Note 27 — Chapter IX

786. Its inhabitants had sufficient courage to cause all their neighbors to fear them. Especially at sea were they powerful and daring as was lamented at different times by the islands of Panày, Luzòn, and others, when they were attacked by the fleets of Mindòro which they completely filled with blood and fire. But at the same time they showed a very great simplicity, which was carried to so great an extreme, as is mentioned by father Fray Gaspàr de San Agustin, that when they saw the Europeans with clothes and shoes—a thing unknown among them—they imagined that that adornment was the product of nature and not placed through ingenious modesty.27 That simplicity produced in them the effect of their not applying themselves to the cultivation of the earth, but of contenting themselves with wild fruit and what they could steal as pirates, or better said, robbers. The sequel of that so far as their laziness is concerned, has lasted even to our own times; for as says father Fray Juan Francisco de San Antonio, all who have discussed the matter, agree that they are the laziest people and the most averse to work of all the inhabitants in those islands, notwithstanding that they are corpulent enough.28 However, my experience of the Philipinas obliges me to say that so blamable a peculiarity is only too common to all of them, almost without any distinction of more or less. Neither could that courage of theirs save them from subjection to España, and if they earlier considered that subjection unfortunate in the extreme, now they regard it with the light of the faith as their greatest fortune.