udah_.

The alliances effected between the Sulu and Mindanao potentates gave
a great stimulus to piracy, which hitherto had been confined to the
waters in the locality of those islands. It now spread over the whole
of the Philippine Archipelago, and was prosecuted with great vigour
by regular organized fleets, carrying weapons almost equal to those
of the Spaniards. In meddling with the Mahometan territories the
Spaniards may be said to have unconsciously lighted on a hornets'
nest. Their eagerness for conquest stirred up the implacable hatred
of the Mahometan for the Christian, and they unwittingly brought
woe upon their own heads for many generations. Indeed, if half the
consequences could have been foreseen, they surely never would have
attempted to gain what, up to their last day, they failed to secure,
namely, the complete conquest of Mindanao and the Sulu Sultanate.

For over two and a half centuries Mahometan war-junks ravaged every
coast of the Colony. Not a single peopled island was spared. Thousands
of the inhabitants were murdered, whilst others were carried into
slavery for years. Villages were sacked; the churches were looted;
local trade was intercepted; the natives subject to Spain were driven
into the highlands, and many even dared not risk their lives and goods
near the coasts. The utmost desolation and havoc were perpetrated,
and militated vastly against the welfare and development of the
Colony. For four years the Government had to remit the payment of
tribute in Negros Island, and the others lying between it and Luzon, on
account of the abject poverty of the natives, due to these raids. From
the time the Spaniards first interfered with the Mahometans there was
continual warfare. Expeditions against the pirates were constantly
being fitted out by each succeeding Governor. Piracy was indeed an
incessant scourge and plague on the Colony, and it cost the Spaniards
rivers of blood and millions of dollars only to keep it in check.

In the last century the Mahometans appeared even in the Bay of
Manila. I was acquainted with several persons who had been in
Mahometan captivity. There were then hundreds who still remembered,
with anguish, the insecurity to which their lives and properties were
exposed. The Spaniards were quite unable to cope with such a prodigious
calamity. The coast villagers built forts for their own defence, and
many an old stone watch-tower is still to be seen on the islands south
of Lu