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Ineffectual expeditions against pirates, and continual disputes between the clerical and secular authorities, form the principal incidents. The Spanish writers are full of descriptions of the wretched state of society then existing, which it is unnecessary to repeat here. In the earliest time the Dutch had engaged occasionally in attacks on the Bisayas.
The wholesale purchases are made in Luzon and the adjacent islands in fardos, by "colleccion," that is, direct through the finance officials, who have the management of the plants from the sowing; but in the Bisayas by acopio; that is, the Government officials buy up the tobacco tendered by the growers or speculators by the cwt.
They have very little skill in boat-making. In the Philippine Islands a system of agriculture similar to that of the Muruts is widely practised; and some of the tribes, though their culture has been largely influenced by Spanish civilisation, seem to be of the same stock as the Muruts; thus the Tagals of Borneo are not improbably a section of the people known as Tagalas in the Philippines, and the Bisayas of Borneo probably bear the same relation to the Visayas of the Philippines.
[Extortions of encomenderos.] The original holders of feudal tenures amassed considerable booty therefrom. Zuñiga relates that as early as the time of Lavezares, who was provisional governor between 1572 and 1575, he visited the Bisayas and checked the covetousness of the encomenderos, so that at least during his rule they relaxed their system of extortion. Towards the end of Sande's government (1575-80) a furious quarrel broke out between the priests and the encomenderos; the first preached against the oppression of the latter, and memorialized Philip
Pintados, or Bisayas, according to a native word denoting the same, must be the inhabitants of the islands between Luzon and Mindanao, and must have been so named by the Spaniards from their practice of tattooing themselves. From this they appear to have tattooed themselves in the manner of the Papuas, by burning in spots and stripes into the skin.
The alcaldes were said to influence the commanders of the cruisers, and the latter to overreach the alcaldes; but both usually made common cause. According to the Diario de Manila, March 14, 1866, piracy on the seas had diminished, but had not ceased. Paragua, Calamianes, Mindoro, Mindanao, and the Bisayas still suffer from it.
In 1814 this stupid arrangement was first put an end to; and forthwith the tobacco supplies from the Bisayas increased, through the competition of the private dealers, who then, for the first time, had the power of purchase; and from 1839 the planters were empowered to obtain higher prices than those afforded by the greedy monopolizing magistrates.
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