tall pole, feathered and fluttering with cotton drilling, resembling a huge quill pen, stub set in the ground, proclaims the loss of a cherished son. All such tokens are necessarily perishable, while the resting places of those who departed a few years since are wholly neglect

ed.

The datto of the particular plantation at whose dwelling we had arrived was invited to accompany us through the valley. He assured us that no American had ever explored it; he had no authority from the Sultan to lead Americans into it; besides he had no horse and was too old to walk.

Captain Ryan pointed to a herd of ponies grazing in the bottom. He quickly replied through our interpreter: "Those are all mares; my stallions are at the lake; to ride a mare is contrary to Moro custom." At this juncture two substantial specimens of the Moro race stepped out and volunteered to act as guides. One of these we kept with us, the other at his own request was permitted to precede us at full speed afoot to apprise the people of our approach upon a purely friendly mission. The runner remarked as he left that he would tell the "women to keep quiet and not become frightened." We instructed him to convey our best regards to the ladies.

Then we were given an exhibition of the staying powers of a Moro messenger. He struck a trot which would have delighted longdistance pedestrians. Disappearing over a rolling elevation, he was not again seen until he emerged at a bend of the trail far up the valley, In the meantime our horses had been swinging along at a brisk walk.

We came to a large sweet-potato patch enclosed with a hard-wood fence "pig tight." The owner, not content with securing his crop by means of the best fence that he could make, had set traps at every rod

suspending heavy sections of bamboo. These devices were sprung by a vine attached to each and running from hut to every point outside the field. These extraordinary precautions were taken against wild boar with which the Moro is unable to cope. The flesh of swine your Mahommetan fellow-citizen will not eat. He possesses few guns and no ammunition that he can afford to waste upon animals other than those classified as genus homo.

The kris, campilan and barong are made exclusively for carving his neighbors who may fall under his displeasure. Family feuds are very common. He would not think of "sticking a pig" with these emblems of authority and badges of rank; besides, the boar is armed in his own right with tusks capable of bringing matters to pass. As

overtaker and undertaker the wild boar of Mindanao has won respect. To bury a dead hog with a defunct Moro is to cut off a soul from the eternal joys of the heavenly harem.

When a herd of boars attacks the trap-protected fence the vines are jerked, and the bamboos fall with a resounding whack. The animals

not hurt in the least-simply scared away. The traps are again set and a slave renews his watch.

Arriving at a village guarded by a cotta I first peeped into the "Mosque," a mere shed, whose single "sacred" emblem was a large suspended tom-tom made of wood and carabao hide, upon which is beaten the refrains of the nasal discords which answer for music. The gate of the cotta was wide open. A deep ditch, an adobe wall ten feet high, out of which grew an impenetrable bamboo thicket, in which lantacas (small brass cannon) were secreted, afforded protection to the datto's casa, within which women and children swarmed.

The patriarch of the place, with all his advisers, warriors and assembled slaves coming out, with great seeming cordiality urged us

to enter the fort and tarry for re-
His numerous wives
freshment.
and still more numerous children
were in high glee. There could be
no doubt that our coming was the
one novel event of their lives.

The belle of the village was to be seen; she was also for sale. I did not get the figures, though I understood that the datto had cut the catalogue price fifty per cent in honor of our visit. There were no bids. The belle smiled as sweetly as a Moro belle can smile, considering her natural limitations. Assuring our new-made friends that we had still many calls to make ere the day was done, we changed our course, having explored the region as far as practicable on horse-back. Not being able to ascertain that the valley had any general designation, it was proposed in honor of the commanding officer of this reconnoissance that his name be hereafter associated with it.

Turning southeast we picked up the Spanish trail at the base of the long ridge which cuts off a view of the Lanao region from the Pantar basin.

The first glimpse gained of Lake Lanao is impressive when one recalls the utter rout of General Corcuera in the year of 1641, after fighting for two years to subdue the Malanaos in a vain endeavor to hold the country for the crown of Spain.

For a period of two hundred and fifty years thereafter the lake men were left to pursue unmolested the savage tenor of their way. Thousands of lives have been lost by invaders and defenders along these shores. At Marahui, the Sultan, with the usual retinue of dattos, rajah-mudas and panditas about him, bid us welcome as we dismounted near the water's edge.

Pershing had left there during the morning hours of the day before. Marahui-ites were stunned by the disaster at Bacolod. The Sultan was loth to discuss it. He had arrived at Bacolod while the fight

was on; he had been an eye witness to the work of the mountain guns; he had been moved by the impetuosity of the soldiers as they carried

Pedro, Pershing's cunning guide, with hideous grimace and vulgar jest, had ridiculed the munitions and war methods of his own race. "Fools! fools!" shouted Pedro, "to think that Americans are afraid of lantacas which make a big noise but never hit anything."

The Sultan, who had before exercising his offices for peace by carrying messages to and from Bullard, was now more than ever determined to cross the lake and labor with his hot-headed brethren at Taraca and elsewhere. He fell a victim to cholera while on this mission. More than once had he said that he desired the lake country to become safe for any man with good intentions to enter at will and leave at pleasure. On the face of the returns a long step had been taken toward that end.

It would have been easy enough during these days of uncertainty for our men to provoke a casus belli. They roundly cursed their luck that they had not been put into the fight at Bacolod. Construction work had been hard and long sustained. The temptation was strong to quarrel with the Moros; veterans could not have conducted themselves with greater circumspection. Discipline won in the struggle with passion.

Dattos who held valuable labor contracts on the military road still kept their slaves at work. These brilliantly attired chieftains were growing rich in Mexican pesos. The American camp lay, nevertheless, over a slumbering volcano.

A hunting party of Twenty-eighth Infantrymen was "jumped" by a band of Moros lurking in the colgon grass. The American warriors, though bleeding from kris-slashes, saw their assailants one by one fall under the might of their Krags.

The end was not yet. Surface indications may never be taken as an index of what lies deep in the savage heart. These proud denizens. of the jungle were wedded to tr notion that we relied upon their promises and were deceived by disclaimers.

The Moros are the Apaches of the Philippines. Events justified our judgment. War the Moros would have and we fought them.

From Kashmir to Lha-sa, from Thibet to Peking, from China to Korea, the "Land of the Morning Calm,”-spread the doctrine of the Mahayanas "Great "Great Vehicle" of Northern Buddhism in the earliest centuries of the Christian Era. Cautioned in tolerance by the words of Gautama himself, this rapid religious conquest of full half the world was everywhere a gentle fusion of existent beliefs with the Indian spiritual conceptions. Thus do we find. the attributes of a previous divinity. oft-times the heritage of a Buddha of the invaders and the possibility of its existence lending strength to the theory of periodic births of "enlightened ones."

While Ulysses builded his wooden. horse and by artifice gained what the prowess of Achilles ne'er could do, there lived (so runs tradition) a great King of the Mongols, Chung Wang, third ruler in the dynasty. of Chow. Now, unto the wife of this mighty son of Heaven did the Great Spirit send a daughter, who growing ripe in years and wondrous. beautiful, was deemed worthy to

be conferred by her illustrious sire upon the wisest man in all his wide domain.

Alas, Chung recognized not his daughter as an emissary of the Infinite One, and when in the fulness of her great compassionate heart she pleaded to be allowed to devote her whole life to merciful ministrations and to the guidance of blind, groping, suffering humanity, in a mighty rage at her disobedience he commanded that her beautiful head be severed from her shoulders. But lo! when the uplifted sword descended upon the raven tresses 'round her throat, shattered it was in a thousand fragments and unscathed before the ire of her father still stood in pensive meditation the glorious, divinely encompassed maid. Yet so blinded by the volume of his vexations was Chung Wang that he beheld not in this miraculous deliverance intervention from on high, and rushing forthwith upon his daughter, with his own hands. he stifled the breath from her body; for be it known that to resist a parent is the highest treason and the greatest crime in the annals of mankind's transgressions.

But when Kwan-Yin had breathed her last celestial breath upon him and had descended even unto Avitchi, the uttermost of the eight hells, the Infernal Regions themselves, trembling with joy, were turned into a Paradise, and in terror lest he lose his heritage, Yama, God of the Underworld restored the living breath to her body, and conveyed her to the upper air. Then, seated upon a lotus, emblem of creative power, over the summer seas she was borne to the henceforth sacred isle of Poo Too, near the city of Ning-Po, where for nine years she lived, bestowing her gracious mercy upon all man

kind, warning mariners of the dangers that beset them, and giving of her guidance to every comer.

This is the legend of Kwan-ShaiYin, the Merciful, as it was in the second century of our era when the progress of Buddhism displaced in China the existence of numerous unsettled faiths. True to the policy of the great founder, here again, as in Thibet, it assimilated many of the current beliefs, nor was the previous worship of Kwan-Sha-Yin a small factor in the ready acceptance of the new creed.

When, in B. C. 153, under Kanishka of Kashmir, the northern Buddhists and the southern (Hinayanas) became distinct from one another, the separation was due largely to difference and thought and temperament between the disciples of the two schools. Thus, the Hinayanas regarded all life as a painful transition and the ultimate reward of endeavor to be total self-annihilation in a dreamless Nirvana. To the Mahayanas, however, Nirvana. is born of a slightly different conception. While they hold all existence to be suffering, yet their idea of compensation has in it many of those concrete joys which could only be recognized by sentient entity. Thus the faith of the followers of the "Lesser Vehicle" is not nearly so impressionable nor so involved with legends and deifications as is that of the northern Buddhists.

In the second great book of the canon of the latter, "The Lotus of the Good Law," we find the closing Sutras devoted to the worshipful description of Avolakitesvara, the Great Looking Down Lord of Mercy and Compassion. It can be readily seen how in the introduction of Buddhism into China, the fusion of this deity and Kwan-Shai-Yin was brought about. Thus, upon its advent, Kwan-Yin was deified, and was supposed to have passed through all the stages of transition. even to the last, the Bodhi Sattva, from whence she pledges herself to

all humanity not to go forth into Nirvana until every living thing on earth is beyond the pale of suffering forever.

The keynote of the Lotus Sutra has been thus beautifully expressed: "Where a gnat cries, there am I.”

Kwan-Yin is often depicted as one of the "Three Sages of the West," seated to the left of the "Blessed One." On the right is Chi Chi, incarnation of Judgment, and between the Sacred Guatama, in whom is mingled the calm discernment of the one and the mercy and wisdom of the other. In truth noble God-head.

a

To the enlightened Buddhist the worship of the left hand deity is representative of a lofty idea, rather than a belief in the potency of the image. To the ignorant, as often in our own hemisphere, the source and meaning of the conception is overlooked, and to Kwan-Yin is assigned many beneficent powers by credulous idolatry. The real significance of the thought is neither more or less than the recognition of reason as the merciful bequest of divinity to man, a means through whose agency he may free himself from the darkness of ignorance and climb into the celestial heights of true happiness-knowledge.

"Thus long ago, ere heaving bellows learned to blow," was conceived this beautiful theory of the purpose and ultimate goal of human endeavor and was constructed that pathway to human emancipation which we in our progressive onward march have appropriated as distinctly a product of Western enlighten

ment.

"All hail, Kwan-Shai-Yin! would that our power of acquiring knowledge might develop itself so that quitting this body we might obtain perfect rest and repose.'

"Oh, may we soon cross to the other side in the boat Prajna (Sanskrit for wisdom.)

"All hail! Amitabha Buddha!" (Liturgy Kwan-Yin.)