The weapons they use are the following: shields, breast-high, and little more than half a _vara_ [67] wide; lances, two and a half _varas_ long, with iron and steel points a third as long as the lance, and as wide as the hand. In some districts the lance-points are long and ground to a very fine edge. Cutlasses or daggers, from a half to three-fourths of a _vara_ long, are made of the same shape as the lance-points. Those people have armor consisting of cotton-lined blankets, and others of rattan. Some wear corselets, made of a very hard black wood resembling ebony. They use bows which are very strong and large, and much more powerful than those used by the English. The arrows are made of reeds, the third part consisting of a point made of the hardest wood that can be found. They are not feathered. They poison the arrows with a kind of herb, which in some regions is so deadly that a man dies on the same day when he is wounded; and, no matter how small the wound is, there is no remedy, and the flesh will surely decay unless the antidotal herb, which is found in Luzon, be first applied to the wound. Arrows are also discharged through blow-guns with the same effect, although not with the same range. The Moros, who trade with the Japanese and Sangleyes [S: Indians or Japanese], possess in their houses, and bring in their vessels, bronze culverins, so excellent and well cast, that I have never seen their equal anywhere.
Rice is the main article of food in these islands. In a few of them people gather enough of it to last them the whole year. In most of the islands, during the greater part of the year, they live on millet, _borona_, roasted bananas, certain roots resembling sweet potatoes and called _oropisa_, as well as on yams [_yuñames_] and _camotes_ [68] whose leaves they also eat, boiled. They eat Castilian fowls and pork. In the islands inhabited by Moros, some goats are raised; but there are so few of them that wherever fifteen or twenty Spaniards arrive, no goats will be seen for the next two or three years. The cocoa-palm offers the greatest means of sustenance to the natives, for they obtain from it wine, fruit, oil, and vinegar. These people eat many kinds of herbs which grow both on land and in the sea. Some of these herbs have been used by our people as articles of food. The scarcity of all kinds of food here is such that--with all that is brought continually from all these islands, in three frigates, one _patache_, and all the other native boats that could be obtained--each soldier or captain could only receive [as his rations] each week two _almudes_ of unwinnowed rice--which, when winnowed, yielded no more than three _cuartillos_. This ration was accompanied by nothing else, neither meat nor fish.