When civil government was established I was put in general executive control of matters pertaining to the non-Christian tribes. Incidentally, a word about that rather unsatisfactory term "non-Christian." It has been found excessively difficult to find a single word which would satisfactorily designate the peoples, other than the civilized and Christianized peoples commonly known as Filipinos, which inhabit the Philippines. They cannot be called pagan because some of them are Mohammedan, while others seem to have no form of religious worship. They cannot be called wild, for some of them are quite as gentle, and as highly civilized, as are their Christian neighbours. The one characteristic which they have in common is their refusal to accept the Christian faith, and their adherence to their ancient religious beliefs, or their lack of such beliefs as the case may be. I am therefore forced to employ the term "non-Christian" in designating them, although I fully recognize its awkwardness. While serving with the First Philippine Commission I was charged with the duty of writing up the non-Christian tribes for its report, and tried to exhaust all available sources of information. The result of my investigations was most unsatisfactory to me. I could neither find out how many wild tribes there were, nor could I learn with any degree of accuracy the territory which the known tribes occupied, much less obtain accurate information relative to their physical characteristics, their customs or their beliefs. The most satisfactory source of information was the work of Blumentritt, an Austrian ethnological writer; but Blumentritt had never set foot in the Philippines, and I suspected at the outset what later proved to be the case, that his statements were very inaccurate. He recognized more than eighty tribes of which thirty-six were said by him to be found in northern Luzón. As it was obviously impossible to draft adequate legislation for the control and civilization of numerous savage or barbarous peoples without reliable data on which to base it, and as such data were not available, I had to get them for myself, and undertook a series of explorations, carried out during the dry seasons so far as possible, in order to gather my information on the ground. I first visited Benguet in July and August, 1900. On my second northern trip I traversed the province of Benguet from south to north, arrived at Cervantes in Lepanto, and was about to leave for the territory of the Bontoc head-hunters when I received a telegraphic summons to return to Manila for the inauguration of Governor Taft on July 4, 1901.