The Encyclopaedia Britannica says that the Island Samai was called Filipina by Vellalohos, who sailed from Mexico in February, 1543. The capital was fixed at Manila in 1571, a distinction enjoyed three hundred and twenty-seven years. It was in a letter of Lagozpis in 1567 that the name Ilas Filipinos appeared for the first time.
The Dutch became very enterprising and venturesome in the Asiatic archipelagoes and gave the Philippines much attention, having many fights with the Spaniards. The Ladrones became well known as a resting place between the islands of Philip and New Spain—Mexico. The Chinese Pirates were troublesome, and the Spaniards, between the natives, the pirates and the Dutchmen, kept busy, and had a great deal of naval and military instruction. There were other varieties of life of an exciting character, in terrible storms and earthquakes. The storm season is the same in the Philippines as in the West Indies, and the tempests have like features. October is the cyclone and monsoon month. The most destructive storm in the island of Luzon of record was October 31st, 1876. Floods rolled from the mountains, and there was a general destruction of roads and bridges, and it is reported six thousand persons were killed.
So extensive and exposed is the Bay of Manila, it is one hundred and twenty knots in circumference—that it is not properly a harbor, but a stormy sheet of water. Admiral Dewey's fleet has had low steam in the boilers all the while to quickly apply the power of the engines for safety in case of a visitation from the dreaded typhoon, which comes on suddenly as a squall and rages with tornado intensity.
There are many volcanoes in the islands, and they exist from the North of Luzon to the Sulus in the extreme South, a distance as great as from Scotland to Sicily. There is one on Luzon that bears a close resemblance both in appearance and phenomena to Vesuvius. The likeness in eruptions is startling. The city of Manila has repeatedly suffered from destroying shocks, and slight agitations are frequent. Within historic times a mountain in Luzon collapsed, and a river was filled up while the earth played fountains of sand. The great volcano Taal, 45 miles south of Manila, is only 850 feet high, and on a small island in a lake believed to be a volcanic abyss, having an area of 100 square miles. Monte Cagua, 2,910 feet high, discharges smoke continually. In 1814 12,000 persons lost their lives on Luzon, the earth being disordered and rent in an appalling way. There were awful eruptions July 20 and October 24, 1867, forests of great trees buried in discharges of volcanoes. June 3, 1863, at 31 minutes after 7 in the evening, after a day of excessive heat, there was a shock at Manila lasting 30 seconds, in which 400 people were killed, 2,000 wounded, and 26 public and 570 private houses seriously damaged. The greater structures made heaps of fragments. That these calamities have taught the people lessons in building is apparent in every house, but one wonders that they have not taken even greater precautions. The forgetfulness of earthquake experiences in countries where they are familiar, always amazes those unaccustomed to the awful agitations and troubled with the anticipations of imagination. However, there never has been in the Philippines structural changes of the earth as great as in the center of the United States in the huge fissures opened and remaining lakes in the New Madrid convulsions.
In a surprising extent the Spanish government in the Philippines has been in the hands of the priests, especially the orders of the church. In the early centuries there was less cruel oppression than in Mexico and Peru. And yet there is in the old records a free-handed way of referring to killing people that shows a somewhat sanguinary state of society even including good citizens.
Blas Ruys de Herman Gonzales wrote to Dr. Morga from one of his expeditions, addressing his friend:
"To Dr. Antonio de Morga, Lieutenant of the Governor of the Filipine isles of Luzon, in the city of Manila, whom may our Lord preserve. From Camboia." This was in Cochin China, one of the Kings being in trouble, called upon Gonzales, who sympathized with him and wrote of the ceremony in which he assisted: "I came at his bidding, and he related to me how those people wished to kill him and deprive him of the kingdom, that I might give him a remedy. The Mambaray was the person who governed the kingdom, and as the king was a youth and yielded to wine, he made little account of him and thought to be king himself. At last I and the Spaniards killed him, and after that they caught his sons and killed them. After that the capture of the Malay Cancona was undertaken, and he was killed, and there was security from this danger by means of the Spaniards. We then returned to the war, and I learned that another grandee, who was head of a province, wished to rise up, and go over to the side of Chupinanon; I seized him and killed him; putting him on his trial. With all this the King and kingdom loved us very much, and that province was pacified, and returned to the King. At this time a vessel arrived from Siam, which was going with an embassy to Manila, and put in here. There came in it Padre Fray Pedro Custodio. The King was much delighted at the arrival of the priest, and wished to set up a church for him."
Unquestionably there was degeneracy that began to have mastery in high places, and this can be distinctly made out early in this century, becoming more obvious in depravity, when Spain fell into disorder during the later years of the Napoleonic disturbances, and the authority and influence of Mexico were eliminated from Spain. I may offer the suggestion and allow it to vindicate its own importance, that if we have any Philippine Islands to spare, we should turn them over to the Republic of Mexico, taking in exchange Lower California and Sonora, and presenting those provinces to California to be incorporated in that State as counties. It was under Mexican rule that the Philippines were most peaceable and flourishing.
The late Government of the islands as revealed to the American officers who came into possession of Manila, was fearfully corrupt. It was proven by documents and personal testimony not impeachable, that a Captain-General's launch had been used to smuggle Mexican dollars, that the annual military expedition to the southern islands was a stated speculation of the Captain-General amounting to $200,000, in one case raised to $400,000, that the same high official made an excursion to all the custom houses on the islands ordered the money and books aboard his ship and never returned either, that one way of bribery was for presents to be made to the wives of officials of great power and distinction; one lady is named to whom business men when presenting a splendid bracelet, waited on her with two that she might choose the one most pleasing, and as she had two white arms, she kept both.
The frequent changes in Spanish rulers of the islands are accounted for by the demand for lucrative places, from the many favorites to whom it was agreeable and exemplary to offer opportunities to make fortunes. It goes hard with the deposed Spaniards that they had no chance to harvest perquisites, and must go home poor. This is as a fountain of little tears.