"Nor am I. It may be you do not know the sorrows of Luzon, Señor Admiral!" "It may be I do not, General Saguanaldo." "May I tell you of them, Admiral Rainey?" "I shall be pleased to know more of this land that I have just come to command until my country tells me what to do, or ends the unhappy war." "When Spaniards from Mexico first landed in Maynila, centuries ago," continued General Saguanaldo, "the simple-minded natives bowed to the white people as to gods; and they have been on their knees rendering tribute of Luzon's products ever since. It did not take the natives long to learn the nature of the Spaniards, who were inflamed by the lust of gold, both by their experience with the Incas and Aztecs in America and by the hard terms of the Spanish rulers, for we have had to pay tribute to Rome, to Spain and to Mexico--all." "I am told the people of the interior are primitive--half naked Igorrotes, or Negritos, wearing only breech clouts." "Those live chiefly in the Southern islands. The body of the people of the Northern islands are of the Malayan stock, loving liberty, but kept poor by tributes exacted. They were a people of simple ways and homely virtues. Because of being of Malayan descent they wore called Moros by the Spaniards. The two tribes of Moros, the Tagals of Northern Luzon, and the Viscayans of Southern Luzon and North Mindoro, yielded to Legaspi, to whom the king of Spain gave all the land he might conquer. He was not a hard master, leaving the olden, native chiefs in charge; but when, after this, the friars came from Spain, they began the work of oppression. When the great earthquake destroyed Maynila in 1645, and over 600 perished in the catastrophe, the natives were forced to work without pay on the arsenal at Ca Vite, and when, because of harsh treatment, they rebelled, burning towns and churches, the friars dispatched soldiers for the head of Sumoroy, the rebel. His followers sent in the head of a pig instead. The enraged friars and soldiers tortured to death the mother of Sumoroy, and afterward, when the rebel was betrayed to them, struck off his head and mounted it on a pole for the people to look upon." "Brutal, doubtless. But such things were common in those days," returned the admiral. "God pity us, they are too common in Manila in these days. The reputation of the friars was such in those days that when some of them went to Japan it was reported in that land that they were advance guards of the Spanish army, getting a foothold, and that after them would come the army to protect them. The Mikado ordered the friars out, but they defied him. Then the Japanese emperor adopted heroic measures. He gathered together 150 lepers and sent them to Maynila, saying that Japan did not allow Roman friars in that country, but, since these friars were fond of this kind of people, he sent them a ship load." "That, too, seems to have been inhuman. How were the lepers received?"