[The native clergy.] The guiding principle of Spanish colonial policy—­to set one class against another, and to prevent either from becoming too powerful—­seems to be the motive for placing so many native incumbents in the parsonages of the Archipelago.  The prudence of this proceeding, however, seems doubtful.  A Spanish priest has a great deal of influence in his own immediate circle, and forms, perhaps, the only enduring link between the colony and the mother-country.  The native priest is far from affording any compensation for the lack of either of these advantages.  He generally is but little respected by his flock, and certainly does nothing to attach them to Spain; for he hates and envies his Spanish brethren, who leave him only the very worst appointments, and treat him with contempt.

[Nabua.] I rode from Batu to Nabua over a good road in half an hour.  The country was flat, with rice-fields on both sides of the road; but, while in Batu the rice was only just planted, in Nabua it already was almost ripe.  I was unable to obtain any explanation of this incongruity, and know not how to account for such a difference of climate between two hamlets situated in such close proximity to one another, and separated by no range of hills.  The inhabitants of both were ugly and dirty, and were different in these respects from the Tagalogs.  Nabua, a place of 10,875 inhabitants, is intersected by several small streams, whose waters, pouring down from the eastern hills, form a small lake, which empties itself into the river Bicol.  Just after passing the second bridge beyond Nabua the road, inclining eastwards, wends in a straight line to Iriga, a place lying to the south-west of the volcano of the same name.

[Remontados.] I visited a small settlement of pagans situated on the slope of the volcano.  The people of the plains call them indifferently Igorots, Cimarrons, Remontados, Infieles, or Montesinos.  None of these names, however, with the exception of the two last, are appropriate ones.  The first is derived from the term applied in the north of the Island to the mixed descendants of Chinese and Filipino parents.  The word Cimarron (French, marrow) is borrowed from the American slave colonies, where it denoted negroes who escaped from slavery and lived in a state of freedom; but here it is applied to natives who prefer a wild existence to the comforts of village life, which they consider are overbalanced by the servitude and bondage which accompany them.  The term Remontado explains itself, and has the same signification as Cimarron.  As the difference between the two states—­on account of the mildness of the climate, and the ease with which the wants of the natives are supplied—­is far less than it would be in Europe, these self-constituted exiles are more frequently to be met with than might be supposed; the cause of their separation from their fellowmen sometimes being some offence against the laws, sometimes annoying debts, and sometimes a mere