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. 48]

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VIANA'S MEMORIAL

199

forces for punishing them, they were curbed and
humiliated; since they have seen us poor and weak
they have displayed their perfidy and boldness, and
are treating us with the greatest insolence ever seen
- for they invade even the villages along this bay,
without there being, on our side, any means to prevent this.
3. The vassals of his Majesty, both Spaniards and
natives, live in the sorrow which is aroused in them
by their melancholy reflections on our poor and
miserable condition. The Indians, who are civil
only when they fear some punishment, regard their
sovereign with little respect, and the Spanish nation
with disgust at seeing it humiliated by the English,
the Dutch, the French, and even the Moros; and they
judge that the Spaniards are somewhat more than the
Indians, but much less than the other nations. And,
although they are confounded at the glorious successes which our armies have gained against the English since the capture of this military post, and at the
heroic valor with which the unfaithful provinces
have been punished, when they become aware of our
actual poverty that will be enough to destroy their
reverence and respect for the acts of the superior
government, and to make them bold to commit any
insolence, for our lack of means to restrain them
from it.
4. For this same reason, nothing can be undertaken that will avail against the Moros who harass
us,"6 or against the Indians who refuse obedience
116 "Since our entrance into this land, the Moorish [i.e., Mahometan] following has been greatly increased - not only through
the ordinary traffic which the people of Macazar carry on in it;
but because the santons of Meca, proceeding by way of the strait
of Moca, come to Sumatra, and from there pass, by the strait of