would still be left us another reason to explain the attack of the
evil. The abandonment of the fields by their cultivators, whom the
wars and piratical attacks dragged from their homes was sufficient
to reduce to nothing the hard labor of so many generations. In the
Philippines abandon for a year the land most beautifully tended and
you will see how you will have to begin all over again: the rain will
wipe out the furrows, the floods will drown the seeds, plants and
bushes will grow up everywhere, and on seeing so much useless labor
the hand will drop the hoe, the laborer will desert his plow. Isn't
there left the fine life of the pirate?

Thus is understood that sad discouragement which we find in the friar
writers of the 17th century, speaking of once very fertile plains
submerged, of provinces and towns depopulated, of products that
have disappeared from trade, of leading families exterminated. These
pages resemble a sad and monotonous scene in the night after a lively
day. Of Cagayan Padre San Agustin speaks with mournful brevity: "A
great deal of cotton, of which they made good cloth that the Chinese
and Japanese every year bought and carried away." In the historian's
time, the industry and the trade had come to an end!

It seems that these are causes more thorn sufficient to breed indolence
even in the midst of beehive. Thus is explained why, after thirty-two
years of the system, the circumspect and prudent Morga said that the
natives "have forgotten much about farming, raising poultry, stock
and cotton, and weaving cloth, as they used to do in their paganism
and FOR A LONG TIME AFTER THE COUNTRY HAD BEEN CONQUERED!"

Still they struggled a long time against indolence, yes: but their
enemies were so numerous that at last they gave up!