Page:The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 (Volume 05).djvu/85

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1582–1583]
RELATION BY LOARCA
83

the governor—namely, Captain Graviel de Ribera, Captain Joan Maldonado, Captain Bergara, and Captain Rodrigo Alvarez. There is also a convent of Augustinian monks, one of descalced friars, and one house of the Company [of Jesus].

The city is situated midway on the shore of a large bay, about twenty leagues in circumference. The region all about this bay is fertile, and well-provisioned. The inhabitants are Moros, instructed in that faith by those of Burney. The river has a freshwater lake, about five leagues above this city; it is more than twenty leagues in circumference. The district abounds in rice and cotton. The people possess much gold in the way of trinkets, but there are no mines in this region. This same race of Moros have made settlements as far as the villages of the Batangas; their number will be told later. They have also peopled the island of Mindoro and that of Luban, but they are to be found in no other region of these islands. The inhabitants of the province of Camarines at the eastern end of this island, through whose strait arrive the ships from Nueva España, resemble the Pintados; and even those at the other and southeastern [sc. northern] end of this island, toward the Japanese, also closely resemble the Pintados—although they do not tattoo [pintan] themselves as the latter do, and bore their ears differently; for in these two provinces there is but little tattooing. The Pintados tattoo the whole body very gorgeously; but the Moros do not tattoo themselves at all, nor do they bore their ears. Unlike the men of Visaya, the Moros wear their hair short, although their women bore their ears, but in a very ugly manner. The Moros inhabit only this district of the bay of Manilla,