexican at retail. Certainly many American tools could be used with profit, even if more expensive, as they would do much more effective work. Most of the plantations away from the coast use water wheels to furnish power for crushing the cane, while along the coast steam engines are used. On most plantations the crushed cane is used for boiling the juice; but under the engine boilers wood is used almost entirely, and as the forests are cleared further and further from the coast this wood becomes quite an item of expense. On some plantations the wood is supplemented by the stems of this coarse grass, which is cut and stacked under sheds during the dry season.

Even on the best-equipped plantations little attention is paid to saving in labor. Even on Mr. A. Locsan's plantation, which is said to be the best fitted and arranged of any on the island, the laborers have to carry the cane 10 feet and step up 3 feet to get it from the truck on the tramway onto the moving table that carries it to the crushing rollers, and yet there is no apparent reason why the tramway should not come near and high enough so that the cane might be thrown from the trucks directly onto the table, thus saving half the labor.

The laborers, aside from the foreman, get 12 cents Mexican per day and two meals of rice and maize, except during the time of making the sugar, when they get double pay and three meals a day. On some plantations a good share of this is paid in tuba or bino and betelnut. Some of the plantation owners feel that they will have trouble with their laborers under American law. One said that if the laborers knew he could not kick or beat them when they did not do as he told them, he could do nothing with them. An American officer said that recently a Spaniard on the west coast was greatly surprised and exceedingly angry for being fined because he severely beat one of his laborers.

It has been so easy to grow a profitable crop of sugar on this fertile, new land that little careful study has been given the subject by most planters. One planter when asked if he thought an experiment station and school of agriculture would be of much value to the people replied: "Yes, if you will show us how to grow other crops besides sugar; but there is no use in attempting to teach us to grow sugar or to make it, as any boy on the plantation 12 years old knows all about growing and making it." The sugar made sells for a low price; but whether on plantations of this size it would be profitable to use more expensive machinery and make a better grade of sugar would have to be determined. On Luzon they make a different grade of sugar. One trouble with most of the planters in Negros is that when they get a good crop they spend the money in having a "big time" in Manila or Hongkong, and then have to borrow money at from 12 per cent to 25 per cent to care for their next crop. Colonel Miner said he investigated the titles to the land a little to see if American capital could not be secured at a lower rate, but found most of them too defective for this. The early settlement of land titles is very important, and difficult as well. Some of the American officers, as well as planters, say that certain planters are enlarging their plantations very rapidly.

Maize and rice.-These are grown on all plantations and often together. They are grown more for use as food for the laborers than to sell in the market. The cultivation of the rice on the dry land is very good. It is difficult to get even an approximate estimate of yield from the planters. Considerable forest land is burned each year for planting maize and upland rice. The burning kills all the weeds and brush so thoroughly and the ashes make so good a fertilizer that for two years scarcely any cultivation is needed, and all the crop costs is the trouble of planting and harvesting. After two years a little hand cultivation is given for a couple of years more and then the land is often allowed to grow grass and brush.

Abaca or manila hemp.-Next to sugar, this is the most important export of the island. The plant closely resembles the banana and grows best when shaded by it or some tree. It grows wild, but when planted the young suckers are generally set on freshly cleared hillsides. Smooth land is not necessary, as most of the cultivation consists simply of keeping the weeds and other small growths down by hand. The plant will yield fiber in from two to three years after it is set. About 150 plants

will yield a picul of fiber and require laborers about seven days to draw it. If of the best quality and unstained, it will be worth about $20 to $23 (Mexican). Much fiber is wasted in drawing, but whether it could be saved at a profit is one of the questions yet to be settled. Many machines have been tried for drawing it, but so far without success. Why more is not planted is not easily understood, except that the planter has to wait two years for any return. The cost of starting a plantation is small and the crop is safe from the attack of the locusts.

Mr. Areneta, who is said to have the largest plantation of abaca on the island, is planting cocoanut and areca nuts among the plants, as shade, to take the place of bananas, as the former are much more profitable. He says different plants of the abaca vary greatly as to the amount and quality of the fiber they produce.

Tobacco-Tobacco is mostly grown in small patches on the hillsides by the plantation laborers on shares. In this way the women and children assist in its cultivation and harvesting. The leaves are generally slung on rattan and hung in the tops of the laborer's house to cure. In this way it is grown and cured at little expense.

Cocoanuts.-Cocoanuts are much grown along the coast on both sides of the island. Very little copra is made, as most owners cut the flower stems for tuba. This is sometimes distilled, but mostly sold the same day or next after gathering. Most of the nuts produced are used locally for oil. On the coast the young trees will bear profitable crops of nuts in from five to seven years after planting, while on the upland from seven to nine years are required. On the upland they are more subject to the attacks of locusts and other insects.

Other products. Quite a large quantity of areca nut is exported. The plant grows well almost everywhere and is quite profitable. The nuts brings about $1 (Mexican) per 1,000, on the island, after they are cleared of the husks.

Coffee and cocoa are grown for local use, but little attention is paid to their cultivation. Small quantities of each are brought to the local market for trade.

Mangoes and breadfruit grow without cultivation where the seeds have been thrown out.

Excellent pineapples are grown on a few plantations, and a few are exported.
Bananas grow almost everywhere.

Scarcely any cotton is grown except the wild tree cotton, which is of no use for spinning.

A wild lemon, as well as the pomelo, grows in the mountains, and probably a cultivated one of good quality would grow equally as well. Some other fruits are grown or grow wild in small quantities.

On each plantation cloth for clothing is spun and woven by the women on hand looms. Several fibers are used, alone and mixed, as abaca, pineapple, etc. This is about the only manufacturing on the island.

Cattle. Most of the labor on the plantation is done with the buffalo. The ordinary ox is used for the saddle or to draw the native carriage, even in the villages. He is much quicker in his movements, but not as heavy and stout as the buffalo.

Rinderpest. On the east coast the rinderpest is very prevalent, and many cattle and buffalo are dying daily. On many of the plantations the work in the cane fields is practically at a standstill for lack of animals to do it. The disease is rapidly spreading to the interior of the island. The army surgeons have applied some material for inoculation, but were short of syringes. Apparently very little attention was given the burning or burying of the bodies, and in some cases they were skinned before being buried. Often they were buried so shallow that the dogs dug them out. Iloilo so many had died that there were not enough left to handle the freight, and it was a very common sight to see men drawing loaded carts. If these cattle had been properly inoculated before they were actually sick, probably nearly all would have remained immune to the disease. It would need close foreign supervision all the time to make inoculation effective.

At

Locusts.-Locusts are very numerous in certain sections this year. How many broods there are in a year, or how long the eggs require for hatching, I could not learn. Their great numbers are largely due to cutting or burning the forests and then allowing the ground to grow up with grass and weeds; these waste places are where they hatch in such large numbers. In several of the places all the people were out driving the young ones into pits before they were able to fly. In this way they caught bushels of them. One planter had some dry diseased ones with which he was going to inoculate some of those on his plantation. They will not eat abaca, tobacco, cotton, or the castor-oil plant.

LA GRANJA.

The government farm lies about 30 miles from Bacolod, up near the foothills of the volcano Canlaon. It contains about 1,700 hectares of land, 300 of which are said to be excellent for cane growing. There are two or three high hills on the farm, and