394 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



are innocent, and clear the guilty. This must be either a design or 

 malice." Our newspaper correspondents at the present time would 

 do well to follow this advice. 



The Filipinos at that time were not only oppressed by taxation and 

 corvees, but they were transported as slaves in such numbers as to 

 threaten to depopulate the islands. "There is not a ship sails from 

 Manila, whether it belong to Siam, Camboxa, or the Portugueses, &c, 

 but carries away Indians out of the islands." 



A missionary who was in earnest had no easy time of it in those 

 days in the Philippines. Perils from wild beasts, earthquakes, storms, 

 disease and shipwrecks were frequent enough to abash the stoutest heart, 

 and, according to Navarette's naive account, it appears that his for- 

 titude was due more to the presence of courage than to the absence 

 of fear. He was badly frightened by thunder and the upsetting of his 

 canoe, but he managed to absolve his companions who were floating 

 in the water, although he was in great distress that there was no one 

 to absolve himself. Although all his personal possessions were lost in 

 this accident, he rejoices that the bottle of mass wine, being nearly 

 empty, floated and was washed ashore. His first experience with an 

 important earthquake is quaintly told. "Upon St. Philip and Jacob's 

 day I was in great trouble; I was hearing confessions in the chapel, and 

 observed that the cane chair on which I sat moved. I imagined a 

 dog got under it, and bid the Indian to turn him out. He answered, 

 Father, it is no dog, but an earthquake. It increased to such a degree, 

 that leaving the penitent, I kneeled down, to beg mercy of God. I 

 thought that the end of the world had been at hand." 



One of his fellow priests was devoured by an alligator, a fate that 

 distressed Father Navarette exceedingly, since such a burial-place 

 could hardly be consecrated, but he consoled himself with the saying 

 of St. Augustine that "a good death is that which follows a good life, 

 be it of what sort it will. . . . The good F. Lewis Gutierrez having lived 

 so virtuously, said two masses that day, and being about to say the third, 

 who is there that can doubt of his good disposition?" 



As if the natural dangers of the Philippines were not enough, he 

 was molested by enemies from the lower world. At Batam (Batan?) 

 he was much disturbed by witches or fairies, who made a great noise, 

 threw stones and hurled about chairs in a terrible manner. Evidently 

 the predilection of spirits for furniture moving is not purely American, 

 as has been supposed. 



The reception given by the people of Manila to the Japanese Chris- 

 tians, who were driven out of their native land by the great 'cross- 

 trampling' persecutions, elicits the highest praise from one author; 



"Many were sick and with the leprosy, yet charity was such, that they 

 carried them home to their houses to be cured; and they that had one of 



