268 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [vol.. 50 



darins came to see the country and its condition, because the king wished to 

 break off relations with the Spaniards, and to send a large fleet before the year 

 was out, with a hundred thousand men, to take the country. 



The governor and High Court were of opinion that they should be watchful 

 in guarding the city, and that these mandarins should be handsomely treated, 

 but that they should not go outside of the city, nor be allowed to administer 

 justice (as they were beginning to do among the Sangley 1 men), at which 

 they felt some regret : they were desired to treat of their business, and then 

 return shortly to China, without the Spaniards letting themselves appear con- 

 scious or suspicious of anything else than what the mandarins gave out. The 

 mandarins had another interview with the governor, and he said to them more 

 clearly, and making rather a joke of their coming, that it caused amazement 

 that their king should have believed what that Chinaman they had got with 

 them had said ; and that even had there been in truth any such gold in the 

 Philippines, the Spaniards would let it be carried away, the country belong- 

 ing as it did to His Majesty. The mandarins replied that they understood 

 well what the governor explained to them, but that their king had bid them 

 come, and they were bound to obey him, and bring him an answer, and that, 

 having done their business, they had fulfilled their duty and would return. 

 The governor, to shorten the matter, sent the mandarins with their prisoner 

 and servants to Cabit, which is the port, two leagues from the city, where they 

 were received with many discharges of artillery, which were fired at the time 

 they disembarked, at which they showed much fear and timidity ; and when 

 they landed they asked the prisoner if that was the island of which he had 

 spoken to the king. He answered that it was. They asked him where was the 

 gold. He replied that all that they saw there was gold, and that he would 

 make it good with his king. They put other questions to him, and he always 

 made the same answers, and all was taken down in writing, in the presence 

 of some Spanish captains who were there with private interpreters ; and when 

 the mandarins had ordered a basketful of earth to be taken from the ground, 

 to carry it to the King of China ; and when they had eaten and rested, they 

 returned the same day to Manila with the prisoner. The interpreters said 

 that this prisoner had said, when hard pressed by the mandarins to answer 

 to the purpose the questions they put to them, that what he had meant to say 

 to the King of China was, that there was much gold and wealth in the pos- 

 session of the Spaniards and natives of Manila, and that if a fleet and men 

 were given him, he offered, as a man who had been in Luzon and knew the 



1 The Chinese were called by the Spaniards Sangleyes, derived from a word 

 of the Amoy-dialect, "seng-li," trade. Each Chinese had to pay a head-tax 

 "tribute," not to a Spanish official, but to his "capitan," who was a kind 

 of mayor over the parian, called capitan de sangleyes, or alcalde mayor, and 

 enjoyed a high authority among his countrymen. The wealthy Chinese 

 would pay the tribute for their poor fellowmates. It was the principle of the 

 Spaniards not to meddle with the inner affairs of the parian ; the capitan 

 represented the mediator between the Spanish authorities and the Chinese 

 population. Sangley means only "trader, merchant," not "class of mer- 

 chants," as Schott makes out in a note to Jagor's Reisen in den Philippine!! 

 (p. 272), nor "itinerant dealers," as Blumentritt (Chinesen auf den Philip- 

 pinen, p. 18) explains after Barrantes. 



