Note 3 — Moro Pirates and their Raids in the Seventeenth Century

Colin (who was at that time in Joló) says of this (Labor evangélica, ed. 1663, p. 49): “There was found near the island of Joló a piece [of amber] which weighed more than eight arrobas, of the best kind that exists, which is the gray [el gris].” Retana and Pastells regard Combés’s ambar as meaning amber, the vegetable fossil; but it is possible that all these writers mean rather ambergris, which is supposed to be a morbid secretion of the sperm whale, and has been used as a perfume.