ic and 570 private houses seriously damaged. The
greater structures made heaps of fragments. That these calamities have
taught the people lessons in building is apparent in every house, but
one wonders that they have not taken even greater precautions. The
forgetfulness of earthquake experiences in countries where they are
familiar, always amazes those unaccustomed to the awful agitations
and troubled with the anticipations of imagination. However, there
never has been in the Philippines structural changes of the earth
as great as in the center of the United States in the huge fissures
opened and remaining lakes in the New Madrid convulsions.

In a surprising extent the Spanish government in the Philippines
has been in the hands of the priests, especially the orders of the
church. In the early centuries there was less cruel oppression than
in Mexico and Peru. And yet there is in the old records a free-handed
way of referring to killing people that shows a somewhat sanguinary
state of society even including good citizens.

Blas Ruys de Herman Gonzales wrote to Dr. Morga from one of his
expeditions, addressing his friend:

"To Dr. Antonio de Morga, Lieutenant of the Governor of the
Filipine isles of Luzon, in the city of Manila, whom may our Lord
preserve. From Camboia." This was in Cochin China, one of the Kings
being in trouble, called upon Gonzales, who sympathized with him and
wrote of the ceremony in which he assisted: "I came at his bidding,
and he related to me how those people wished to kill him and deprive
him of the kingdom, that I might give him a remedy. The Mambaray was
the person who governed the kingdom, and as the king was a youth and
yielded to wine, he made little account of him and thought to be king
himself. At last I and the Spaniards killed him, and after that they
caught his sons and killed them. After that the capture of the Malay
Cancona was undertaken, and he was killed, and there was security
from this danger by means of the Spaniards. We then returned to the
war, and I learned that another grandee, who was head of a province,
wished to rise up, and go over to the side of Chupinanon; I seized
him and killed him; putting him on his trial. With all this the
King and kingdom loved us very much, and that province was pacified,
and returned to the King. At this time a vessel arrived from Siam,
which was going with an embassy to Manila, and put in here. There
came in it Padre Fray Pedro Custodio. T