ving the ordinance executed. Public schools
are to be seen at a half-league's distance from Manila, where
the youth are taught, but good care is taken not to teach them
Castilian. They are taught the language of the country. They have,
it is true, little prayer-books written in Castilian, and the youth
are taught now and then a few words of that language; but the chief
language that the teachers try to have them speak and read well is
the language of their own country. So, go one league from Manila,
and you can scarcely be understood if you do not know the language
of the country--a fact which I can attest, for I have experienced
it. It is still worse in the provinces. Thus are the friars the
masters of the Indians. A great abuse that follows from that is,
that the Spaniards themselves cannot get any knowledge of the
condition of things in those provinces. They would have no safety
in traveling, if they were not known to the religious, and if they
did not have with them recommendations presented by the religious
of Manila. Those recommendations are infinitely more to be preferred
than the orders which the governor could give to the alcaldes or to
those religious. The latter would probably not deign to receive them;
while the alcaldes, who themselves need to keep on good terms with
the friars, would give but faint response to the governor's orders.

Notwithstanding all the recommendations possible, it yet happens that
the friar in charge of the people among whom you travel, allows you
but rarely to speak alone with the Indians. When you speak in his
presence to any Indian who understands a little Castilian, if that
religious is displeased to have you converse too long with that native
he makes him understand, in the language of the country, not to answer
you in Castilian but in his own language. The Indian obeys him; and,
if you are not aware of that practice, you cannot guess his reason,
inasmuch as you have not understood what the religious said. I have
been assured of this by several Spaniards, among them the engineer
Don Feliciano Marques. He has several times complained to me that,
in spite of his great desire to travel in the provinces, he did not
dare resolve to do it, in view of the great difficulties that he saw
to be inseparable from such an undertaking.

We went together, he and I, several times, on the river in a
_pangue_--the boat of the country. Once we went up stream for three
leguas. No one could unders