Note 14 — Relation of the Filipinas Islands

The horses and cows in those islands have been carried thither from Mexico and China, for there were none there formerly. The flesh of swine is their most usual food, and there is a great abundance of it; it is very healthful and savory. There are also innumerable fowl, deer, wild boars, goats, and civet-cats; also plenty of beans, cotton, strawberries, and even cinnamon—which is found only in the island of Mindanao, and which does not begin to be as good as that of Ceilan. They have no silver mines in those islands, and the little silver seen there has been carried from Mexico, in return for the merchandise exported there annually. There are gold mines in the island of Manila, and on the river of Butuan in the island of Mindanao. There is truly not sufficient to satisfy the desires of the Spaniards; but the little that there is of it sufficed the Indians, who value it only for the little use that they make of it, since it does not enter at all into trade. There is a quantity of honey and wax in their mountains; and since the Spanish have lived there they have built many sugar mills; and sugar is so common there that one may buy twenty-five libras of sixteen onzas apiece for one teston. They have three varieties of fruit that are most common: bananas, santors, and birinbines.14 There are fifteen or sixteen kinds of bananas, some of them are sweet, but that sweetness has an admixture of bitter in others. Some of them smell good, but all of those varieties are very agreeable to the taste. I know of no fruit in Europa to which to compare them, unless it be the musas which grow in Sicilia. The birinbines and santors are eaten preserved more often than in any other way, because of their tartness; when prepared in preserves, they taste like plums. If they are allowed to ripen on the tree, they smell like quinces, although they have no other resemblance to quinces at all. Those islands have many other trees which grow wild. Their mountains furnish them with roots, from which they draw their most usual nourishment; these are called pugaian and corot.15 They have other roots which they cultivate, such as the apari, the ubi, the laquei, and others which they call camotes, which are the potatoes16 of España. The Spaniards use the last named, as also do the Indians.