Note 74 — XIII.

Spanish writers, treating of the Philippines, derive this name from "Losong," which in the native language means the wooden mortar in which the rice, which forms the chief subsistence of the inhabitants, is shelled and pounded. The first strangers who came to this island, and found in every hut one of these very peculiar clumsy-looking implements, spoke of the newly discovered island as "Isle de los Losenes" (island of wooden mortars), whence in process of time it became transformed into Luzon.