Don Francisco (Don Paco) Mascuñana settled farther south in San Carlos, a coastal pueblo that was relatively more developed and already populated than the neighboring pueblos such as Toboso and Escalante. The land was fertile and well provisioned for large-scale sugarcane plantations as there was still presence of wide arable virgin land. The main industry in the area was farming but its methods were still primitive using carabao-drawn wooden plows. Aside from the Mascuñanas’ there were few numbers of mestizos, some of them Chinese and Spanish origins, who were already engaged in small-scale farming and trade. Don Paco’swife, Gliceria Miranda was a mestiza of Spanish-Chinese descent whose kin were from Cebu and Negros.
