Note 14 — Relation of the Western Islands Called Filipinas

Rice is the main article of food in these islands. In a few of them people gather enough of it to last them the whole year. In most of the islands, during Page 180the greater part of the year, they live on millet, borona, roasted bananas, certain roots resembling sweet potatoes and called oropisa, as well as on yams [yuñames] and camotes14 whose leaves they also eat, boiled. They eat Castilian fowls and pork. In the islands inhabited by Moros, some goats are raised; but there are so few of them that wherever fifteen or twenty Spaniards arrive, no goats will be seen for the next two or three years. The cocoa-palm offers the greatest means of sustenance to the natives, for they obtain from it wine, fruit, oil, and vinegar. These people eat many kinds of herbs which grow both on land and in the sea. Some of these herbs have been used by our people as articles of food. The scarcity of all kinds of food here is such that—with all that is brought continually from all these islands, in three frigates, one patache, and all the other native boats that could be obtained—each soldier or captain could only receive [as his rations] each week two almudes of unwinnowed rice—which, when winnowed, yielded no more than three cuartillos. This ration was accompanied by nothing else, neither meat nor fish.