Indies.  These are about twenty-six or twenty-eight feet long, and five or six feet high from the keel, which is made of the trunk of a tree like a canoe, sharp at both ends.  They manage these boats with a paddle instead of a rudder, and use a square sail, and they sail with incredible swiftness, twenty or even twenty-four miles in an hoar.  One side of these boats is quite flat and upright like a wall from end to end, but the other side is rounded and full-bellied like other vessels.  Along this side, parallel with the boat, at the distance of six or seven feet, a log of light wood, a foot and a half wide, and sharp at both ends, is fastened by means of two bamboos eight or ten feet long, projecting from each end of the main boat, and this log prevents the boat from oversetting.  The English call this an out-lier, or out-rigger, and the Dutch Oytlager.  The air of this island is accounted exceedingly healthy, except in the wet season between June and October.  The Indians inhabit small villages on the west side of this island near the shore, and have priests among them to instruct them in the Christian religion.  By means of a civil letter from Captain Swan to the Spanish governor, accompanied by some presents, we obtained a good supply of hogs, cocoa-nuts, rice, biscuits, and other refreshments, together with fifty pounds of Manilla tobacco.

Learning from one of the friars that the island of Mindanao, inhabited by Mahometans, abounded in provisions, we set sail from Guam on the 2d June with a strong E. wind, and arrived on the 21st at the Isle of St John, one of the Philippines.  These are a range of large islands reaching from about the latitude of 5 deg. to about 19 deg.  N. and from long. 120 deg. to 126 deg. 30’ E. The principal island of the group is Luzon, or Luconia, in which Magellan was slain by a poisoned arrow, and which is now entirely subject to the Spaniards.  Their capital city of Manilla is in this island, being a large town and sea-port, seated at the south-west end, opposite to the island of Mindora, and is a place of great strength and much trade, especially occasioned by the Acapulco ships, which procure here vast quantities of India commodities, brought hither by the Chinese and Portuguese, and sometimes also by stealth by the English from fort St George or Madras; for the Spaniards allow of no regular trade here to the English and Dutch, lest they should discover their weakness, and the riches of these islands, which abound in gold.  To the south of Luzon there are twelve or fourteen large islands, besides a great number of small isles, all inhabited by, or subject to, the Spaniards.  But the two most southerly, Mindanao and St John, are not subjected by the Spaniards.