Considering their size, those islands are very thinly populated.  The people are generally very dark, more so than the natives of Nueba Espana.  There are but few islands where blacks are not found among the mountains.  The inhabitants of the lowlands are of the former kind, and are accustomed to tattoo their bodies, arms, legs, and even their faces, where a beard should grow, with very carefully-drawn and handsome figures.  The greater the chief, or the more valiant he is, the more he tattoos himself, leaving untattooed only the parts covered by the breech clout—­the [clothing or] dress worn by them, and which covers only the privy parts.  Both men and women suffer no hair to grow on their bodies except on the head.  They wear the hair long and take good care of it so that it will grow.  The men bind their hair on the crown of the head with a small piece of gauze, and the women bind it with bands made of the hair itself.  All of them, both men and women, are fond of [wearing] beads, earrings and perfumes.  The garment worn by them [the women] is made of linen drawn together like a bag or sleeve with two very wide openings.  The amount by which this garment is too wide they gather up into many folds upon the left side, which, knotted with the same linen, rest there.  A small, tight-fitting shirt is worn, which does not reach to the knees [S:  waist], and covers no more than the breasts.  They wear garlands of flowers on their heads.  It is a very immodest dress, for it leaves uncovered the greater part of the legs and body.  The women are generally depraved.  They are given to abominable lustful habits.

The weapons they use are the following:  shields, breast-high, and little more than half a vara [67] wide; lances, two and a half varas long, with iron and steel points a third as long as the lance, and as wide as the hand.  In some districts the lance-points are long and ground to a very fine edge.  Cutlasses or daggers, from a half to three-fourths of a vara long, are made of the same shape as the lance-points.  Those people have armor consisting of cotton-lined blankets, and others of rattan.  Some wear corselets, made of a very hard black wood resembling ebony.  They use bows which are very strong and large, and much more powerful than those used by the English.  The arrows are made of reeds, the third part consisting of a point made of the hardest wood that can be found.  They are not feathered.  They poison the arrows with a kind of herb, which in some regions is so deadly that a man dies on the same day when he is wounded; and, no matter how small the wound is, there is no remedy, and the flesh will surely decay unless the antidotal herb, which is found in Luzon, be first applied to the wound.  Arrows are also discharged through blow-guns with the same effect, although not with the same range.  The Moros, who trade with the Japanese and Sangleyes [S:  Indians or Japanese], possess in their houses, and bring in their vessels, bronze culverins, so excellent and well cast, that I have never seen their equal anywhere.