minable lustful habits.

The weapons they use are the following: shields, breast-high, and
little more than half a _vara_ [67] wide; lances, two and a half
_varas_ long, with iron and steel points a third as long as the lance,
and as wide as the hand. In some districts the lance-points are long
and ground to a very fine edge. Cutlasses or daggers, from a half
to three-fourths of a _vara_ long, are made of the same shape as
the lance-points. Those people have armor consisting of cotton-lined
blankets, and others of rattan. Some wear corselets, made of a very
hard black wood resembling ebony. They use bows which are very strong
and large, and much more powerful than those used by the English. The
arrows are made of reeds, the third part consisting of a point made of
the hardest wood that can be found. They are not feathered. They poison
the arrows with a kind of herb, which in some regions is so deadly
that a man dies on the same day when he is wounded; and, no matter how
small the wound is, there is no remedy, and the flesh will surely decay
unless the antidotal herb, which is found in Luzon, be first applied
to the wound. Arrows are also discharged through blow-guns with the
same effect, although not with the same range. The Moros, who trade
with the Japanese and Sangleyes [S: Indians or Japanese], possess
in their houses, and bring in their vessels, bronze culverins, so
excellent and well cast, that I have never seen their equal anywhere.

Rice is the main article of food in these islands. In a few of them
people gather enough of it to last them the whole year. In most of the
islands, during the greater part of the year, they live on millet,
_borona_, roasted bananas, certain roots resembling sweet potatoes
and called _oropisa_, as well as on yams [_yunames_] and _camotes_
[68] whose leaves they also eat, boiled. They eat Castilian fowls and
pork. In the islands inhabited by Moros, some goats are raised; but
there are so few of them that wherever fifteen or twenty Spaniards
arrive, no goats will be seen for the next two or three years. The
cocoa-palm offers the greatest means of sustenance to the natives,
for they obtain from it wine, fruit, oil, and vinegar. These people
eat many kinds of herbs which grow both on land and in the sea. Some
of these herbs have been used by our people as articles of food. The
scarcity of all kinds of food here is such that--with all that is
brought continually from all these islands, in