The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803; explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commericial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the beginning of the nineteenth century; [Vol. 1, no. 36]

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THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

[Vol. 36

of many ships, he went out to meet them at a legua's
distance from his principal island,56 and fought with
them the greatest battle that those seas have ever seen.
Cot-sen sent most of their champans to the bottom,
and captured many; few escaped, and those were
damaged. This filled that country with such fear
that their precautions [against him] wrought more
destruction than his cruelty could have accomplished; for these obliged the king of China to
depopulate the extensive coasts of his entire kingdom, a strip of land six leguas wide embracing cities
of Ioo,ooo or 200,000 inhabitants, in order that they
might not be the prey of the conqueror.57 This was
56 This was Hia-mun, or Emuy (known by the English as
Amoy); it lies off the province of Fuh-kien, at the mouth of the
Lung-kiang ("Dragon") River. On it lies the city of Amoy, a
large and important commercial port; it has one of the best harbors on the coast. (Williams's Middle Kingdom, i, pp. I I4, I 5.)
57 Diaz relates this (Conquistas, p. 619) in greater detail.
"The Tartar [i.e., Chuntche], seeing himself reduced to so great
straits... resolved to command that all the [inhabited
places on the] maritime coasts should be laid waste and dismantled,
for a distance of three or four leguas inland, throughout the
more than eight hundred leguas of coasts which that empire possesses. This, to the great injury of the empire, left demolished
and razed to the ground innumerable settlements and cities, enough
to compose several kingdoms. This was the greatest conflagration
and havoc that the world has seen,... and only populous
China could be the fit theater for such a tragedy, and only the
cruel barbarity of the Tartars [could make them the] inventors
and executors of such destruction. The upheaval which the execution of this so unexampled cruelty caused cannot be described;
the loss of property is incalculable; and human thought cannot
conceive the horror produced by the sight of so many thousands
of towns and cities burning. At last this general conflagration
was completed, the fire lasting many days-the clouds of smoke
reaching as far as Hia-muen, more than twenty leguas, and the
sun not being visible in all that broad expanse. Stations were
established at suitable distances for easily rendering aid, well
garrisoned with soldiers; and watch-towers were erected a legua
apart, to keep a lookout over the sea-coasts. A public proclama