80 REMARKS AND OPINIONS. 



But the Christian descendants of those who 

 escaped the ruin of their race, and survived their 

 independence, have lost all the peculiarities of their 

 ancestors, all their arts, and, for the most part, for- 

 gotten their language. 



Gobien appears to be the first who made the 

 ridiculous assertion, that the inhabitants of the 

 Mariana islands were first made acquainted with fire 

 by Europeans. The historians of Manilla repeat 

 this circumstance, and Velarde applies to them the 

 Nulla Getis to to gens truculentior orbe ; and we 

 are astonished to see able authors, from whom a 

 sounder judgment might have been expected, 

 lightly led into unpardonable errors. * 



This people belongs to the family who, related 

 by character, customs, and arts, and connected 

 by commerce and navigation, inhabit the islands 



* Burney shows here, too, how the most solid learning is 

 with him in good hands, I.e. p. 312. How could the inha- 

 bitants of the islands, on which many volcanoes burn, be 

 ignorant of fire ? Pigafetta enumerates, among their food, the 

 flesh of birds, without remarking that it was eaten raw. We 

 observe, en passant, that the sow, which, according to this voy- 

 age, Magellan had killed on his arrival at Huna-rura, in the 

 Philippine islands, has probably caused the unauthenticated asser- 

 tion, that Magellan had taken with him hogs from the Ladrones. 

 Of this, however, Massimiliano Transilvano, as well as the Breve 

 Narratione di un Portughese, (Ramusio,) are silent ; and Her- 

 rera, Historia de los Indios, torn. ii. cap. 3., does not mention it. 

 All the authorities agree, that on taking possession of them, 

 there were no four-footed animals. Herrera, 1. c, ascribes 

 to these islands, rice, (^ poco arroz,) evidently without any 

 reason. 



