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]

I604-1605]

CHIRINO'S RELATION

209

he found the whole people busied in their grainfields. Accordingly, he went farther to some
small islands lying adjacent in the broad sea, where
the people had already gathered in their rice crops.
In one of them, called Batac, he made a short stay,
and the people from all the neighboring islands assembled there to celebrate the Christmas festivals,
and attend to the things pertaining to their salvation. When they were about to return home, advice
was given to the women in other matters relating to
civilized ways and to modesty - especially in regard
to their mode of dress, which, on account of their
being a rough and barbarous people, was not quite
decent; but after they were taught, they adorned
and covered themselves more modestly. They had
built, in anticipation of the father's coming, a church
and house and even a confessional for the women.
After a goodly number had been made Christians,
the father returned to the principal station, which
is Catubig; and at his departure these poor creatures
besought him earnestly not to leave them so forsaken,
now that he was going away, but to teach some
Christian the form and ceremony, so that he could
baptize them in cases of necessity. The father did
so, and left them with much grief in his heart. But
these pains, which in truth are more intense than
those of childbirth, we often suffer there, since the
harvest is so great and the laborers are so few. So
many were the baptisms in Catubig that the father,
fearing lest the blessed oil and chrism would give
out, carried the water of baptism from place to place,
in order not to prepare it so often.26
26 t" Water blessed in the font on Holy Saturday and the vigil
of Pentecost, which must be used at least in solemn baptism....