A Glimpse at Life in Batangas Early in the 1600s

The Spanish government official and historian Antonio de Morga¹ gave a fascinating glimpse of what life must have been in the Lake Bombon (Taal Lake in the present day) area in the latter years of the sixteenth and early years of the seventeenth centuries. The Seville-born de Morga was assigned to the Philippines from 1594 to 1604. He served as deputy to Governors General Luis Pérez Dasmariñas and Francisco Tello de Guzmán. Upon his reassignment to Mexico in 1609, he published a narrative² on life in the Philippine Islands which is considered among the most important sources of information about the country during the early years of Spanish colonization³.

De Morga described Lake Bonbon⁴ as 20 “leguas” or leagues from Manila, the Spanish league understood to be roughly three miles⁵. The lake, he wrote, was “not as extensive as the former (in reference to Laguna de Bay), but with a great abundance of fish.” This was a time when Taal Lake was still a marine ecosystem that was connected to Balayan Bay by a wide channel rather than the freshwater environment it has become in the present day.

He went on to describe how the natives caught the fishes by building corrals or cages made of “bejucos.” These bejucos, according to de Morga, were “slender canes or rushes, solid and very pliant and strong; these are employed for making cables for the natives’ boats, as well as other kinds of ropes.” De Morga was likely referring to a climbing vine which in the Philippines is better known in the present day as rattan⁶.

“They (the natives),” de Morga went on, “catch the fish inside these corrals, having made the enclosures fast by means of stakes.” Apart from using corrals, the natives also caught fishes using fishing nets called the “attarayas,” “esparavels” and “barrederas.”

In their annotations to Volume XVI of the series “The Philippine Islands,” Emma Helen Blair, James Alexander Robertson and Edward Gaylor described the “attaraya” as a “species of fishing net;” the “esparavel” as a round fishing net which is jerked along by the fisher through rivers and shallow places;” and the “barredera” as “a net of which the meshes are closer and tighter than those of common nets” and used for catching smaller fishes.

A final way of catching fish, de Morga wrote, was “with hand lines and hooks,” as was done elsewhere all over the world.

For food, the natives frequently had a fish “as small as the “pejerreyes,” a Mediterranean specie which grew on average no more than three inches. These natives, de Morga went on, seemed to prefer this fish, which they called the “laulau,” to larger ones. They dried and cured the “laulau” under the sun and had various styles of cooking it.

In their notes, Blair, Robertson and Gaylor cited Jose Rizal’s conjecture that the “laulau” was probably either the sardinella tawilis or the “dilis,” the Philippine anchovy⁷. The web site Philippine Foodie, however, lists a present-day fish called either “lao-lao” or “law-law,” scientific name sardinella brachysoma⁸. This marine or saltwater sardine looks remarkably like the tawilis.

The natives, de Morga wrote, ate the fish with “a green fruit, like walnuts, which they call ‘paos’.” According to Rizal, this “paos” was, in fact, the miniature mango called “paho,” scientific name mangifera altissima⁹. (Since the ‘h’ is not pronounced in Spanish, “pahos” would have indeed sounded like “paos” if said by a Spaniard.) “They also prepare “charras” in pickle brine, and all sorts of vegetables and greens, which are very appetizing.”

Blair, Robertson and Gaylor noted that the word “charra” was Spanish for a cryptogram, a plant which produces spores such as the mushroom. Filipinos will quickly recognize, however, that de Morga was describing the “achara” (or its Tagalog spelling, “atsara”), a pickle made from green papaya¹⁰.

De Morga further wrote that the natives also stored in quantities instead of the expensive saffron, a poor man’s version called the “kasubha.” According to the web site Tagalog Lang, the “kasubha” is frequently used in Philippine dishes “as a coloring agent for rice dishes¹¹.”

The natives’ practice of chewing betel or “nganga” must have made quite an impression on de Morga that he wrote lengthily about it: