hung on Rembrandt's bronze shoulders, where his statue rises on the plain.

or

From the sublime to the ridiculous, there being but a step, the American notes the star-spangled banner, in this quarter. of numerous restaurants. But always the emblem of law and order is over some palace of "real American drinks,' above an "American Billiard Academy," and oh! strange mixture of associations, "America Royal" peep shows. Surely the Dutch are as unconscious of a joke as are the English who gave Archbishop Laud a stained-glass window for promoting the colonization of New England!

But to our wandering sheep! We do not forget that the whole of these street tableaux have been gotten up in "the Painters' Quarter"; that is, the space between Ruysdael Kade and the Amstel. Here the new streets of ever-growing Amsterdam are named after Holland's men of the brush and palette. Names now become living figures, and in the group we recognize by some mark or detail of costume, Van der Helst, Franz Hals, Ferdinand Bols, Govert Flink, Jan Steen, Ostade, Albert Cuyp, Gerard Don, Ruysdael, Hobbema, Jacob van Campen, Quellinus, Paul Potter, Sweelinck and Henony. They stand in pairs, these contemporaries, pupils or successors of Rembrandt, but the master receives chief honor. On the rim of a colossal floral crown surmounting a "float" adorned with fair women, we read the names of three or four of his masterpieces. Hollanders to-day mourn that so many of Rembrandt's etchings and paintings are owned outside of the Fatherland. Yet they gloat over the fact that besides a hundred or so of the smaller works, the three or four greatest of Rembrandt's canvases hang on home walls. "The Night Watch," the "Anatomy Lesson, the "Syndics of the Cloth Guild" and "Elizabeth Bas" are public property; while in the house of the professor of esthetics in the Amsterdam University, Dr. Six, the matchless portrait of his ancestor, the burgomaster, Jan Six, is still the joy of thousands of visiting students of the perfect in portraiture.

After the forty damsels and other dames of the F.F.F. (fair, fat and forty) and the four hundred or so costumed and helmeted men, of fifteen or more unions

or fraternities of artistic folk, with horse, foot and wagons, had passed by, our next quest of inquiry was the Dutchmen at night.

In the State Theater, at 8 P.M., when the Queen Mother and Prince arrived, and between the "acts" we saw fair Holland in jewels and evening dress. Somewhat heavy and slow to an American, we confess, were parts of the program. Vondel's "Joseph in Dothan" was a living Rembrandt in color, pose, grouping and light, while, incidentally, one could be easily convinced, if he needed conviction, of the nobility of the Dutch vernacular. Exquisite elocution and a "grand manner" in solemn diction redeem any tongue from vulgar associations born of helpless ignorance. To see also the most striking of Rembrandt's etchings thrown on the screen in colossal proportions was in itself a revelation of the master's power.

But, on the street, again, among the plain folks, even the world and his wife, one felt again that Holland is but a disguised republic. Intense individualism and plenty of freedom, rarely requiring police interference, showed how heartily the Dutch people appreciate both their political and mental liberty and the men who helped to make it. Rembrandt broke with Italy, the church traditions and the academy, in order to glorify the home, the cradle, marriage and common life, and man. He pictured the real Christ and the actual Apostles, and he stripped mystery-so beloved of ambitious ecclesiastics-of its power to enslave. In his love of truth, even to nudity, yes even to repulsiveness, the Dutch people follow their greatest master. In their homes he still looks at them from sixty self-portraits. which tell of a painter's progress from amateurish essay to consummate mastery. On Rembrandt night, besides illumination of the National Museum, eighty-six stereopticon views in open air of the master's finest works delighted myriads. Amsterdam has no kermiss. So the crowdsexcept, of course, in the Kalvar Straatwere quiet enough to make sleep easy for those in bed betimes.

Music in a score of places and the great flower array in Vondel Park marked the fourth and final day of the Rembrandt festival, beginning also the fourth century of his fame.

BY

ERHAPS nowhere in the world can be found so great a variety of wonderful hardwoods as in the Philippine Islands. Even a layman in woods is impressed with their infinite richness of coloring, the great size of the timbers, and their durability. In the far Cagayan Valley of Northern Luzon is an old Spanish mansion whose floors are of huge bolted planks from thirty inches to three feet across, and glistening like plate-glass mirrors without the aid of any varnish. These planks of different woods are laid alternately, and are brilliant in natural finish of jet black, claret red, and golden straw-color. Soldiers who were in the

Philippines in the war days will remember the old Oriente Hotel in Manila and the huge staircase of rich, glistening, claret-red Tindalo. The Spaniards appreciated the wonderful woods of the Philippines. In remote provinces, in the most unexpected places in the Islands, one will find old mansions built by the Spanish years ago, with great doors and tables made of single boards, and pieces of exquisitely carved furniture that would have graced the homes of Washington or Jefferson. Some of these exquisite hardwoods of the Philippines have been taken to England and Spain. Much is used in China in wood carvings, and in Japan in decorative cabinet work; but these superb woods are comparatively unknown to Americans.

The forests of the Philippines are of great extent. With an estimated value of two billion dollars - their actual value has not yet been computed by "timbercruisers" they exceed the hardwood forests of India and Borneo in the amount of uncut timber; and may be logged cheaper and more easily than the forests of South America. They are not found in swamps. Either from the point of view of the artist and nature-lover, or the capitalist and lumberman, the woods of the Philippines perhaps excel the forests of any other portion of the tropical world covering an equal area.

Standing on the low-lying hills of the Southern Peninsula of Luzon recently, I saw a typical Philippine forest, a vast sea of interwoven tree tops, a hundred feet above the ground, stretching for miles and miles in every direction, and in the distance growing indistinct and merging into the vista of bright green color that is characteristic of the foliage. There with Mr. John Orr, the dean of all lumbermen in the Islands, a commercial forester of fourteen years' experience in the Philippines, well equipped and operating a vast

tract, I spent three weeks in the woods examining the different tree species, their abundance, and the texture and beauty of the woods. It is difficult for one who has not actually been in the forests to appreciate their tremendous possibilities - the vastness of the merchantable timber.

The natural growth of the Philippine forests is computed by Major Ahern, Chief of the Insular Forestry Bureau, to be 1,400,000,000 cubic feet - three times the cut for 1900 in the entire United States! At the present time fully ninety, nine per cent of this natural growth is going to waste, and the world is clamor ing for the woods- the ebonies, mahog anies, ironwoods, construction woods, all manner of precious woods, that need only modern methods, a maximum of machinery and a minimum of handling to make Monte Cristos of the needed lumbermen.

The forests are a delight. Often giant trees meet in thick crown eighty to one hundred and fifty feet overhead. Some of the trees run up in clear trunks eighty or more feet before branching. One may walk for miles in their dark shades on a firm carpet of dry mold, frequently clear

of underbrush.

Sometimes you may run

on a drove of wild boar; sometimes on a troop of chattering monkeys; often you hear the hoarse booming of the callao bird. But, as a rule, the woods are enchantingly still.

With the exception of the most densely settled areas in the Archipelago, of some of the open plateau country of the interior of Northern Luzon, and of the pampas of the great Mindanao valleys, the Philippines are almost entirely covered with forests of immense trees. The biggest average of timber is found where there is the smallest population. On the Island of Cebu, which has the densest population, there is absolutely no commercial timber. On the Island of Mindanao, where there is an average of but one and a half people to the square mile, are found some of the thickest groves of timber in the Islands. Perhaps the finest merchantable forests in the Archipelago are to be found along the west coast of Southern Luzon peninsula, on the Islands of Mindoro and Negros, and on the great island of Mindanao. There are thought to be at least ten million acres of virgin forest on the last named island alone. Major Ahern, of the Forestry Bureau, says there are two million acres of dense virgin forest in Cagayan Province of Northern Luzon.

Practically all of the commercial woods of the Philippines are hardwoods. The only notable exceptions are the huge calentas or Philippine cedar found almost everywhere, and pines that grow on the mountain slopes of Benget, in Northern Luzon, and like regions.

The specific gravity of these hardwoods. is so dense that most of them, even when dry, will sink in salt water like so much lead.

The Philippine forests do not grow in "straight stands" of any one timber, as redwood, pines, spruce, and other species are found growing in the United States. The species are intermixed; yet it is usual to find one species predominating. many regions narra (or Philippine mahogany), which is one of the most valuable cabinet woods in the world, is found growing in enormous "stands" of dense timber. For fear of exaggeration, many writers in touching upon the Philippine forests in their general articles have

underestimated their value. The Forestry Bureau of the Philippine Islands makes a distinction between timber land and wood land. The bureau estimates the amount of timber land in the forests at forty million acres. It has estimated, by actual measurement, one large tract as having an average "stand" of construction wood of between thirty and forty thousand feet, board measurement, of merchantable timber (i. e., over fifteen inches in diameter) per acre. These estimates are made from actual count. foresters take long strips running through a tract of country; every tree in that strip is measured by the foresters, and in that way they gain a very accurate estimate of the entire "stand." One lumberman estimates a certain tract at the extraordinary average of two hundred and

The