From the West, long before the Spanish conquest, there was a great influx of Malays, who settled on the shores and the lowlands and drove the first settlers (_Aetas_) to the mountains. Central Luzon and the Lake environs being already occupied, they spread all over the vacant lands and adjacent islands south of Luzon. These expeditions from Malesia were probably accompanied by Mahometan propagandists, who had imparted to the Malays some notions, more or less crude, of their religion and culture, for at the time of Legaspi's arrival in Manila we find he had to deal with two chiefs, or petty kings, both assuming the Indian title of _Rajah_, whilst one of them had the Mahometan Arabic name of Soliman. Hitherto the _Tao ilog,_ or Tagalog, had not descended the Pasig River so far as Manila, and the religious rites of the Tondo-Manila people must have appeared to Legaspi similar to the Mahometan rites, [74] for in several of his despatches to his royal master he speaks of these people as _Moros_. All the dialects spoken by the Filipinos of Malay and Japanese descent have their root in the pure Malay language. After the expulsion of all the adult male Japanese Lake settlers in the 17th century, it is feasible to suppose that the language of the males who took their place in the Lake district and intermarried there, should prevail over the idiom of the primitive settlers, and possibly this amalgamation of speech accounts for the difference between the Tagalog dialect and others of these islands peopled by Malays. The Malay immigration must have taken place several generations prior to the coming of the Spaniards, for at that period the lowland occupants were already divided into peoples speaking different dialects and distinguishing themselves by groups whose names seem to be associated with the districts they inhabited, such as Pampanga, Iloco, and Cagayan; these denominations are probably derived from some natural condition, such as _Pampang_, meaning a river embankment, _Ilog_, a river, _Cauayan_, a bamboo, etc. In a separate chapter (x.) the reputed origin of the Mahometans of the southern islands is alluded to. They are also believed to be immigrants from the West, and at the time of the conquest recent traditions which came to the knowledge of the Spaniards, and were recorded by them, prove that commercial relations existed between Borneo and Manila. There is a tradition [75] also of an attempted conquest of Luzon by a Borneo chief named Lacasama, about 250 years before the Spanish advent; but apparently the expedition came to grief near Luzon, off an island supposed by some to be Masbate.