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.