[5] Falúa (also faluca, English, felucca); a small open boat, or a long boat with oars.
[6] Francisco Angel was born at San Clemente, Spain, April 14, 1603; and at the age of fifteen he became a Jesuit novice. He reached the Philippines in 1626, and spent a long and arduous life in the service of the missions there; a large part of his work was in Mindanao and the adjacent islands. He died at Catbalogan, February 24, 1676. See Murillo Velarde’s Hist. Philipinas, fol. 353 verso.
[7] This image had been taken by the Moros from the Recollect church on the island of Cuyo. “It was a titular [i.e., an ¡mage of the titular (or patron saint) of that church] of our father St. Augustine, and on a linen cloth represented the holy doctor, with Jesus Christ on one side, refreshing him with the blood from His side; and on the other the Virgin, offering him the [“virginal,” as La Concepción words it] nectar from her royal breasts.” Thus Luis de Jesús, in his Historia religiosos descalzos (Madrid, 1663). The figure of St. Francis Xavier was conjoined with this one, later, by the Jesuits, to incite the soldiers.
[8] Retana says, in the preface to his edition of Combés (col. lvi) that the ancient divisions of the island of Mindanao were four: Butúan, Zamboanga, Mindanao (or district of the Moros), and Caraga. Colin states (Labor evangélica, p. 42) that “the district of the Moros begins at the river of Sibuguey, and extends along the discovered coast, always to the south, for more than sixty leguas, until it encounters the beginning of the jurisdiction of Caraga.... Its furthest part is the bay of Tagalooc” (i.e., Davao, according to Pastells, in his edition of Colin, i, p. 43). The river above mentioned “discharges its waters into the bay of Dumanquilas” (Retana and Pastells, Combés, col. 761).
[9] The Ventura del Arco transcript is here somewhat differently worded; and according to it the sentence would continue thus: ”(and by another caracoa, which carried a white flag, a letter to the Recollect fathers whom the Moros held captive there, that they should inform them [i.e., our men?] of what was going on) should cast anchor,” etc.
[10] This place was Lamitan, Corralat’s seat of government and court. The height to which that chief retreated after the capture of Lamitan was named Ilihan, according to Montero y Vidal (Hist. piratería, i, p. 168).
[11] Probably referring to Liguasan, a large lake southeast of Cotabato, which forms a reservoir for the waters of the Rio Grande of Mindanao—which river seems to have been the headquarters of the piratical Moros of that island. The fort captured at this time was located at the mouth of that river.
[12] Sarvatanas (or zarbatanas): a word of Arabic origin, here applied to reeds or canes through which are blown poisoned darts—the sompites (or sumpitans) of the text. (See Retana and Pastells’s note in Combés, col. 783.)
[13] Sabanilla, diminutive form of sabana (English, “Savannah”); a name given by Corcuera’s Spanish soldiers to the fortress which was constructed, under the direction of Father Melchor de Vera, at that point in Mindanao, south from Lake Lanao. Puerto de la Sabanilla was anciently called Tuboc, on account of the springs that flow there ... which form the river now named Malabang. The etymology of this last name indicates the formation of land by the deposits made by the river, which may also be seen in the delta of the Rio Grande of Mindanao. (Retana and Pastells, in Combés, col. 760.)
Tuboc is the name of a modern pueblo on the eastern shore of Illana Bay.