Note 81 — San Agustin’s Letter on the Filipinos
Reading edition
The second: While I was in the village of Lipa, a mine was discovered in that of Tanavan which was said to be of silver. Governor Don Fausto Cruzat y Gongorà sent ministers and officials in order to find out about it and to assay it. These men made their efforts, but the mine only said, Argentum et aurum non est mihi.81 But the devil willed to have some rogue at this time to sow this deceit, namely, that the ministers82 said that the mine would yield no silver until all the old women of Cometan had been caught, and their eyes plucked out and mixed with other ingredients, in order to anoint the vein of the mine with that mixture. This was believed, so that all was confusion and lamentation, and the old women hid in the fields; and it took a long time to quiet them, and cost the ministers great difficulty, as the Indians would not believe them because they were Castilians, until time itself undeceived them.83