Native Hut, Guam.

These dwellings differ very little, if at all, from those of the ancient Chamorros. They are to be found only on the country-side, or in small barrios, and are generally occupied only at harvest time.

SOME GOVERNORS HAD SENSE OF DUTY. 181

ries of the officers, which he sends back, giving them instead inferior goods at prices fixed by himself."

SOME GOVERNORS HAD A PROPER SENSE OF DUTY.

Not all the governors, however, were tainted with avaricious disregard for the interests of their people. Some there were who gave the natives free license to trade and stimulated enterprise amongst them in every possible manner. In one or two notable instances the executive set an example of thrift by personally cultivating a farm and vying with his neighbors. These efforts were, unfortunately, only temporary in their effect and availed little against the results of the prevailing system of government.

The condition of the Mariannes had from time to time been urged upon the attention of different governors-general of the Philippines. Some of these had secured confidential reports from special commissioners but very little was accomplished in the direction of the needed reforms in the administration and laws of the island until the time of Don Mariano Ricafort. This governor displayed a laudable concern in the affairs of Guam, and in December, 1828, issued a number of new regulations designed to improve the state of the island. At the same time Ramon de Villalobos, a captain of artillery, was despatched to the Mariannes with instruc

tions to make an exhaustive investigation and to report his findings and recommendations to the Governor-General direct.

Villalobos was in thorough sympathy with the object of his mission. He was a man of resources and more than average intellect, but political economy was clearly not his strong point.

VILLALOBOS REPORTS ON THE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS.

He entertained the ancient fallacy that "money and "wealth " are synonymous and believed that the solution to the problem might be found in the disposition of currency. "The lack of circulation of coin" he writes to the Governor-General," is the cause of the very small interior and exterior trade of this territory, which consists almost entirely of bartering certain goods for others, with the countless difficulties arising therefrom which caused the establishment of money by our ancestors.

It is evident, then, in order that the Marianne Islands may issue from so sad a plight, it is indispensable that there should be in them an abundance of money, and as long as this is not the case, whether, as in the former system, little comes in and soon goes out, or whether great sums come in and go out immediately, as will happen in the present system, the evil will always be the same or nearly the same."

One of the articles of the new regulations pro