. Not to go into certain
details, wearisome beyond measure, I shall only say, that even now
were it not for the direct intervention of the Spanish priest in
the collection of the cedula or tribute, the treasury would lose
some hundreds of thousands of pesos. Many are the parish priests,
especially in the Bisayas, who oblige the heads of barangay to deliver
at the convent the result of the collection; for if they did not do so,
not one-half of what the town should furnish would be deposited in the
royal treasury. While the writer of these lines was in a certain town
of Iloilo a few years ago, the parish priest had in his convent the
sum of 15,000 pesos, belonging to the collection of the tribute. He
petitioned the corresponding authority for an armed force to conduct
the revenues of the state safely to the royal treasury. That authority
considered it suitable to answer him that it was not part of the
duty of the military force to act as a custodian for the conveyance
of the state revenue....--_Coco_.

[108] Fray Juan de Villamayor took his vows in the Augustinian convent
of Toledo, and was conventual and prior of Halaud in 1590 and 1593
respectively. He ministered at Aclan in 1596, at Jaro in 1598, at
Sibucao in 1599, at Potol in 1603, and finally at Aclan, 1605-1608,
where he died the latter year. See Perez's _Catalogo_, p. 38.

[109] The lay brother Fray Andres Garcia was assistant for some years
at the mission at Aclan. He died in 1623. See Perez's _Catalogo_,
p. 75.

[110] The island of Bantayan (province of Cebu) has now a population
of 18,325, all civilized. See Bulletin No. I, _ut supra._

[111] And of pearls.--_Coco_.

[112] Antique; in 1893 it was a province with twenty-one
villages and a population of 119,322, under the charge of sixteen
Augustinians.--_Coco_.

Its present population is 134,166, of whom 131,245 are civilized and
2,921 wild. The reports of population for several other years are as
follows: 1818, 50,597; 1840, 48,333; 1850, 84,570; 1870, 108,855;
1887, 115,434. See Bulletin No. 1 (_ut supra_) and _U.S. Gazetteer
of the Philippine Islands._

[113] Father Fray Nicolas Melo, or Moran, Portuguese by birth, and
the lay-brother Fray Nicolas de San Agustin, a Japanese, were sent
on an important commission to Europe in 1597. They went to Malacca,
and thence to Goa--where, not finding facilities to embark, they
determined to make the journey by land. They journeyed toward Persia,
in company with