The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 38, 1674-1683: Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century
History
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 38, 1674-1683: Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century
Demarcation line of Alexander VI; Missions -- Philippines; Philippines -- Discovery and exploration; Philippines -- History -- Sources
25. During those days I gave instruction and confession and
administered the communion to all. There were no adults to baptize,
but there were children. As the heat increased, together with the
danger of the enemy and my lack of health, I resolved to return,
although not a little sorry to leave two more visitas, twenty leguas
from that place. I reached Nanhoan by passing again through the same
villages by which I had come. During that voyage I observed that,
having ascended a river and told the Indians to prepare me a place
wherein to say mass and another in which to sleep that night, they made
the whole thing in two hours, by making a covering above that place
with only the leaves of the wild palm. That night a very heavy shower
fell, but not a single drop leaked inside the shelter. Then and on
many other occasions I have noticed that each leaf was so large that
an Indian carried it by dragging it; and since they are fan-shaped,
and have channels, and are strong, they could withstand as much rain
as might fall. In another village an incident happened that caused
the Indians great fear, and myself not a little wonder. The Indians
were down at the shore, mending the boat in which I was going to
embark, when suddenly a well-known fish came out of the water, which
we call picuda, [11] and the Portuguese vicuda. It seized an Indian
so firmly by the instep that it began to drag him into the sea. His
companions hastened to his rescue and made the fish loose its prey
by means of clubs and stones, and return to the water. They brought
the young fellow to me wounded. He confessed, and was very sick. He
recovered his health afterward, but was lame in that foot. Those men
were astonished, for they had never seen or heard that that fish went
ashore, and much less that it attacked men.
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