The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803; explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commericial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the beginning of the nineteenth century; [Vol. 1, no. 13]

1604 —I605]

CHIRINO'S RELATION

I37

to the spring of the year one thousand six hundred
and one, that fire which the Son of God, Jesus Christ
our Lord, came to earth to light, so earnestly desiring to set the world aflame, seemed to burn with
great heat in the island of Bohol - as may be seen
by the letters of our fathers who at that time had
gone thither. The most interesting letter, as giving
the most detailed account, is, if I am not mistaken,
one from Father Valerio de Ledesma, rector of Sebu,
to the father-visitor; he writes thus:
" In this letter I shall give an account of what our
Lord was pleased to accomplish in the island of Bohol
after I departed from Sebu with Father Ximenez and
Brother Dionisio, on the twenty-ninth of May in the
year one thousand six hundred. When the council
adjourned, I set forth to visit the island of Bohol, as
your Reverence had instructed me. There I immediately undertook to unite and bring together the
people, a very difficult task, but quite necessary for
their instruction. I began with the people of Loboc,
who were dispersed and disunited; and, after many
peaceful methods and forcible arguments, God was
pleased to bring together more than a thousand souls,
gathered from the mountains and rivers - most of
them people reared in war, robbery and murder;
until then, it had been impossible to bring them down
from the hilly regions and inaccessible mountains
where they dwelt. But non est impossibile apud
Deum omne verbum. Encouraged by our good fortune in Loboc, we sought to unite the Tinguianes (or
mountaineers) of Dita and Marabago, a wild people
who had never before seen a father. We brought
them together by blandishments and mild threats,
and by other methods suited to their capacity, and it