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]

I649-I666]

ROYAL FUNERAL RITES

37

of sixteen columns, with foundations on a like number of bases and pedestals crowned with beautiful
and curiously wrought capitals. On top of them
arose the entablatures with their friezes, architraves,
fluted mouldings, and pediment of the arch crowned
with balusters-all regulated to the requirements
of art without detracting one jot from the idea [that
they expressed]. That structure ended in a cupola,'
which well supplied the place of the sky, when it
was seen reflecting the lights, and bathed in splendor. The cornices, mouldings, representations of
fruit, mouldings above, and brackets, were of a
bronze color, so cunningly done that they appeared
rather the work of nature than the imitation of art.
The pedestals and capitals, touched with beaten
gold, heightened the fiction of the bronze which the
brush and hand of the artist feigned and imitated.
The shafts of the columns, with their pedestals,
friezes and architraves were so vivid an imitation of
jasper that one would believe them to have been cut
from that mineral; or that they had stolen the confused variety of its colors, so that one's sight was mistaken in it. Their beauty was heightened by the
brilliancy of silver work or broken crystals with
which they were wreathed. In the center of that
structure shone forth majestically the urn, which
was placed under a canopy of solid silver covered
with a rich violet cloth of gold, with two cushions
of the same material, and another of white cloth of
gold, on which reposed the royal crown. On its
pedestal was seen a stanza of ten verses, as follows:
"Esta fatal urna encierra "This fatal urn encloses a
fallida vna Magestad: ayer te- dead majesty; but yestreen a
4 Spanish, una media naranja, literally, "a half orange."