Note 16 — Relation of the Western Islands Called Filipinas

The Spanish word is moldes; this sentence regarding the art of printing in China is not in the Sevilla MS. Gonzalez de Mendoza gives an interesting account in his Hist. gran China (Madrigal edition, Madrid, 1586), part i, book iii, ch. xvi, fol. 87–87b; he says that the Chinese understood and used the art of printing more than five hundred years before Gutenberg. He supposes that this invention was carried to Germany via Russia and Muscovy, or by way of the Red Sea and Arabia. The Augustinian Herrada and his associates took to the Philippines a great many books, “printed in various parts of that kingdom [China], but mostly in the province of Ochian [the former province of Hu-Kwang, now forming the two provinces of Hou-Nan and Hou-Pe] ... for therein were bookshops of the largest size,” where books were sold at low prices. In ch. xvii (fol. 89–91), Mendoza enumerates the subjects treated in the books procured by Herrada; they included history, statistics, geography, law, medicine, religion, etc. See also Park's translation of Mendoza (Hakluyt Society, London, 1853), vol. i, pp. 131–137, and editorial note thereon regarding antiquity of printing in China.