The Jesuit Colin, one of the pioneers in the Philippine missions, furnishes in his Labor evangélica (Madrid, 1663) a valuable account of the native races and their customs. He makes some attempt to trace the origin of the Malayan tribes, which he places, for most, in the islands of Sumatra and Macasar (or Celebes), and for some in the Moluccas. The Negritos came, he thinks, from Farther India, and possibly from New Guinea also. A chapter is devoted to the alphabet, mode of writing, and languages in use among the Filipínos. Colin praises their quickness and cleverness; some of them act as clerks in the public offices at Manila, and of these some are capable of taking charge of such offices; and they are competent printers. Colin discourses at length upon the native languages--admiring the richness and elegance of the Tagálog--and upon their mode of bestowing personal names. He then proceeds to describe their physical appearance, dress, ornaments, treatment of hair and teeth, and tattooing; their food, customs in eating, and modes of making wine; their songs and dances; their habits of bathing. Their deities, religious observances, and superstitions are recounted--including the worship of spirits, ancestors, idols, and phenomena of nature--and their ideas of the creation, and of the origin of man. Their mortuary customs include the employment of hired mourners, the embalming of the corpse, the killing of slaves to accompany the soul of the deceased, and a taboo imposing silence. Colin gives an account of their limited form of government (its unit the barangay); their laws, criminal and civil, with their penalties (among which appears the ordeal); the different ranks of society, and the occupations of the people; their weapons and armor; their marriages and divorces, and punishments for adultery. He also recounts their customs in adoption of children, inheritance of property, and slavery. Similar information is furnished by another Jesuit writer of note, Francisco Combés, on the native peoples of Mindanao and other southern islands, in which he spent twelve years as a missionary. He enumerates the several tribes and their distinctive characteristics; of these the Lutaos (or Orang-Laút, "men of the sea"), the chief seafaring and trading tribe, have acquired an ascendancy over the others which is comparable to that of the Iroquois among the North American Indians. Combés describes their mode of warfare, and ascribes to their aid the supremacy of Corralat over the other Moro chieftains, since their wars are of little importance except when waged by the sea-routes. These Lutaos of the coast hold in a sort of vassalage the Subanos, or river-dwellers, who are slothful, ignorant savages, treacherous and cowardly. Combés next praises "the noble and brave nation of the Dapitans," a small tribe who migrated from Bohol to Mindanao; he relates their history as a people, and why they changed their abode, and how they have always been the loyal