Their manner of burying the dead was as follows:  The deceased was buried beside his house; and, if he were a chief, he was placed beneath a little house or porch which they constructed for this purpose.  Before interring him, they mourned him for four days; and afterward laid him on a boat which served as a coffin or bier, placing him beneath the porch, where guard was kept over him by a slave.  In place of rowers, various animals were placed within the boat, each one being assigned a place at the oar by twos—­male and female of each species being together—­as for example two goats, two deer, or two fowls.  It was the slave’s care to see that they were fed.  If the deceased had been a warrior, a living slave was tied beneath his body until in this wretched way he died.  In course of time, all suffered decay; and for many days the relatives of the dead man bewailed him, singing dirges, and praises of his good qualities, until finally they wearied of it.  This grief was also accompanied by eating and drinking.  This was a custom of the Tagalos.

The Aetas, [28] or Negrillos [Negritos] inhabitants of this island, had also a form of burial, but different.  They dug a deep, perpendicular hole, and placed the deceased within it, leaving him upright with head or crown unburied, on top of which they put half a cocoa-nut which was to serve him as a shield.  Then they went in pursuit of some Indian, whom they killed in retribution for the Negrillo who had died.  To this end they conspired together, hanging a certain token on their necks until some one of them procured the death of the innocent one.

These infidels said that they knew that there was another life of rest which they called maca, just as if we should say “paradise,” or, in other words, “village of rest.”  They say that those who go to this place are the just, and the valiant, and those who lived without doing harm, or who possessed other moral virtues.  They said also that in the other life and mortality, there was a place of punishment, grief, and affliction, called casanaan, which was “a place of anguish;” they also maintained that no one would go to heaven, where there dwelt only Bathala, “the maker of all things,” who governed from above.  There were also other pagans who confessed more clearly to a hell, which they called, as I have said, casanaan; they said that all the wicked went to that place, and there dwelt the demons, whom they called sitan.

All the various kinds of infernal ministers were, therefore, as has been stated:  catolonan; sonat (who was a sort of bishop who ordained priestesses and received their reverence, for they knelt before him as before one who could pardon sins, and expected salvation through him); mangagauay, manyisalat, mancocolam, hocloban, silagan, magtatangal, osuan, mangagayoma, pangatahoan. [29]