ds were the learned Friar Francisco Marquez, author of a Chinese
grammar, and Friar Juan Caballero, a former missionary in China,
who, because of his own work and because his brother held high office
there, was influential in the business affairs of the Order. Through
them Lam-co settled in Binan, on the Dominican estate named after
"St. Isidore the Laborer." There, near where the Pasig river flows
out of the Laguna de Bay, Lam-co's descendants were to be tenants
until another government, not yet born, and a system unknown in his
day, should end a long series of inevitable and vexatious disputes by
buying the estate and selling it again, on terms practicable for them,
to those who worked the land.

The Filipinos were at law over boundaries and were claiming the
property that had been early and cheaply acquired by the Order as
endowment for its university and other charities. The Friars of
the Parian quarter thought to take those of their parishioners in
whom they had most confidence out of harm's way, and by the same act
secure more satisfactory tenants, for prejudice was then threatening
another indiscriminate massacre. So they settled many industrious
Chinese converts upon these farms, and flattered themselves that
their tenant troubles were ended, for these foreigners could have no
possible claim to the land. The Chinese were equally pleased to have
safer homes and an occupation which in China placed them in a social
position superior to that of a tradesman.

Domingo Lam-co was influential in building up Tubigan barrio, one
of the richest parts of the great estate. In name and appearance
it recalled the fertile plains that surrounded his native Chinchew,
"the city of springs." His neighbors were mainly Chinchew men, and
what is of more importance to this narrative, the wife whom he married
just before removing to the farm was of a good Chinchew family. She
was Inez de la Rosa and but half Domingo's age; they were married
in the Parian church by the same priest who over thirty years before
had baptized her husband.

Her father was Agustin Chinco, also of Chinchew, a rice merchant,
who had been baptized five years earlier than Lam-co. His baptismal
record suggests that he was an educated man, as already indicated,
for the name of his town proved a puzzle till a present-day Dominican
missionary from Amoy explained that it appeared to be the combined
names for Chinchew in both the common and literary Chinese, in each