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. 44]

I700-I736]

JESUIT MISSIONS

39

Cabeza de Bondoc,7 about sixty leguas from Manila,
in the bishopric of Camarines - the bishop of Nueva
Cazeres at that time being his illustrious Lordship
Don Fray Diego de Guevara, of the Order of St.
Augustine. As soon as that zealous prelate took
possession of his see, he began to ask for fathers of
the Society, in order that, commencing with the
Indians who were already peaceable who reside in
Nueva Cazeres, they might establish missions and
continue their instructions in other villages which
he intended to give them. But the Society, who
always have showed due consideration to the other
ministers in these islands, not attempting to dispossess them from their ministries - although not
always have we found them respond in like spiritthanked that illustrious prelate for his kindness,
without accepting those ministries; and in order
that he might see that [the cause of this action] was
consideration for the ministers, and not the desire to
escape from the labor, Ours consented to conduct a
mission in Bondoc, the difficulty of which, and its
results, are explained by that prelate in a letter
which he wrote to Father Torres, in which he says:
"I find that it is true, what was told to me in Manila,
when I gave that mission-field to the Society, and I
mention it with great consolation to myself; and
that is, that it was the Holy Ghost who inspired me
to give it - for I see the fruits which are steadily and
evidently being gathered therein. For in so many
ages it has been impossible to unite those villages,
and the Indians in them were regarded as irreclaim7 That is, "headland of Bondoc" (or Bondog); a mountain
1,250 feet high, at the southern end of the peninsula of Tayabas,
Luz6n. (U. S. Gazetteer of Philippines, p. 397.)