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Unfortunately I have had no personal intercourse with them, and what I have learned respecting them from the Christian inhabitants of Samar is too uncertain to be repeated. But it does seem certain that all these Cimarronese or their ancestors have traded with the Spaniards, and that their religion has appropriated many Catholic forms.
"With the report that those two islands had been converted to the faith, the island of Cauayan and others of Samar were led to ask for fathers to instruct them. I repaired to Cauayan, and in fifteen days I baptized, after some instructions and sermons, one hundred and seventy adults, with four or five little children.
Luzón is about the size of Ohio, and the other six islands that really matter, are in size mere little Connecticuts and Rhode Islands, and in population mere Arizonas or New Mexicos." This paragraph is no exception to the general rule that the statements of this author will not bear analysis. One of the other six islands that he says really matters is Samar. Its area is 5031 square miles.
The island next to it in number of inhabitants is Panay, which contains about three hundred and thirty thousand. Then come Zebu, Mindanao, Leyte, Samar, and Negros, varying from the above numbers down to fifty thousand. The population is increasing, and it is thought that it doubles itself in seventy years.
Samar has scarcely any other means of communication besides the navigation of the coast and rivers, the interior being roadless; and burdens have to be conveyed on the shoulders. A strong man will carry an arroba and a half daily for a distance of six leagues for a whole week.
Allied with eight hundred other little princes, he was waiting for the Russians with firmness, in order to decide, by a battle, the lot of all the ancient country of Yugorie. Samar boasted of his courage and of his strength, but he forgot prudence, for he, his army and his guards, were plunged in sleep when at the hour of dawn the Cossacks attacked his camp.
Besides the coasting trade from the provinces to Manilla, and that in the government service, there is a trade carried on by various provinces between themselves, such as conveying rice or paddy from the grain-districts to other provinces where less of it is grown, from the attention of the natives being directed to some other agricultural produce more suitable than paddy to their soil and climate, as from Antique to Mindora or Zamboanga, or from the island of Samar to that of Negros, or to Mesamis.
The last time we met in this chamber, the mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their own homes, forbidden from working or going to school. Today women are free, and are part of Afghanistan's new government. And we welcome the new Minister of Women's Affairs, Doctor Sima Samar.
After travelling three or four miles in a northerly direction, we crossed the Banauon, at that time a mere brook meandering through shingle, but in the rainy season an impetuous stream more than a hundred feet broad; and in a couple of hours we reached the iron-works, an immense shed lying in the middle of the forest, with a couple of wings at each end, in which the manager, an Englishman, who had been wrecked some years before in Samar, lived with his wife, a pretty mestiza.
The products which they in exchange exported from the islands were crude wax, cotton, pearls, tortoise-shell, betel-nuts, dry-goods, etc. The first thing noticed by Pigafetta, who came with Magellan in 1521, on arriving at the first island of the Philippines, Samar, was the courtesy and kindness of the inhabitants and their commerce.
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