UNKNOWN PHILIPPINES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 6489, 8 April 1908, Page 8

UNKNOWN PHILIPPINES.

rheeo great unknown Uganda spell neglected opportunity; millions and millions of acres have never known even tho wild man’s crude plough. One may, fcn regions travel for days, even veoks, without seeing a native. He will pass through realms of extreme fertility and beauty, through vafrt upland meadows of rich pasture grass, and growing knee-high and concealing a soil rich and black as that of Egypt; across quiet savannahs where strange trees dot the land swipe as do the mountain oaks of tho California Sierras. But for the lack of sleek cattle, one might l.ero fancy himself in a deserted orchard pasture in New England. Streams, cflear, cold, and crystal, spring from tho mountain heights and bubble through the momtain meadows. In tho lowlands, jungles of wild bananas wave in the wind, their fruit tin* propped; in the uplands, thousands of acres of wild hemp oro never stripped; on the mountain tops the Igorrotes grow ns fine long-staple cotton as any in tho world, hue crudely. For each * cotton plant stands alone on the summit rf n. hummock which is six or eight feet from tho next hummock, and surrounded by the water of a rice paddy. The cotton grows well enough, and on Immense quantity could bo grown on the idle areas, but tho Igorrotes f-rt* skilled only in tho raising of rice. Wild peanuts, wild cemotes (sweet potatoes), wild oranges of many kinds, and some of a delicious flavour, wild limes, wild rubber and gutta-percha, thousands of products of the tropical, semi-tropical, and, in the higher altitudes, of the temperate zone, are neglected. Tho valuable hardwoods that pass their usefulness without being lumbered and on to decay are almost everywhere. Game and fruit for tho taking, cool nights—sometimes very cold—and brilliant, comfortable days and a region ns magically Alluring as over beckoned to the pioneers of the Great Plains. Who knows i tho Philippines who has lived only in the cities there?