been very fluctuating.  In 1819 they amounted to $15,930; in 1839 to $36,390; and in 1860 they were estimated at $58,954.  In the year 1844-5 they rose to $292,115.  The cause of this large increase was that indulgences were then rendered compulsory; so many being alloted to each family, with the assistance and under the superintendence of the priests and tax-collectors who received a commission of five and eight per cent on the gross amount collected. [100]

[Lake Buhi.] The Lake of Buhi (300 feet above the sea-level) presents an extremely picturesque appearance, surrounded as it is on all sides by hills fully a thousand feet high; and its western shore is formed by what still remains of the Iriga volcano.  I was informed by the priests of the neighboring hamlets that the volcano, until the commencement of the seventeenth century, had been a closed cone, and that the lake did not come into existence till half of the mountain fell in, at the time of its great eruption.  This statement I found confirmed in the pages of the Estado Geografico:—­“On the fourth of January, 1641—­a memorable day, for on that date all the known volcanoes of the Archipelago began to erupt at the same hour—­a lofty hill in Camarines, inhabited by heathens, fell in, and a fine lake sprang into existence upon its site.  The then inhabitants of the village of Buhi migrated to the shores of the new lake, which, on this account, was henceforward called the Lake of Buhi.”

[1628 Camarines earthquake.] Perrey, in the Memoires de l’Academie de Dijon, mentions another outbreak which took place in Camarines in 1628:  “In 1628, according to trustworthy reports, fourteen different shocks of earthquake occurred on the same day in the province of Camarines.  Many buildings were thrown down, and from one large mountain which the earthquake rent asunder there issued such an immense quantity of water that the whole neighborhood was flooded, trees were torn up by the roots, and, in one hour, from the seashore all plains were covered with water (the direct distance to the shore is two and one-half leagues). [101]

[A mistranslation.] It is very strange that the text given in the footnote does not agree with A. Perrey’s translation.  The former does not mention that water came out of the mountains and says just the contrary, that trees, which were torn up by the roots, took the place of the sea for one hour on the shore, so that no water could be seen.

[Unreliable authorities.] The data of the Estado Geografico are apt to create distrust as the official report on the great earthquake of 1641 describes in detail the eruptions of three volcanoes, which happened at the same time (of these two were in the South of the Archipelago and one in Northern Luzon) while Camarines is not mentioned at all.  This suspicion is further strengthened by the fact that the same author (Nierembergius) whose remarks on the eruptions of 1628 in Camarines are quoted, gives in another book of his a detailed