The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 / Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century.

The main part of this volume is a record of the Recollect missions in the Philippines from 1661 to 1712; these are conducted mainly in western Luzón, Mindanao, and Calamianes, and Assis’s account contains much information of interest regarding conditions in those regions. “Moro raids in the seventeenth century” summarizes the principal events connected with that topic; and the Jesuit Clain presents an interesting account of the discovery that the islands called Palaos exist within range of the Philippines.
Extracts from letters written by Manila Jesuits in 1691 and 1694 furnish some items of news. Governor Cruzat y Gongora is making rigorous exactions upon the alcaldes-mayor and the tributary Indians; he engages in trade, and accepts gifts from office-seekers. In 1692, two richly-laden vessels from Manila are lost; and in 1694 another, which contained all the available wealth of the Manila citizens. Various ecclesiastical squabbles continue as echoes of the Pardo controversy.
A letter from the Jesuit Paul Clain (June 10, 1697) gives a vivid description of the arrival in Samar of some strange people, driven from their homes in the Palaos (or Pelew) Islands; and reports the information gained from them about that hitherto unknown group in the broad Pacific. These foreigners receive kind treatment from the natives of Samar, and religious instruction from the missionaries there; and they desire to open communication between their own islands and the Philippines.
The chief part of this volume is devoted to the Recollect missions in various portions of the Philippines, the period treated in general being included in the years 1661–1712, although some few remarks touch a later period. The main portion of the account is taken from the chronicle of Pedro de San Francisco de Assis, the author of the fourth part of the Recollect Historia general ; the second and subsidiary part from vols. viii and ix of Juan de la Concepción’s Historia , this portion being designed merely to supplement the preceding account.