Note 23 — Relation of the Filipinas Islands

The Chinese return in the month of March, and carry to China silver in return for their merchandise. They also take a wood called sibueno23—that is, brazil-wood, which is used in making their ink. Those Chinese merchants are so keen after gain that if one sort of merchandise has succeeded well one year, they take a great deal of it the following year. A Spaniard who had lost his nose through a certain illness, sent for a Chinese to make him one of wood, in order to hide the deformity. The workman made him so good a nose that the Spaniard, in great delight, paid him munificently, giving him twenty escudos. The Chinese, attracted by the ease with which he had made that gain, laded a fine boatload of wooden noses the following year, and returned to Manila. But he found himself very far from his hopes, and quite left out in the cold;24 for in order to have a sale for that new merchandise, he found that he would have to cut off the noses of all the Spaniards in the country.