The Bontoc men are never corpulent, and, with the exception of the very old, they are seldom poor.  During the period of a man’s prime he is usually muscled to an excellent symmetry.  His neck, never long, is well formed and strong and supports the head in erect position.  His shoulders are broad, even, and full muscled, and with seeming ease carry transportation baskets laden with 75 to 100 pounds.  His arms are smoothly developed and are about the same relative length as the American’s.  The hands are strong and short.  The waist line is firm and smaller than the shoulders or hips.  The buttocks usually appear heavy.  His legs are generally straight; the thighs and calves are those of a prime pedestrian accustomed to long and frequent walks.  The ankles are seldom thick; and the feet are broad and relatively short, and, almost without exception, are placed on the ground straight ahead.  He has the feet of a pedestrian —­ not the inturned feet of the constant bearer of heavy burdens on the back or the outturned feet of the man who sits or stands.  The perfection of muscular development of two-thirds of the men of Bontoc between the ages of 25 and 30 would be the envy of the average college athlete in the States.

In color the men are brown, though there is a wide range of tone from a light brown with a strong saffron undertone to a very dark brown —­ as near a bronze as can well be imagined.  The sun has more to do with the different color tones than has anything else, after which habits of personal cleanliness play a very large role.  There are men in the Bontoc Igorot Constabulary of an extremely light-brown color, more saffron than brown, who have been wearing clothing for only one year.  During the year the diet of the men in the Constabulary has been practically the same as that of their darker brothers among whom they were enlisted only twelve months ago.  All the members of the Constabulary differ much more in color from the unclothed men than the unclothed differ among themselves.  Man after man of these latter may pass under the eye without revealing a tint of saffron, yet there are many who show it faintly.  The natural Igorot never washes himself clean.  He washes frequently, but lacks the means of cleansing the skin, and the dirtier he is the more bronze-like he appears.  At all times his face looks lighter and more saffron-tinted than the remainder of his body.  There are two reasons for this —­ because the face is more often washed and because of its contrast with the black hair of the head.

The hair of the head is black, straight, coarse, and relatively abundant.  It is worn long, frequently more than half way to the hips from the shoulders.  The front is “banged” low and square across the forehead, cut with the battle-ax; this line of cut runs to above and somewhat back of the ear, the hair of the scalp below it being cut close to the head.  When the men age, a few gray hairs appear, and some old men have heads of uniform iron-gray color.  I have never seen a white-haired Igorot.  A few of the old men have their hair thinning on the crown, but a tendency to baldness is by no means the rule.