o obedience,
for the eloquence of the religious can do nothing. Such an emergency
occurred in my time, at the end of 1767. Several settlements about the
large lake revolted, and carried their boldness even to the point of
killing the friar curas. It was necessary to send a cavalry officer at
the head of a detachment of fifteen men, to make those rebels submit.

These disorders always happened when the provinces of the Philippines
had at their head, to govern them, only an alcalde and the friars. I
believe that it would be necessary for the court to have four or five
hundred troops (or at least a sufficient number), for the sole purpose
of scattering them through those different provinces, in posts of only
fifteen or twenty men. That number, besides being but inconsiderable
and of little expense, would be sufficient to maintain the Indians
in their duty, since only fifteen men have appeased the disturbance
in a considerable district near the lake.

[The following, also from Le Gentil (pp. 59-63), treats in part of
the ecclesiastical estate.]

Ninth Article

Of the genius of the inhabitants of the Philippines, and the peculiar
punishments inflicted by the religious on the women who do not attend
mass on the prescribed days.

This article is the fourteenth chapter of the Franciscan religious
from whom I have extracted a portion of my details. But I believe
that it will be important to reproduce here in exact translation the
text of the original.

[The extract is from San Antonio's _Chronicas_, vol. i, part of chapter
xl of book i; it is not, however, an exact translation, but in part
a synopsis. The meaning is not distorted; but we have preferred to
translate this portion of the chapter, entitled in San Antonio "Of
the characteristics and genius of the Filipino Indians," directly from
the Spanish, reproducing exactly the matter synopsized by Le Gentil.]

"412. Among the gifts with which man is adorned, those of the
soul are the most noble and most important--for instance, the
characteristics or bent, and the skill or understanding in the
exercise of a man's reasonings and mental operations. And since
the soul is so dependent on the body and on its sensations, the
spiritual operations are tempered by the bodily characteristics. These
characteristics (in the judgment of Galen, Plato, Aristotle, and
Hippocrates), are such or such, according to the varying climate of the
[different] regions. Consequently, the di