266 TRAVELS IN THE EAST INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 



land witliout taking with tliem tliis plant, wMch 

 they valued more even than food, and which they 

 had been accustomed to cultivate. If, after estab- 

 lishing themselves in their new colony, they had been 

 overpowered and completely destroyed by some more 

 powerful tribe, their conquerors would probably have 

 become addicted to the same habit as readily as the 

 people of every clime and every stage of civilization 

 do now, and thus the practice would have been per- 

 petuated, though the people who introduced it per- 

 ished ages ago, and all the idols, and temples, and 

 foi*tifications they might have made, have long since 

 crumbled into dust. This inference is greatly 

 strengthened, if we consider the past and present 

 geographical distribution of maize, or Indian corn, 

 which is also a native of our continent only, and, 

 like tobacco, is now raised in every part of the ar- 

 chipelago. Unlike rice, this plant thrives on hill- 

 sides and elevated lands, and can therefore be raised 

 on all the larger islands in these seas, where there 

 are few level areas that can be readily inundated for 

 the cultivation of rice. It was also probably intro- 

 duced by the Portuguese, for Juan Graetano, a Span- 

 ish pilot, who visited Mindanao in 1642, twenty-one 

 years after the discovery of the Philippines by Ma- 

 gellan, states * that " in a certain part of that island 

 ruled by the Moors " (Arabs), " there are some small 

 artillery, and hogs, deer, buffaloes, and other animals 

 of the chase, with Castilian " (or common) " fowls, 

 rice, palms, and cocoa-nuts. There is no maize in that 



* Vide Ramusio, vol. i., p. 376, in Orawfurd's "Dictionary of the 

 India Islands." 



