The influence of Christian teaching is plain in some of the songs, plays, and stories of the natives, especially in the plays, for in them the hero is often a Christian prince who defeats a strong and wicked Mohammedan ruler, and releases an injured maiden. Change the names and the play becomes a modern English melodrama. In several of the islands, however, the impress of Spanish occupancy is slight, and customs are still in force that have existed for hundreds of years. On Mindanao are still to be found the politic devil-worshippers, who, instead of seeking to ingratiate themselves with benevolent deities, whose favor is already assured, try to gain the goodwill of the fiends. Their rites are practised in caves in which will be found ugly figures of wood and an altar on which animals are sacrificed. The flesh of these animals is eaten by the devils, according to the priests, and by the priests, according to the white men. 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. Among our American Indians the outfits supplied to a dead man are in sound condition, as it is supposed he will need them on his journey to the happy hunting-grounds, while the Chinese put rice and chicken in sound vessels on the graves of their brethren, believing they will need refreshment when they start on the long journey to the land of the shades. Tramps know where the Chinese are accustomed to bury their dead in American cities. When food is placed before an Otaheite corpse it is not for the dead, but for the gods, and is intended to secure their good offices for the departed. While a Tagbanua corpse is above ground it is liable to be eaten by a vampire called the balbal that lives on Mindanao, has the form of a man with wings and great claws, tears open the thatch of houses and consumes bodies by means of a long tongue, which it thrusts through the opening in the roof. 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 giant asks the new-comer if he has been good or bad in the world overhead, but the dead man makes no reply. He has a witness who has lived with him and knows his actions, and it is the function and duty of this witness to state the case. This little creature is a louse. On being asked what would happen if a native were to die without one of these attendants, the people protest that no such thing ever happens.