reduced the
whole if they had not been afraid of an attack from the Chinese at
Manilla, on which account they withdrew their troops from Mindanao, when
the father of the present sultan laid hold of the opportunity to gain
possession of their forts, and to expel them from the island. At present
they are most in fear of the Dutch, for which reason they have often
invited the English to make a settlement among them, believing them not
so ready to encroach as either of the other nations.

The chief trades in this city are goldsmiths, blacksmiths, carpenters,
and shipwrights, for they build good ships both for war and trade. Their
chief commodities for export are gold, bees-wax, and tobacco; the two
first being purchased from the mountaineers, and the last grows in all
parts of the island in great plenty. They exchange these commodities for
calicoes, muslins, and China silks. The Mindanao tobacco is reckoned as
good as that of Manilla, and yet ten or twelve pounds of it may be
bought for a rial, or the eighth part of a dollar. The natives are
generally afflicted with a dry itchy scurf all over their bodies, and by
scratching, the skin peels off in small white flakes, like the scales of
small fish, leaving broad white spots all over their bodies; but they
did not seem to make any great account of this disease, which is not
infectious. They are also troubled with small-pox; but their most common
diseases are fevers, agues, fluxes, and violent griping pains in their
bowels. They have many wives, but I could not learn their marriage
ceremonies.

They are governed by a sultan, who has no great revenue, yet is so
absolute that he even commands the private purse of every one at his
pleasure. The reigning sultan was between fifty and sixty years old, and
had twenty-nine concubines besides his wife or sultana. When he goes
abroad he is carried in a couch on the shoulders of four men, and is
attended by a guard of eight or ten men. His brother, named Rajah Laut,
a shrewd person of good conversation, is both chief minister and
general, and both speaks and writes Spanish very readily. In war they
use swords and lances, and every one, from the highest to the lowest,
constantly wears a _criss_ or dagger, much like a bayonet. They never
fight any pitched battles, but construct small wooden forts defended by
guns, whence the adverse parties endeavour to surprise each other in
small parties, and never give or take quarter.

We came first