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These Tagbanuas do not believe in a heaven in the skies, because, they say, you could not get up there. When a man dies he enters a cave that leads into the depths of the earth, and after travelling for a long time he arrives in the chamber where Taliakood sits, a giant who employs his leisure in stirring a fire that licks two tree trunks without destroying them.
The evil spirits who appear in the half-darkness of these caves, leaping and screaming, goading the company to frenzy, are priests in disguise and in demoniac possession. Tagbanuas tear a house down when a death occurs in it, bury the corpse in the woods, and mark the grave by dishes and pots used by the deceased in life. These implements are broken.
Comparing a brawny savage with an anæmic scholar, one fancies there is reason in this forecast. The Tagbanuas have no Adam and Eve. Those of them who live beside the ocean say they are the children of Bulalacao, a falling star that descended to the shore and became a beautiful woman.
Yet, like our Indians, the better Tagbanuas and Calamianes try to heal the sick through the aid of drugs and charms and incantations, and they have their medicine man or papalyan. There is in the forest a strange little fellow, known as the man of the wood, who has the power of giving to these doctors the art of healing.
Incidentally we saw something of several of the wild tribes, including the Tagbanuas of Palawan, the Moros of Joló, Basilan and Mindanao, and the Mangyans of Mindoro. We experienced many very real hardships, ran not a few serious risks and ended our sojourn with six weeks of fever and starvation in the interior of Mindoro.
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