I. UNDER THE DOMINION OF THE

EVIL ONE.

"HAVING won America, a fourth part of

the earth which the ancients never knew, the Spaniards sailed, following the sun, and discovered in the Western Ocean an archipelago of many islands adjacent to further Asia, inhabited by various nations, abounding in rich metals, precious stones, and pearls, and all manner of fruit, where, raising the standard of the faith, they snatched them from the yoke and power of the devil and placed them under the command and government of Spain."

Thus wrote Antonio de Morga in 1609. Let me try to paint a picture of the islands while they were yet under the yoke of Spain's predecessor. A hundred thousand square miles of land, broken into more than a thousand pieces and strewn through the China Sea. Ten millions of weak folk inhabiting them, rather sensual, afraid of the fiends, living snug enough lives in their rice-fields. Aliens now and then descending on them to rob and murder; some of the weak ten millions suffering much for a while, but presently appeased. Dense forests over most of the islands, and red-crested volcanoes everywhere bursting up through the palm Rivers that are torrents at one time and dry sand streaks at another, with pools where

trees.

alligators lurk, and turtles, and strange fish, and serpents. Civets and wild-cats in the woods; buffalo and wild boar; and among the hot, vaporous greenery of the trees parakeets and cockatoos and pigeons, while mound-building turkeys and jungle fowl roam underneath, and the air is full of gorgeous butterflies. And there are snowwhite monkeys in Mindanao.

And among these forests and smoke-wreathed hills, in the sweltering air, lived, as I have said, some ten millions of human beings, of low stature and varying degrees of blackness and yellowness, with a certain far-away humanity in their souls. There were the little black people of the wilds, who numbered a few scores of thousands, the furtive remnant of an earlier world. They were spindle-legged, with flat noses and frizzled heads, made frightful with tattoo-marks. They roamed through the forest with bows and poisoned arrows, dwarfish and hideous, hunting for honeycombs and eating all manner of strange wild food, such as only repulsive dwarfs would eat. Little wonder if they were taken for the true children of him who, before the Spaniards, ruled the islands.

But they were hard pressed by the Malays in their millions, the true owners and natives of the soil: stout, yellowish people, with low, dusky foreheads, very good-natured till the murdering fit is on them, when they are speared with iron tridents and shot. The Malays had long been

settled; they dwelt in bamboo huts, with walls of matted palm-leaves, among their rice-fields; they fished in the rivers and lakes and kept pigs and ducks and fowl, and great black buffaloes with long backward curving horns.

While they were yet in their sins they sowed the rice and reaped it with much blood-sacrifice to the fiends. For the five spring months the air had been growing hotter and hotter, till it came in great burning breaths like the breath of a furnace. Then white clouds began to gather in the hot blue dome, and to whirl and cluster and thicken till they hid the sky in a stifling mantle of vapor, and all men went breathless praying for the rain-fiends to conquer the drought. And then burst forth the lightnings and thunderings, and the whole air was fuli of raging 'demons, and the big rain-drops came down, first singly, then in battalions; and the air was full of the swish and swirl of the rain. For the next four months all things were dripping and steaming; the forests were white with hot vapor, and there was an endless trickling from the leaves and a splashing of water on the swampy ground. Then a certain coolness came, and the Malays prepared to plant their rice. the good old days of heathendom they guarded. the thick-sown rice against evil spirits by a bamboo basket of offerings, which they made in this wise Splitting the end of a rod for the length of a hand and spreading out the pieces, they wove twigs between them, making an open trumpet of basket work, stuck in the ground with the wide end up. In this they put the offerings to the fiends.

In

Once in three years they held a more imposing ceremony, which brought rich blessings on their fields. There is a plant called pua, which grows in the jungle, tall and slender, so that,

TYPICAL NATIVE HOUSES.

stripped of its leaves and the root-fibers cut away, it makes a splendid javelin for a sham fight. When the ceremonial day had come, the pawangs, or medicine-men, and the elders collected small coins throughout the villages, and therewith bought a white buffalo-that is, a buffalo of the color of a pig. And all the good, squat yellow sons of the adversary came together and brought rice and cakes for the festivities, and the buffalo was tied between two trees and its throat cut, so that the head fell in the stream that watered the rice-fields. And the flesh was measured out among those whose subscriptions were paid. Then the rice and the cakes were eaten, and there were more incantations to the fiends. And the young men armed themselves with pua spears and divided into two bands, and so fought a running fight of javelins down the rice-fields, the one party being all the time in retreat. master of incantations threw the first spear, and the rest yelled with glee. When the fight had been waged all down the valley, taken up by village after village for three whole days, the evil spirits took flight and the rice-fields were safe for a season. And when the cold time came in December the women harvested the crop, cutting it ear by ear, that the spirit of the rice might not be offended. And there are millions and millions of these yellow people, and the incantations are still in their blood, and the murdering fits, for all their Mussulman or Christian faith.

The

II. HOW SPAIN WON INNUMERABLE SOULS FOR HEAVEN.

Now the story of how the island came under Spain. In the year of grace 1511 the King of Portugal's men conquered Malacca in the Golden Chersonese, half round the world. There they heard rumors of islands of spices and flowery peninsulas, and forthwith equipped three ships to go in search of them. The chief of the fleet was one Antonio de Abreo, and he sailed across the China Sea and the sea of Celebes to Banda and Ternate in the Moluccas. He came back again to Malacca, and told of the wonders of the islands to his friend Fernan Perez de Andrada, and setting forth to Portugal was drowned somewhere in midocean. Captain Fernan told the story to Francisco Serrano, who went in a war-junk to look for the spice islands, and was wrecked on the Isle of Tortoises, beyond Banda. Here they did valiant battle with Malay pirates, who carried them to Amboyna, and thence the fame of their prowess spread to Ternate and Tidor, so that Cachil Boleyfe, lord of Ternate, persuaded Serrano to help him to subdue Cachil Almanser, lord of Tidor, both being pious Mussulmans and ene

mies of long standing. And Serrano wrote all these things to his friend Fernando de Magallanes, who was then in Portugal and who had been with him at the taking of Malacca.

Now, a few years before, Pope Alexander VI. had divided the world between the kings of Portugal and Castille, by a line which ran from pole to pole three hundred miles west of the Azores. And all that was to the eastward the King of Portugal took, but what lay to the west belonged to the King of Castille. His Holiness never imagined that the one sailing east and the other west, they must meet somewhere on the nether side of the earth, with no line to divide them, yet this very thing immediately happened, and for three hundred years the Spaniards had a day too much in their calendar and the Portugals a day too little from sailing thus in opposite ways. Then Fernando de Magallanes, falling out with his liege lord of Portugal and moved thereto by the devil, as the Portuguese chronicler tells us, went over to the King of Spain with Serrano's letter in his pocket. And he per

suaded him that the Moluccas fell within the Spanish dominions, if only you took care to reach them sailing to the west; and Charles V. let himself be persuaded, and fitted out a fleet, under the command of the said Magallanes, or Magellan, who took with him a famous astrologer named Ruyfarelo, the better to find his way through the unknown. And the said Magellan discovered the straits which bear his name, and sailed through them to the southern seas and thence to the islands of Tendaya and Zebu, where he was slain by the natives of Matan. And about the same time his good friend Serrano paid life's debt in Ternate. And thus the Philippine Islands were discovered.

The fleet went on to the Moluccas and came into dispute with the King of Portugal's men, who had railed round the other way and claimed all they found as within their sovereign's dominions. The Spaniards fared badly in the quarrel, and the remnant of them sailed for Spain in the Victory, which alone remained to them of their fleet. And this was the first ship that ever went round the world.

And it afterward seemed good to the King, Don Philip II. of Spain, to carry the matter further. And being informed by the Viceroy of New Spain and the friar Andres de Urdaneta, who had sailed to the Moluccas, that the voyage might be made more easily from New Spain-for so they then called Mexico and Peru-he bade them equip a fleet in the port of Navidad, in the South Sea, and it was given in charge to Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, an inhabitant of Mexico and born in the province of Quipuzcoa, a person

of quality and trust. And the Audiencia, which is the high court of justice, completed the dispatching of Legazpi, giving him instructions as to the parts to which he was to go, with orders not to open them until he should be three hundred leagues out to sea. The reason of this was that many differences existed among the officers of the fleet, some saying that they should go to New Guinea and others to the Luzon Islands, and yet others to the Moluccas. So Miguel Lopez de Legazpi sailed from the port of Navidad in the year of grace 1564, being the year in which the poet Shakespeare was born. He had with him five ships and 500 men, and also the friar Andres de Urdaneta and four other monks of St. Augustine's order. And having navigated for some days to the west, he opened his instructions and found he was to go to the Luzon Islands, which he should endeavor to pacify and reduce to submission to his majesty of Spain and the holy Catholic faith. He sailed over blue seas till he came to the isle of Zebu, where he anchored in a good and convenient port. And the natives and Tupas, their chief, entreated him faith

chronicler, it turned out contrariwise to what they had expected, for the Spaniards conquered and subjected them. Seeing what had taken place in Zebu, the natives of other neighboring islands came humbly before the chief of the expedition, and making submission to him, provided his camp with victuals. The first Spanish settlement was made in that port, which they named the City of the Most Holy Name of Jesus, because they found there, in one of the houses of the natives when they conquered them, a carved image of Jesus; and it was believed that it had remained there from the fleet of Magellan, and the natives held it in great reverence, and it worked for them in their needs miraculous effects. And the image they put in the monastery of St. Augustine, which was built in that city. The isle of Samar was first called Philippina in 1543, but it was a generation more before the whole group were called the Philippine Islands, being by that time pacified and subdued, and the souls of the natives being won for heaven, as the old chroniclers relate.

III.

THREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

It is the fashion to condemn Spanish rule in the Philippines, as though matters there had been steadily going from bad to worse, and as though that remote colony in the China Sea were incomparably worse governed than any other colony under any other power. In reality this is not true at all. There is not a cause of discord in existence to-day that was not equally existent three centuries ago. The events that are happening now are no new events, but had their exact parallel, point for point, in occurrences that took place before the first colonists ever settled in North America. The trouble springs from deep ineradicable causes which arise under every rule by an alien race, and which are operative and steadily working for disintegration in every Oriental land now held by any European power. And, finally, the forces that are fighting against Spain do not represent the Philippine natives at all, but an intrusive and alien element which forced its way into the country long after the arrival of the Spaniards, and which is as heartily detested by the real native races as by the Spaniards themselves.

Let me prove this in detail. And let me point out, to begin with, that even the rulers whom the Spaniards found in possession, and whom they conquered, were an alien element invaders who had brought a foreign religion and an exotic social system from the mainland of India. The Malays themselves, who are the true native population, had practically no say in the matter then,

square miles in extent. Having arrived at the bay of Manila, they found the town on the sea-beach close to a large river, in possession of and fortified by a chief whom they called Raja Mora, whose very name smacks of foreign invasion from India. Across the river there was another large town named Tondo, held by another chief named Raja Matanda. These places were fortified by stockades filled in with earth and a quantity of bronze cannon and a considerable variety of artillery. The Spaniards entered the town by force of arms and took it, with the forts and artillery, on May 9, 1571. The chiefs made their submission, and their example was followed by many other tribes in Luzon. The Spanish commander-in-chief, Legazpi, established a town on the site of Manila, of which Raja Mora made a donation" to the Spaniards for that purpose, as the position was a strong one and in a well-provisioned district. The name Manila was retained. Before the invasion from India the islands had been under Chinese dominion,

66

CHURCH OF SAN ROQUE, CAVITÉ.

but had shaken off the Chinese yoke. But the Chinese still maintained a brisk trade with the Philippines, sending a score of ships thither every year laden with cotton, silk, porcelain, sulphur, iron, copper, flour, quicksilver, cloth, and gunpowder, which they exchanged for skins and buffalo hides, bartered by the Malays.

In the days of the second governor, the famous Chinese pirate, Li Ma Hong, made a descent on the island with seventy large ships and entered the city of Manila, shutting the Spaniards up in the citadel. But they defended themselves courageously, and finally compelled the pirates to reëmbark, and, following them up, burned their fleet in the mouth of the Pangasinam River; and the pirate chief, escaping in an open boat, landed on a desert island and there died. About this time also the monks, friars, and Jesuits began to get a footing on the island, and gradually extended their power over the fanatically orthodox Spanish rulers, as well as over the Malay natives. Their sincere, prolonged, and fervent endeavors to convert the natives were one chief element of discord, as their gradual accumulation of church property was a growing cause of hardship to the Malays. These two forces sprang from the very heart of the religious system they represented, and were dangerous in proportion to their sincere belief in it and faithful adherence to it.

did show. Which goods, for that my ships were not able to contain the least part of them, I was inforced to set on fire." Sir Francis Drake had done the same thing repeatedly, visiting the Philippine Islands on his famous voyage around the world ten years before.

In 1590 the governor, Gomez Perez, began to fortify the town of Manila, and built a battery on the point and also constructed the stone cathedral, and encouraged the inhabitants of the city to build their houses of stone. He further cast many cannons, and indeed left old Manila very much what it is to-day. Then came trouble with the Japanese, who are at this moment trying to gain a voice in the affairs of the Philippines, as they tried then, more than three centuries ago. For several years there had been a steady trade between Nagasaki and Manila, and some of the Japanese traders incited the Emperor of Japan to proclaim his suzerainty over the Philippine Islands. This he did in an arrogant letter, saying that if the Spanish governor did not acquiesce "he should expect him on his return from China, whence he would go directly to his islands, to teach him who he was." At the same time the King of Cambodia sent an embassy to Manila, with a present of two elephants, in return for which the governor sent him a horse and some emeralds.

I record these details to show that the Philippine Islands had already come within the net of Asiatic politics, and that a complicated web of relations was then formed which exists at this moment, and which will have to be taken into account by whatever power assumes the government of the Philippines.

As the claims of Japan, backed by a strong and rapidly growing fleet, form one of the most formidable elements in the foreign relations of the Philippines, so the presence of Chinese in the islands is the gravest internal danger. In March, 1603, a number of mandarins came as ambassadors to Manila with banners, equipages, and lances, and other insignia of much state; the mandarins making many bows and courtesies after their fashion and the governor answering them in his." They told him a wonderful tale of a golden island they had come to seek, but this was a mere mask for a persistent Chinese attempt to get possession of the islands.

Numbers of Chinese shortly began to arrive, supplementing the already large Chinese colony in Manila. They were merchants, fishermen, quarrymen, coal dealers, carriers, masons, and day laborers. A plot was rapidly matured among them, having as its object the massacre of the Spaniards and the seizure of the island. Some of the Chinese themselves, both pagans and Christians, in order