“Look yonder, Castilla.[4] At a time when the Tapuzians were without religion, and lived as wild beasts, God punished them. Look at all the part of that mountain quite stripped of vegetation: one night, during a tremendous earthquake, that mountain split in two—one part swallowed up the half of the village that then stood on the place where those enormous rocks are. A few hundred steps further on all would have been destroyed; there would no longer have existed a single person in Tapuzi: but a part of the population was not injured, and came and settled themselves where the village now is. Since then we pray to the Almighty, and live in a manner so as not to deserve so severe a chastisement as that experienced by the wretched victims of that awful night.”
The conversation and society of this old man—I might say the King of Tapuzi—was most interesting to me. But I had already been four days absent from Jala-Jala. I ordered my lieutenant to prepare for our departure. We bid most affectionate adieus to our hosts, and set off. In two days I returned home, quite pleased with my journey and the good inhabitants of Tapuzi.
Hunting party at Jala-Jala.
[1] See Appendix, I.
[2] I experienced two such gales during my residence at Jala-Jala—the one I am now speaking of, and another to which I shall afterwards allude.
[3] Tapuzi is situated in the mountains of Limutan. Limutan is a Tagalese word, signifying “altogether forgotten.”
[4] In the eyes of the natives of Tagal all Europeans are Spaniards.