Note 10 — FINANCIAL AFFAIRS OF THE ISLANDS, 1766

“In the eastern part of the Philippines, cock-fights must have been unknown in Pigafetta’s time; he saw the first gamecocks in Paláuan.” (See Pigafetta’s mention of these fights, in VOL. XXXIII, p. 211.) “In the ‘Ordinances of good government’ of Hurtado Corcuera, in the middle of the seventeenth century, gamecocks were not mentioned. In 1779 they first added to the revenue from taxation; and in 1781 the government farmed the right to collect entrance-money in the cockpits (galleras, from gallo, “cock”), for $14,798 a year. In 1863 the revenue from these places made an item in the budget of $106,000.” A special ordinance regarding cock-fights was dated at Madrid, March 21, 1861; among its provisions is permission for this sport to be held on Sundays and feast-days, from the conclusion of high mass until sunset. “The craving to gain money without work they can with great difficulty withstand, and many are, through the passion for gambling, drawn into borrowing money at usury, embezzlement, and theft, and even highway robbery; the bands of robbers on both sea and land consist, for the greater part, of ruined gamesters.” (Jagor, Reisen, p. 22.) ↑