Third.--Legaspi was extremely fortunate in his captains, who included such old campaigners as the field-marshal Martin de Goiti, who had been to the Philippines before with Villalobos, and such gallant youths as Salcedo, one of the most attractive military figures in all Spanish history. Fourth.--In considering this Spanish conquest, we must understand that the islands were far more sparsely inhabited than they are to-day. The Bisayan islands, the rich Camarines, the island of Luzon, had, in Legaspi's time, only a small fraction of their present great populations. This population was not only small, but it was also extremely disunited. Not only were the great tribes separated by the differences of language, but, as we have already seen, each tiny community was practically independent, and the power of a dato very limited. There were no great princes, with large forces of fighting retainers whom they could call to arms, such as the Portuguese had encountered among the Malays south in the Moluccas. Fifth.--But certainly one of the greatest factors in the yielding of the Filipino to the Spaniard was the preaching of the missionary friars. No man is so strong with an unenlightened and barbarous race as he who claims power from God. And the preaching of the Catholic faith, with its impressive and dramatic services, its holy sacraments, its power to arrest the attention and to admit at once the rude mind into the circle of its ministry, won the heart of the Filipino. Without doubt he was ready and eager for a loftier and truer religious belief and ceremonial. There was no powerful native priesthood to oppose the introduction of Christianity. The preaching of the faith and the baptism of converts proceeded almost as rapidly as the marching of Salcedo's soldiers. The Dangers of the Spanish Occupation.--Such conditions assured the success of the Spanish occupation, provided the small colony could be protected from outside attacks. But even from the beginning the position of this little band of conquerors was perilous. Their numbers were small and of necessity much scattered, and their only source of succor lay thousands of miles away, across the greatest body of water on the earth, in a land itself a colony newly wrested from the hand of the Indian. Across the narrow waters of the China Sea, only a few days' distant, even in the slow-sailing junks, lay the teeming shores of the most populous country in the world, in those days not averse to foreign conquest.