PAGE Group of Natives (Frontispiece.) Hot Springs at Tivi (Title-page.) Plan of Manila 10 View from my Window to face page 16 Lavanderos, or Washerwomen ,, 24 Waterfall of the Botocan 30 Village of Majajay to face page 36 Travelling by Palkee ,, 38 Crater of the Volcano at Taal 71 Indian Funeral to face page 122 Girls Bathing 134 A Gallera, or Cock-pit to face page 152 Lake of Taal, with Volcano ,, 164 Chart of Zamboanga 341 Chart of Port Iloilo and Panay 354 Chart of Port of Sual 425 Indian Song of the Philippines to face page 434
Three hundred and forty years ago, the Portuguese navigator Fernando de Magalhães, more generally known by his Spanish designation Magellanes, proposed to Carlos I. an expedition of discovery in the Eastern seas. The conditions of the contract were signed at Zaragoza, and, with a fleet of six vessels, the largest of which was only 130 tons burden, and the whole number of the crews two hundred and thirty-four men, Magalhães passed the straits which bear his name in November, 1520; in the middle of March of the following year he discovered the Mariana Islands, and a few days afterwards landed on the eastern coast of the island of Mindanao, where he was well received by the native population. He afterwards visited the island of Zebu, where, notwithstanding a menaced resistance from more than two thousand armed men, he succeeded in conciliating the king and his court, who were not only baptized into the Catholic faith, but recognised the supreme sovereignty of the crown of Spain, and took the oaths of subjection and vassalage. The king being engaged in hostilities with his neighbours, Magalhães took part therein, and died in Mactan, on the 26th April, 1521, in consequence of the wounds he received. This disaster was followed by the murder of all the leading persons of the expedition, who, being invited to a feast by their new ally, were treacherously assassinated. Guillen de Porceleto alone escaped of the twenty-six guests who formed the company. Three of the fleet had been lost before they reached the Philippines; one only returned to Spain--the Vitoria--the first that had ever made the voyage round the world, and the Spanish king conferred on her commander, Elcano, a Biscayan, an escutcheon bearing a globe, with the inscription, "Primus circumdedit me." A second expedition, also composed of six vessels and a trader, left Spain in 1524. The whole fleet miserably perished in storms and contests with the Portuguese in the Moluccas, and the trader alone returned to the Spanish possessions in New Spain.
