5. In their books the Chinese have mentioned the island of Manila, which they call Liu Sung. [15] They say that it is a land where gold abounds, and in that they say truly and rightly. The provinces of Pangasinan and Ilocos are more remarkable in this regard than any other. Rice is abundant and good. There is the rice of forty days, so that it is sown, grows, and is dried, harvested, and eaten in forty days--a very remarkable thing. There is rice of two months, of three, and of five. There are also fine lands for wheat, if there were any system and method in sowing it. If any Indians sow it, it is levied upon in the king's name; and consequently, the Indians do not devote themselves to that work. In my time, wheat was worth ninety pesos per fanega. If they would sow it in that country, it would be very cheap. The larger cattle are too cheap, so greatly have they multiplied. A large and strong bull is worth four pesos, according to the established price. Goats are not wanting, and there are innumerable deer and very many buffaloes. The males of the buffaloes have been crossed with cows, and the result has been a third and very strange-appearing species. There are ducks, chickens, sugar, wax, and wood that is called here Brazil-wood; there is so much of this that it costs only the cutting. Excellent rattan is found in the greatest abundance, and more than enough cotton to clothe the people of the country. Wines and brandy, made from nipa and other materials, are not wanting, nor people to drink them. There are many delicious fruits. The guayava, [16] which has spread so fast that it is destroying the pasturage, is the finest [kind of fruit]--raw, cooked, prepared in preserves, and in jelly; it is good in all forms. The reason why it has multiplied to such an extent is that crows and birds eat of it and afterward drop the stones to the ground, and wherever the latter fall they take root. The Portuguese told me that the sandalwood of the island of Timor had increased in that way, without any other labor, as I have already written. That tree also bears a small fruit which the birds eat, and whose stones they reject which immediately take root without any other cultivation being necessary. There are macupas, bilimbins, pahos, santols, and papaws, [17] any of which can compete with the best fruit here. There is also the nangca, [18] which is the best fruit in the world. Some of them weigh over forty libras. They are delicious, and the nuts or seeds which each mouthful encloses in itself are very savory, raw or roasted. This fruit grows on the trunk of the tree, and on the large branches, but not on the small ones, as it would be impossible for their weight to be borne there. That tree has no flower. Father Kirquero [19] greatly admired that fruit, and the fruit of the pineapple (or ananasses, as the Portuguese call them). He says that they have those fruits in China, but he was deceived in that regard; they grow in that part of the world, but not