Herbalists and witches are common among these natives, but are not punished or prohibited among them, so long as they do not cause any special harm.  But seldom could that be ascertained or known.

There were also men whose business was to ravish and take away virginity from young girls.  These girls were taken to such men, and the latter were paid for ravishing them, for the natives considered it a hindrance and impediment if the girls were virgins when they married.

In matters of religion, the natives proceeded more barbarously and with greater blindness than in all the rest.  For besides being pagans, without any knowledge of the true God, they neither strove to discover Him by way of reason, nor had any fixed belief.  The devil usually deceived them with a thousand errors and blindnesses.  He appeared to them in various horrible and frightful forms, and as fierce animals, so that they feared him and trembled before him.  They generally worshiped him, and made images of him in the said forms.  These they kept in caves and private houses, where they offered them perfumes and odors, and food and fruit, calling them anitos. [158]

Others worshiped the sun and the moon, and made feasts and drunken revels at the conjunction of those bodies.  Some worshiped a yellow-colored bird that dwells in their woods, called batala.  They generally worship and adore the crocodiles when they see them, by kneeling down and clasping their hands, because of the harm that they receive from those reptiles; they believe that by so doing the crocodiles will become appeased and leave them.  Their oaths, execrations, and promises are all as above mentioned, namely, “May buhayan eat thee, if thou dost not speak truth, or fulfil what thou hast promised,” and similar things.

There were no temples throughout those islands, nor houses generally used for the worship of idols; but each person possessed and made in his house his own anitos, [159] without any fixed rite or ceremony.  They had no priests or religious to attend to religious affairs, except certain old men and women called catalonas.  These were experienced witches and sorcerers, who kept the other people deceived.  The latter communicated to these sorcerers their desires and needs, and the catalonas told them innumerable extravagancies and lies.  The catalonas uttered prayers and performed other ceremonies to the idols for the sick; and they believed in omens and superstitions, with which the devil inspired them, whereby they declared whether the patient would recover or die.  Such were their cures and methods, and they used various kinds of divinations for all things.  All this was with so little aid, apparatus, or foundation—­which God permitted, so that the preaching of the holy gospel should find those of that region better prepared for it, and so that those natives would confess the truth more easily, and it would be less difficult to withdraw them from their darkness, and the errors in which the devil kept them for so many years.  They never sacrificed human beings as is done in other kingdoms.  They believed that there was a future life where those who had been brave and performed valiant feats would be rewarded; while those who had done evil would be punished.  But they did not know how or where this would be. [160]