96 
ROBINSON. 
this way. The origin of our other classes of hats is undoubtedly due to 
Spanish influence. , 
Magellan presented the king of Cebu with a velvet cap, and caps of this type 
were subsequently imported. In 1565, for example, three dozen were requisitioned 
from Nueva Espana, for barter at Cebu. 8 By that year, the wearing of other 
hats must already have been on the increase. This seems to be so, because during 
Legaspi’s visit to Cebu, most of the women in a procession “wore palm-leaf hats.” * 
By 1609, we have the statement, with an implied backward reference, “since 
the Spaniards came to the country many Indians * * * wear * * * 
hats.” 10 Colin, in 1663, while giving a comparative account of conditions before 
their coming and as they were in his day, says: 11 “the men adorned the head 
with only cendal or long and narrow thin cloth * * * now * * * the 
men' wear hats.” 
Even at an early date, some at least of the hats were highly esteemed, and 
probably of considerable value. As evidence of this, there may be cited the 
following passage, taken from the account of a Spanish embassy, sent from the 
Philippines to Japan, in 1593-1597. 12 “His intention is to take a certain rich 
present with him. in order that he may say in Japan that he brings recognition. 
* * * He says also that when Don Agustin, a Tagal of Tondo, and Don 
Baltazar, a Japanese, conspired together to seize Manila, Don Agustin gave the 
latter a hat.” 
The following passage occurs in San Agustin’s account of the native peoples 
and their customs, 13 1738-1744. “In olden times the men wore their heads 
covered or wrapped about with a narrow strip of cotton or linen. * * ■* Now 
they wear neat white and black hats, which are woven from various materials 
which they gather in the field.” He and Velarde are elsewhere more definite. 
“From palm leaves, rattan, and nito, they make hats, and petates or rugs, which 
are very handsome, and wrought with various kinds of flowers or figures.” At 
Caragha, now Caraga, in northern Mindanao, in 1662, the women were said 14 
to “use curiously woven hats of palm leaves,” and the hats, or rather salacots, 
of that locality are even to-day as “curious” as those of any locality in the 
Islands, although the main material is bamboo and it is a distinct stretching 
of the meaning of the word to call them woven. 
Mercado was a mestizo priest, who spent his entire life in the provinces near 
Manila, dying in 1698. He investigated, after the fashion of the time, the 
medical and other plants of the country, but his manuscript remained unpublished 
for about two centuries. He says of nito (Lygodium) , 15 “Sirven para hacer 
petaquillas para el buyo y otras curiosidades, como sombreros.” 
Viana, in 1765, advocating a change in the route of ships from the Philippines, 
writes: 16 “The said ships * * * could carry some products of the islands 
* * * such as very fine petates or mats, hats of the same kind and cotton.” 
There may therefore have been by that time a considerable manufacture of hats 
8 B. & R. 2: 191. 
9 B. & R. 2: 140. 
10 B. & R. 16: 77. 
11 B. & R. 40: 61, 63. 
12 B. & R. 9: 48, 49. 
13 B. & R. 40: 285, 291. 
14 B. & R. 21: 202. 
15 Blanco Flora de Filipinas ed. 3, 4 (1880) 50. 
16 B. & R. 48: 279. 
