Next we present the famous letter on this subject by Gaspar de San Agustín (June 8, 1720); our text is collated with other versions, and freely annotated from these, and from comments made by Delgado and Mas on San Agustín's statements. San Agustín, who had spent forty years among the Filipinos, begins by expatiating on the great difficulty of comprehending the native character, which is inscrutable--"not in the individuals, but in the race." They are fickle and false, also of a cold temperament, and malicious, dull, and lazy--due to "the influence of the moon." They are ungrateful, lazy, rude and impertinent, arrogant, and generally disagreeable. San Agustín relates many of their peculiar traits, and incidents showing these, to much disparagement of the natives. He berates their ignorance and superstition, their faults of character, their conduct toward the Spaniards, their lack of religious devotion, etc.--exempting, however, from these censures in the main the Pampangos, who are more noble, brave, and honorable, and are "the Castilians of these same Indians;" and the women, who are devout, modest, and moral (although he ascribes this to the subjection in which they are held by the men, and the necessity for the women to support not only their children but their husbands). After all these complaints, San Agustín returns to his former position, that it is impossible to understand the nature of the Filipinos; and all that he has related is but approximate and tentative. For this reason, it is necessary (especially for religious) to know how to conduct oneself with them. He therefore makes various suggestions for enabling their spiritual fathers to guide them discreetly and successfully. No less interesting than his account of the people are the comments made thereon by the Jesuit Delgado (himself long a missionary in the islands), and the Spanish official Mas, who spent some time there and visited many of the islands. The former refutes many of San Agustín's statements, sometimes very sharply; the latter often supports them, but sometimes he finds them in contradiction to what he himself has observed. Fray Gaspar's letter impresses the reader, at first, as being the complaint of an irritable and querulous old man (he wrote it at the age of seventy); but another cause for his mental attitude may be found toward the end of his letter, where he argues against the proposed ordination of Filipino natives as priests--a plan which aroused great opposition from the religious orders. The MS. which we use contains a sort of appendix to San Agustín's letter in the shape of citations from the noted Jesuit writer Murillo Velarde. These are evidently adduced in support of San Agustin's position, and disparage the character of the Indians in vigorous terms. Finally, we present a chapter from Delgado's Historia de Filipinas making further comment on San Agustín's letter, and defending the natives from the latter's aspersions; he refutes many