[195] In the Italian MS., the chart of Aguada ly boni segnaly (“Watering-place of good signs”), Zzamal (Samar), Abarien, Humunu, Hyunagan, Zuluam, Cenalo, and Ybusson (q.v., p. 102) follows at this point. It is found on folio 29b of MS. 5,650 and is preceded by the following: “Here is shown the island of Good Signs, and the four islands, Cenalo, Humanghar, Ibusson, and Abarien, and several others.”
[196] “The tenth of March” in Eden, and the distance of Zamal from the Ladrones is given as “xxx. leagues.” Albo (Navarrete, iv, p. 220) says that the first land seen was called Yunagan, “which extended north and had many bays;” and that going south from there they anchored at a small island called Suluan. At the former “we saw some canoes, and went thither, but they fled. That island lies in 9° 40´ north latitude.” The “Roteiro” (Stanley, p. 10) says that the first land seen was in “barely eleven degrees,” and that the fleet “went to touch at another further on, which appeared first.” Two praus approached a boat sent ashore, whereupon the latter was ordered back, and the praus fled. Thereupon the fleet went to another nearby island “which lies in ten degrees, to which they gave the name of the ‘Island of Good Signs,’ because they found some gold in it.”
[197] This word is omitted in MS. 5,650.
[198] MS. 5,650 reads: “more than one foot long.”
[199] Since rice is an important staple among all the eastern islands, it is natural that there are different and distinctive names for that grain in the various languages and dialects for all stages of its growth and all its modes of preparation. Thus the Tagálog has words for “green rice,” “rice with small heads,” “dirty and partly rotten rice,” “early rice,” “late rice,” “cooked rice,” and many others. See also U. S. Philippine Gazetteer, pp. 70, 71.
[200] MS. 5,650 reads: “In order to explain what manner of fruit is that above named, one must know that what is called ‘cochi’ is the fruit borne by the palm-tree. Just as we have bread, wine, oil, and vinegar, which are obtained from different things, so those people get the above named substances from those palm-trees alone.” See Delgado’s Historia, pp. 634–659, for description of the useful cocoa palm; also, U. S. Philippine Gazetteer, pp. 72, 73, 75.
[201] MS. 5,650 reads: “along the tree.” Practically the method used today to gather the cocoanut wine. See U. S. Philippine Gazetteer, p. 75.
[202] In describing the cocoanut palm and fruit, Eden (p. 254) reads: “Vnder this rynde, there is a thicke ſhell whiche they burne and make pouder thereof and vſe it as a remedie for certeyne diſeaſes.” He says lower, that the cocoanut milk on congealing “lyeth within the ſhell lyke an egge.”
[203] MS. 5,650 reads: “By so doing they last a century.”
[204] Called “Suluan” by Albo (Navarrete, iv, p. 220). It is a small island southeast of Samar. See ante, note 196. Dr. David P. Barrows (Census of the Philippines, Washington, 1905, i, p. 413), says that the men from Suluan “were perhaps not typical of the rest of the population which Magellan found sparsely scattered about the coasts of the central islands, but ... were almost certainly of the same stock from which the present Visayan people are in the main descended.” These natives had probably come, he says, “in successively extending settlements, up the west coast of Mindanao from the Sulu archipelago. ‘Sulúan’ itself means ‘Where there are Suluges,’ that is, men of Sulu or Joló.”