The Indolence of the Filipino | Page 5

a transfusion of blood. "It's nothing, only the patient has
eight million indolent red corpuscles: some few white corpuscles in the
form of an agricultural colony will get us out of the trouble."
So, on all sides there are groans, gnawing of lips, clenching of fists,
many hollow words, great ignorance, a deal of talk, a lot of fear. The
patient is near his finish!

Yes, transfusion of blood, transfusion of blood! New life, new vitality!
Yes, the new white corpuscles that you are going to inject into its veins,
the new white corpuscles that were a cancer in another organism will
withstand all the depravity of the system, will withstand the
blood-lettings that it suffers every day, will have more stamina than all
the eight million red corpuscles, will cure all the disorders, all the
degeneration, all the trouble in the principal organs. Be thankful if they
do not become coagulations and produce gangrene, be thankful if they
do not reproduce the cancer!
While the patient breathes, we must not lose hope, and however late we
be, a judicious examination is never superfluous; at least the cause of
death may be known. We are not trying to put all the blame on the
physician, and still less on the patient, for we have already spoken of a
predisposition due to the climate, a reasonable and natural
predisposition, in the absence of which the race would disappear,
sacrificed to excessive labor in a tropical country.
Indolence in the Philippines is a chronic malady, but not a hereditary
one. The Filipinos have not always been what they are, witnesses
whereto are all the historians of the first years after the discovery of the
Islands.
Before the arrival of the Europeans, the Malayan Filipinos carried on
an active trade, not only among themselves but also with all the
neighboring countries. A Chinese manuscript of the 13th century,
translated by Dr. Hirth (Globus, Sept. 1889), which we will take up at
another time, speaks of China's relations with the islands, relations
purely commercial, in which mention is made of the activity and
honesty of the traders of Luzon, who took the Chinese products and
distributed them throughout all the islands, traveling for nine months,
and then returned to pay religiously even for the merchandise that the
Chinamen did not remember to have given them. The products which
they in exchange exported from the islands were crude wax, cotton,
pearls, tortoise-shell, betel-nuts, dry-goods, etc. [5]
The first thing noticed by Pigafetta, who came with Magellan in 1521,
on arriving at the first island of the Philippines, Samar, was the

courtesy and kindness of the inhabitants and their commerce. "To
honor our captain," he says, "they conducted him to their boats where
they had their merchandise, which consisted of cloves, cinnamon,
pepper, nutmegs, mace, gold and other things; and they made us
understand by gestures that such articles were to be found in the islands
to which we were going." [6]
Further on he speaks of the vessels and utensils of solid gold that he
found in Butuan, where the people worked mines. He describes the silk
dresses, the daggers with long gold hilts and scabbards of carved wood,
the gold, sets of teeth, etc. Among cereals and fruits he mentions rice,
millet, oranges, lemons, panicum, etc.
That the islands maintained relations with neighboring countries and
even with distant ones is proven by the ships from Siam, laden with
gold and slaves, that Magellan found in Cebu. These ships paid certain
duties to the King of the island. In the same year, 1521, the survivors of
Magellan's expedition met the son of the Rajah of Luzon, who, as
captain-general of the Sultan of Borneo and admiral of his fleet, had
conquered for him the great city of Lave (Sarawak?). Might this captain,
who was greatly feared by all his foes, have been the Rajah Matanda
whom the Spaniards afterwards encountered in Tondo in 1570?
In 1539 the warriors of Luzon took part in the formidable contests of
Sumatra, and under the orders of Angi Siry Timor, Rajah of Batta,
conquered and overthrew the terrible Alzadin, Sultan of Atchin,
renowned in the historical annals of the Far East. (Marsden, Hist. of
Sumatra, Chap. XX.) (7)
At that time, that sea where float the islands like a set of emeralds on a
paten of bright glass, that sea was everywhere traversed by junks,
paraus, barangays, vintas, vessels swift as shuttles, so large that they
could maintain a hundred rowers on a side (Morga;) that sea bore
everywhere commerce, industry, agriculture, by the force of the oars
moved to the sound of warlike songs (8) of the genealogies and
achievements of the Philippine divinities. (Colin, Chap. XV.) (9)
Wealth abounded in the islands. Pigafetta tells us of the abundance of

foodstuffs