The First Schools.--Even in these early years there seem to have been some attempts at the education of the natives. The friars had schools in reading and writing for boys, who were also taught to serve in the church, to sing, to play the organ, the harp, guitar, and other instruments. We must remember, however, that the Filipino before the arrival of the Spaniard had a written language, and even in pre-Spanish times there must have been instruction given to the child. The type of humble school, that is found to-day in remote barrios, conducted by an old man or woman, on the floor or in the yard of a home, where the ordinary family occupations are proceeding, probably does not owe its origin to the Spaniards, but dates from a period before their arrival. The higher education established by the Spaniards appears to have been exclusively for the children of Spaniards. In 1601 the Jesuits, pioneers of the Roman Catholic orders in education, established the College of San José. Establishment of Hospitals.--The city early had notable foundations of charity. The high mortality which visited the Spaniards in these islands and the frequency of diseases early called for the establishment of institutions for the orphan and the invalid. In Morga's time there were the orphanages of San Andres and Santa Potenciana. There was the Royal Hospital, in charge of three Franciscans, which burned in the conflagration of 1603, but was reconstructed. There was also a Hospital of Mercy, in charge of Sisters of Charity from Lisbon and the Portuguese possessions of India. Close by the Monastery of Saint Francis stood then, where it stands to-day, the hospital for natives, San Juan de Dios. It was of royal patronage, but founded by a friar of the Franciscan order, Juan Clemente. "Here," says Morga, "are cured a great number of natives of all kinds of sicknesses, with much charity and care. It has a good house and offices of stone, and is administered by the barefooted religious of Saint Francis. Three priests are there and four lay-brethren of exemplary life, who, with the doctors, surgeons, and apothecaries, are so dexterous and skilled that they work with their hands marvelous cures, both in medicine and surgery." [49] Mortality among the Spaniards.--Mortality in the Philippines in these years of conquest was frightfully high. The waste of life in her colonial adventures, indeed, drained Spain of her best and most vigorous manhood. In the famous old English collection of voyages, published by Hakluyt in 1598, there is printed a captured Spanish letter of the famous sea-captain, Sebastian Biscaino, on the Philippine trade. Biscaino grieves over the loss of life which had accompanied the conquest of the Philippines, and the treacherous climate of the tropics. "The country is very unwholesome for us Spaniards. For within these 20 years, of 14,000 which have gone to the Philippines, there are 13,000 of them dead, and not past 1,000 of them left alive." [50]