They are very fertile, and I have seen but few married people without children. When these are born, they name them according to the incidents that happen at the time of their birth. One will be called Maglente, because of the thunder that sounded at the time of his birth; for lente signifies a clap of thunder. Another will be named Gubaton, because the foes appeared on the coast at that same time; for gubat signifies enemy. They esteem nobility; and I have known a woman called Vray—that is to say, “fine gold”—who had been given that name because of the nobility of her lineage. In some of the islands they were accustomed to put the head of a new-born child between two boards, and thus pressed it so that it would not be round, but long; and they also flattened the forehead, in their belief that it was a mark of beauty to have it thus.[12] At the birth of a child to one among them who is of the highest rank, they hold a festival of a week, during which very joyful songs are sung by the women.
They lose courage when they are sick. They do not use either bleeding or other remedies, except certain medicinal herbs, of which there is abundance in these islands. They use the cupping-glass; but it is not made of glass, for there is no glass in that country, but of small shells or the small horns of deer. They drink the liquor of cocoanuts after it has been kept some time in the evening damp; and that liquor is so healthful that their continual use of it keeps them from gravel, a disease of which the name is unknown among those peoples.
When anyone dies, the music of the mourning and lamentation begins immediately. Some weep because they are truly touched by their loss; others are hired by the day to weep. Women are usually chosen, as they are most apt for that music. They wash the body of the deceased to that sad cadence, and perfume it with storax, and other perfumes which are used among them. After bewailing the body for three days, they bury it. They do not place it in the earth, but in coffins of very hard and incorruptible wood, which they kept in their houses. The boards of the coffins are so well joined that the air cannot enter. They placed a piece of gold in the mouths of some, and adorned their coffins with precious gems. Moreover they were careful to carry all sorts of food to their grave, and to leave it there as if it were to be used by the deceased. Some they would not allow to go alone, and it was necessary to give them some male and female slaves to keep them company. They killed the latter after having given them a fine repast, so that they might go with the deceased. With one of their chiefs of the country they once encased a galley equipped with rowers, so that they could serve him in the other world. The most usual place of burial was the house of the deceased, in the lowest story, where they dug a hole to place the coffin. Sometimes the burial was in the open field; and in such case great fires were made below the house, and sentinels were posted there, for fear lest the deceased should come to take away those who were yet alive. The tears and lamentations were finished with the burial; but the feasts and orgies lasted a greater or less time, according to the station of the deceased. The Tagáls wore black as a sign of mourning; the Bisayans wore white, and shaved the head and eyebrows. When a person of rank happened to die, silence was observed throughout the village, until that the interdict should have been removed—which lasted a greater or less time, according to the quality of the deceased. During that time not the least noise could be made. But the mourning of those who had been killed in war or by treachery lasted a longer time, and did not end until their children and relations had killed many others—not only those who were known as enemies, but even strangers or unknown men; for their fury having thus been assuaged, they thought that they could put an end to their mourning, and solemnize it by great festivities and prolonged feasting.
They are for the most part good sailors—I mean for the navigation among the islands; for, as they do not use the compass, they do not get along so well on the open sea. They use various kinds of craft, which are propelled by sail and oar. The largest craft of the second class are called caracoas. Although these are not very large, they do not hesitate to put one hundred Indians in them; for there are three banks of rowers on each side. They make use of those craft for trading among those islands; and they lade them with dried fish, wine, salt, wax, cotton, cocoanuts, and other like merchandise.
They are cowards naturally, and more apt to make an ambuscade than to face their enemies. Upon that is chiefly founded their submission to the Spaniards, for they do not serve them out of affection.
They readily received our religion. Their meager intelligence does not permit them to sound the depths of its mysteries. They also have little care in the fulfilment of their duties to the Christianity which they have adopted; and it is necessary to constrain them by fear of punishment, and to govern them like schoolchildren. Intoxication and usury are the two vices to which they are most addicted. The piety and care of our religious have not as yet been able to make them lose those habits altogether.
The climate of Manila and most of the other Filipinas Islands is very warm. The difference between the seasons is not perceived, for the heat is equally great all the year. The rains commence at the end of the month of May and last for three or four months without interruption; but beyond that time it rains but rarely. In the months of October, November, and December, the country is subject to hurricanes, which the natives of the country call vaguios. They are furious winds which make the entire round of the compass in twenty-four hours, commencing at the north. They break the palm-trees, uproot the largest trees, overthrow the houses, and sometimes carry persons into the air; and some have been seen which have hurled vessels a musket-shot inland.
At the extremity of the island of Manila, near the Embocadero, where the vessels en route from Nueva España enter, there is a volcano or mountain whence often issue flames, and always smoke.[13] In those islands there is neither grain, wine, nor olive-oil, nor one of the fruits which we have in Europa, except the oranges, of which I shall speak later. Rice grows there in great abundance, and serves instead of bread. They have two kinds of it. One kind is sown in places always under water, and the other on the mountains, where it is moistened only by the water from the sky. Their drink also is made from rice, by soaking it in water; or it is taken from palm-trees, or cocoanuts, or from another variety of small palm called nipa. They keep those liquors in large crocks, and draw from them only on holidays and days of rejoicing. Those liquors mount to the head and intoxicate, as much as does the wine of Europa.
The horses and cows in those islands have been carried thither from Mexico and China, for there were none there formerly. The flesh of swine is their most usual food, and there is a great abundance of it; it is very healthful and savory. There are also innumerable fowl, deer, wild boars, goats, and civet-cats; also plenty of beans, cotton, strawberries, and even cinnamon—which is found only in the island of Mindanao, and which does not begin to be as good as that of Ceilan. They have no silver mines in those islands, and the little silver seen there has been carried from Mexico, in return for the merchandise exported there annually. There are gold mines in the island of Manila, and on the river of Butuan in the island of Mindanao. There is truly not sufficient to satisfy the desires of the Spaniards; but the little that there is of it sufficed the Indians, who value it only for the little use that they make of it, since it does not enter at all into trade. There is a quantity of honey and wax in their mountains; and since the Spanish have lived there they have built many sugar mills; and sugar is so common there that one may buy twenty-five libras of sixteen onzas apiece for one teston. They have three varieties of fruit that are most common: bananas, santors, and birinbines.[14] There are fifteen or sixteen kinds of bananas, some of them are sweet, but that sweetness has an admixture of bitter in others. Some of them smell good, but all of those varieties are very agreeable to the taste. I know of no fruit in Europa to which to compare them, unless it be the musas which grow in Sicilia. The birinbines and santors are eaten preserved more often than in any other way, because of their tartness; when prepared in preserves, they taste like plums. If they are allowed to ripen on the tree, they smell like quinces, although they have no other resemblance to quinces at all. Those islands have many other trees which grow wild. Their mountains furnish them with roots, from which they draw their most usual nourishment; these are called pugaian and corot.[15] They have other roots which they cultivate, such as the apari, the ubi, the laquei, and others which they call camotes, which are the potatoes[16] of España. The Spaniards use the last named, as also do the Indians.
But the most useful tree of all is the palm—not that which bears the date, for they do not have that species, but those which bear cocoanuts, of the size of an orange. Those nuts are filled with a very sweet liquor, which is very good to drink. They make wine, vinegar, and honey of it; and when that fruit becomes dry as it ripens, that liquor changes into white meat harder than an almond. It is from that meat that oil is extracted and a milk resembling that extracted from almonds. The cocoanut has two coverings. The first, which is less hard, is used for tinder when dried; also for the rigging and smaller cordage of the ships, or as tow for calking them. The other covering is harder, and is used for drinking vessels, or as dishes in which to prepare their food. The palm-leaves are the tiles with which their houses are thatched. The trunks of the same trees are used to support the houses, and in making the pillars. They have one other tree which is no less useful to them, for it serves them as a perpetual spring, and furnishes water to an entire village—which, being located on a very high and dry site, has no other water than what they get from that tree by making incisions in its trunk, and in its largest branches; for a clear sweet water flows out of it. The trees of those islands are always green, and there are only two species that shed their leaves, one called batelan,[17] and the other dabdas.