128 USEFUL PLANTS OF GUAM. 
to his assistant, and 48 pesos for the minor expenses attending the 
education of ** poor children.’ 
The education dispensed was of the most elementary nature. At 
times it consisted of a course in ‘music and primary letters” and in 
giving toa few boys suflicient instruction to serve as acolytes for the 
priests, Many of the governors disapproved of the higher education 
of the natives. Don Francisco Villalobos suggested to the captain- 
general that the college be abolished and that the funds be : applied to 
“general education, to repairs and ornaments of the churches, and to 
the improvement of government buildings and priests’ residences on 
the island.” He also recommended that the schoolhouse be converted 
into an inn or guest house for the entertainment of strangers, and that 
the fixed income therefrom be applied to government purposes. 
The vupils, it was asserted, were injured rather than benefited by 
their ed ‘cation and rendered unfit for future usefulness. On entering 
h- college they soon forgot the misery and poy erty of their homes, 
and during their stay of five or six years became accustomed to good 
food, clothing, and lodging, without learning any trade by which they 
might afterwards earn a livi ingand without forming habits of industry. 
The discipline was declared to be bad, and eve rvthing tended to make 
the students incompetent to carn their living, discontented with their 
lot, and, the more quick-witted among them, thorns in the side of the 
governor, who was often obliged to impose ‘correctional punish- 
ments” upon them.” 
Another governor, Don Felipe de la Corte, recommended that the 
education of the natives be limited to the merest. rudiments, to avoid 
their atequiring a superficial knowledge of the more advanced branches 
of learning, which would lead to pretensions on their part to be men 
of education. Such persons, he declared, gave more trouble to the 
authorities than any other class und were a distur hing element among 
the natives. In spite of Don Felipe’s recommendation the captain- 
general at Manila did not see fit to divert the fund from its original 
object. 
From these and other extracts from the archives it is e sasily seen 
that the Spanish governors of the island of Guam discour: aged the 
higher education of the natives not because they thought them inca- 
pable of receiving it, but because they believed they would be more 
tractable if they remained ignorant. 
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS AND CUSTOMS. 
Marriace.—The natives marry at a comparatively early age, and 
the young couple, though they may continue to live with the f family 
of the bride or of the groom in the town residence, usually enter into 
“ Don Francisco Villalobos, letters to the captain-general of the I Philippines, inedited, 
November 16, 1831, and February 9, 1833. 
