The gates of Manila were opened, and the governor, in person hastened to give aid, with a great number of people, who could check the fire so that it should not cross over to the other part of Binondoc and Tondo. What was more, he prevented the robberies which in such emergencies are committed by some soldiers and wicked people, who on such occasions are worse than the fire, as has been found by experience at various times; for in times of drouth fires are very frequent in the suburbs of Manila, most of them being occasioned by fire set by these soulless incendiaries, who find their profit in such destruction. To this local calamity at La Estacada succeeded another affliction, which was general through the greater part of these islands; this was a plague of locusts, one of the worst which has been seen in them, for the locusts were so many that in dense and opaque clouds they darkened the sun, and covered the ground on which they settled. These insects ravaged the grain-fields, and left the meadows scorched; and even the trees and canebrakes they stripped of the green leaves. These locusts were so voracious that they not only laid waste every kind of herbage and verdure, but they entered the houses, and gnawed and pierced with holes every kind of cloth; and those who flapped sheets and coverlets at the locusts to drive them away--as is usually done at other times in the invasions of this pest, with some effect--on this occasion found that the only result was to ruin those articles, for the locusts ate them, and destroyed them with their poisonous jaws. Thereupon the people began to feel the loss which ensued from this calamity, in the great scarcity and want of provisions--so great that a cabán of rice (which is half a fanega) came to be worth two pesos and a half, and in some places three pesos. (Nor has the poverty been less which is being experienced while I am writing this, on account of the great plague of locusts which occurred in the past year of 1717 and the present one.) And it can be said that the poor died in great numbers, not so much because the rice (which is the general food of the regions) cost so much, as through their lack of forethought, and of money with which to buy rice; and because there was so excessive a number of beggars--some through necessity, and others through laziness and dislike for work--that it was impossible to relieve them; for when there is but little to give it is not possible to divide it so that all shall be sufficiently cared for.