LAUFER] RELATIONS OF CHINESE TO THE PHILIPPINES 277 



They have long petticoats, underneath which they wear a sort of round frame- 

 work of two or three strips of rattan, one above another (probably identical 

 with the old-style hoopskirt). Over the coil of hair they always wear a net. 1 



Two very curious observations with regard to natural history in 

 the Philippines are recorded in a small geographical work, "'K'un 

 yii t'u shuo," published (in Chinese) by the Jesuit father Ferdinand 

 Verbiest, about 1673, m which he followed principally a geography 

 of the world written by Pantoja, an Italian Jesuit, in compliance 

 with an imperial order, half a century earlier.- The passage reads 

 as follows : 



In the southeast of Kuang-chou, Luzon is situated. This country pro- 

 duces falcons. When the king of the falcons flies up, the flock of other 

 falcons follow him to take birds and animals as booty. The king of the 

 falcons first takes the pupils out of the eyes of these animals, and afterwards 

 a covey of hawks devour their flesh. Furthermore, there is a tree there which 

 animals are not able to go near. As soon as they pass it they fall down dead 

 at its foot. 



Whether these statements have any foundation in fact, I am not 

 now prepared to say. 



After the Spaniards had been unsuccessful in establishing direct 

 commercial relations with China in the port of Amoy, the people of 

 Hai-ch'eng sent their junks to Manila, and extensive trade was car- 

 ried on between the two cities. The bulk of Chinese merchandise, 

 the chief article of which consisted in silk, pottery, and metal-ware, 

 was made over to the ports of New Spain and Peru, which thus 

 became a large market for Chinese manufactures. This trade was 

 a source of immense profit to China. The importation of silver into 

 Manila from Spanish America during two hundred and fifty years 

 of intercourse (1571— 1821) is computed by De Comyn at four hun- 

 dred million dollars; and a large share of this, perhaps half, passed 

 over to China. 3 



The entire Spanish colony subsisted until the nineteenth century 



1 This is the well-known silk net called by the Spaniards redecilla. 



"The women wear no caps, but tie a kind of network silk purse over their 

 hair, with a long tassel behind, and a ribbon tied in a bow-knot over their 

 forehead. This head-dress they call redecilla, and it is worn indiscriminately 

 by both sexes" (Richard Twiss, Travels through Portugal and Spain, in 

 1772 and 1773 [London, 1775], p. 33). 



= A. Wylie, Notes on Chinese Literature, 2d edition, p. 58. 



3 Chinese Repository, vol. vm, p. 173 ; see also G. Phillips, Two Mediaeval 

 Fuhkien Trading Ports (T'oung Pao (1895), vol. vi, p. 456). 



