[111] The Indians, upon seeing that wealth excited the rapacity of the encomenderos and soldiers, abandoned the working of the mines, and the religious historians assert that they counseled them to a similar action in order to free them from annoyances.  Nevertheless, according to Colin (who was “informed by well-disposed natives”) more than 100,000 pesos of gold annually, conservatively stated, was taken from the mines during his time, after eighty years of abandonment.  According to “a manuscript of a grave person who had lived long in these islands” the first tribute of the two provinces of Ilocos and Pangasinan alone amounted to 109,500 pesos.  A single encomendero, in 1587, sent 3,000 taheles of gold in the “Santa Ana,” which was captured by Cavendish.—­Rizal.

[112] This was prohibited later.—­Rizal.

[113] See Vol.  XIV, pp. 301-304.

According to Hernando de los Rios the province of Pangasinan was said to contain a quantity of gold, and that Guido de Labazaris sent some soldiers to search for it; but they returned in a sickly state and suppressed all knowledge of the mines in order not to be sent back there.  The Dominican monks also suppressed all knowledge of the mines on account of the tyranny of which gold had been the cause in the West Indies.—­Stanley.

[114] Pearl-fishing is still carried on along the coasts of Mindanao and Palawan, and in the Sulu archipelago.  In the latter region pearls are very abundant and often valuable; the fisheries there are under the control of the sultan of Sulu, who rents them, appropriating for himself the largest pearls.

[115] Probably the cowry (Cypraea moneta).  Crawfurd states (Dict.  Ind.  Islands, p. 117) that in the Asiatic archipelago this shell is found only on the shores of the Sulu group, and that it “seems never to have been used for money among the Indian Islanders as it has immemorially been by the Hindus.”

[116] Jagor, Travels in the Philippines (Eng. trans., London, 1875), devotes a portion of his chapter xv to these jars.  He mentions the great prices paid by the Japanese for these vessels.  On p. 164, occurs a translation of the above paragraph, but it has been mistranslated in two places.  Stanley cites the similar jars found among the Dyaks of Borneo—­the best called gusih—­which were valued at from $1,500 to $3,000, while the second grade were sold for $400.  That they are very ancient is proved by one found among other remains of probably the copper age.  From the fact that they have been found in Cambodia, Siam, Cochinchina, and the Philippines, Rizal conjectures that the peoples of these countries may have had a common center of civilization at one time.

[117] “Not many years ago,” says Colin (1663), “a large piece [of ambergris] was found in the island of Jolo, that weighed more than eight arrobas, of the best kind, namely, the gray.”—­Rizal.