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Updated: May 6, 2025
After my escape from the Ajetas, I had noticed a small wound on the forefinger of my right hand, which I attributed to having been accidentally scratched by a branch or a thorn, while we were endeavouring to make our escape with such precipitation from the arrows which the savages let fly at us.
The features of the Ajetas have something of the African black, but the lips are not so prominent; while young their forms are pretty; but their lives being spent in the woods, sleeping always in the open air without shelter, eating much one day and often having nothing long fastings, followed by repasts swallowed with the voracity of wild beasts gave them a protruding stomach, and made their extremities lank and shrivelled.
I discovered that it was simply a strong solution of arsenic in citron juice, with which they coated their arms several times. I tried to find the poison used by the Ajetas. They led me to the foot of a large tree, and tore off a piece of its bark, and told me that that was the poison they used.
They were the aborigines of the Philippines, and had for a long time been masters of Luzon. At a time not very far distant, when the Spaniards conquered the country, the Ajetas levied a kind of black-mail from the Tagalese villages situated on the banks of the lake of Bay.
Having previously noticed several graves at a short distance from our bivouac, an idea struck me of carrying away a skeleton of one of the savages, which would, in my judgment, be a curiosity to present to the Jardin des Plantes or to the Museum of Anatomy at Paris. The undertaking was one of great danger, on account of the veneration of the Ajetas for their dead.
Alila was nevertheless quite right, and I myself could not disguise the fact, that good luck alone could extricate us from the critical position in which we were placed by my fault, in having thought of my country, and in wishing to ornament the Museum of Paris with a skeleton of an Ajetas.
When I reflect on my position, on the ocean, in a frail boat; having only for helps two individuals who could not move, two skulls, and a skeleton of an Ajetas, I cannot help thinking that the reader may imagine that I have concocted a story for his amusement. However, I relate facts exactly as they occurred, and I leave all at liberty to believe as they please.
After the conquest of the Philippines by the Spaniards, the latter took upon themselves the defence of the Tagalese, and the Ajetas, terrified by their fire-arms, remained in the forests, and did not re-appear among the Indians. The same race is found in various parts of the Malay country; and the people of New Zealand the Paponins resemble them very much in form and colour.
My affairs being almost regulated; my son being placed under his care, and that of his nurse, and of a housekeeper in whom I had every confidence; I was induced, by this feeling of security, and by the instances of my friend, to proceed to visit the district of the Ajetas, or Black-men, who were a wild race, altogether in a state of nature.
To-morrow morning the enraged Ajetas will come to attack us for the execrable booty which we have carried off from them at the risk of our lives. If they would attack in the open ground, with our guns we might defend ourselves; but what can one do against those animals, perched here and there like monkeys in the top branches of the trees of their forest?
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