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. 40]

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THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

[Vol. 40

erations must have been Malays, since their letters
and languages alone are found in these islands.
418. The vowels in the characters proper to their
language are three in number, although they have the
same value as our five in use; for the E and the I
form one single letter, as do also the 0 and the U.
The consonants are thirteen in number, but they are
never used alone, for the vowel is always used with
them. Thus by the use of the C and the M alone
they write cama [i.e., "bed"]. In order to pronounce words with other vowels, they make use of
certain commas, placed either below or above. Consequently, as all the pronunciation of their writing
for the most part makes it necessary for them to supply it at the expense of commas, the difficulty that
was experienced was considerable, even in the natives themselves. On that account they have applied
themselves so easily and willingly to our letters, in
order to write in their own language.
419. Their own method of writing was peculiar,
by writing the lines from top to bottom, beginning at
the left hand and proceeding to the right. This
bespeaks a very great antiquity; for the ancient custom of the Hebrews is to write lines from the right
to the left, as the Chinese do at the present time.
But the latter write them from top to bottom, as was
done in these islands. Diodorus Siculus, who wrote
in the time of the emperor Caesar Augustus, says that
in an island of the torrid zone the people wrote from
top to bottom, and employed only a few letters.
420. 'Before the people knew anything of paper
in these islands they wrote on the smooth bark of
bamboo, or on leaves of the many palms which are
found in these islands (and even yet this is done, in