VII.] THE OCEANIC MONGOLS. 257 



nominal Roman Catholics under a curious theocratic admini- 

 stration, in which the true rulers are not the civil functionaries, 

 but the priests, and especially the regular clergy 1 . One result 

 has been over three centuries of unstable political and social 

 relations, ending in the occupation of the archipelago by the 

 United States (1898). Another, with which we are here more 

 concerned, has been such a transformation of the subtle Malayan 

 character that those who have lived longest amongst the natives 

 pronounce their temperament unfathomable. Having to comply 

 outwardly with the numerous Christian observances, they seek 

 relief in two ways, first by making the most of the Catholic 

 ceremonial and turning the many feast-days of the calendar into 

 occasions of revelry and dissipation, connived at if not even 

 shared in by the padres'; secondly by secretly cherishing the old 

 beliefs and disguising their true feelings, until the opportunity 

 is presented of throwing off the mask and declaring themselves 

 in their true colours. A Franciscan friar, who had spent half 

 his life amongst them, left on record that " the native is an 

 incomprehensible phenomenon, the mainspring of whose line of 

 thought and the guiding motive of whose actions have never 

 yet been, and perhaps never will be, discovered. A native will 

 serve a master satisfactorily for years, and then suddenly abscond, 

 or commit some such hideous crime as conniving with a brigand 

 band to murder the family and pillage the house 3 ." 



In fact nobody can ever tell what a Tagal, and especially a 

 Bisayan, will do at any moment. His character is a succession of 

 surprises ; " the experience of each year brings one to form fresh 

 conclusions, and the most exact definition of such a kaleidoscopic 

 creature is, after all, hypothetical." 



After centuries of misrule, it is perhaps not surprising that no 

 kind of sympathy has been developed between the natives and the 

 whites. Mr Foreman tells us that everywhere in the Archipelago 

 he found mothers teaching their little ones to look on their white 



1 Augustinians, Dominicans, Recollects (Friars Minor of the Strict Ob- 

 servance), and Jesuits. 



' 2 In fact there is no great parade of morality on either side, nor is it any 

 reflection on a woman to have children by the priest. 



3 J. Foreman, op. cit. p. 181. 



K. 17 



