ional. Looking back on their highest hill,
as they sailed away, and fearing that when they returned it might be
with but half a cargo of gold and rum and Christians, so many of them
wept for the misery of this thought that to this day the height is
known as Buat Timantangis, or Mount of Tears. In one dull season,
when the pirates were almost mutinous because of their continued
ill-fortune, it occurred to one of the captains that an image to
which the Christians prayed so earnestly and with such good effect
might do as much for him as for some other natives. In his barbarian
mind there was no absurdity in trying to persuade a gentle Virgin or
a pure-minded Saint to deliver into his hands the goods and persons
of those who knelt before their effigies. A sacred image was "good
medicine" for Spaniards and Tagalogs, and should, therefore, be
good medicine for Mahometans. Thus, he bethought him of the statue
now known as the Virgin of Antipolo, that came from Spain by way
of Mexico in charge of early missionaries. To think was to act. He
raided the village where it had been enshrined and attempted to carry
it off; but the statue had warned the faithful of its peril, and the
marauders were met and driven off by a powerful force. The Virgin of
Antipolo became one of the most influential of all the guardians of
the islands, and to this day is especially besought by mothers who
ask for her intercession on behalf of their sickly children. Holy
water taken from her shrine will cure the sufferer, and the mother
then performs a public penance in thankfulness. Before the American
arrival, with its sudden imposition of new ideas on an old society,
it was no uncommon thing to see on Good Friday a company of the
richest women in Manila, poorly attired and with bare feet, dragging
through the streets a heavy cross thirty feet in length. This was in
fulfilment of vows they had made at the shrine of Antipolo.

This Virgin of Antipolo is likewise known as Our Lady of Good Voyage
and Peace. She arrived from Mexico in a state galleon in 1626. On
the voyage she calmed a storm so quickly that the priests proclaimed
her special sanctity, and ordered her to be received in Manila with
salutes of bells and guns. While the Jesuits were building a church
for her she would often descend from her temporary altar and stand
in an antipolo tree (Astocarpus incisa). People cut pieces from this
tree for charms against disease and misfortune, until Father Sal