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]

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THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

[Vol. 44

applying themselves to the cultivation [of that
field], went about among those rugged mountainsfrom which they brought out some heathens, and
others who were Christians, but who were living
like heathen, without any spiritual direction. They
baptized the heathens and instructed the Christians;
and, in order that the results might be permanent,
Ours gradually settled them in villages which they
formed; there are three of these, Bovac, Santa Cruz,
and Gasan, and formerly there was a visita in
Mahanguin. The language spoken there is generally the Tagalog, although in various places there is
a mixture of Visayan, and of some words peculiar to
the island. God chose to prove those people by a
sort of epidemic, of which many died; and the
fathers not only gave them spiritual assistance, but
provided the poor with food, and treated the sick.
This trouble obliged them to resort for aid to the
Empress of Heaven, to whom they offered a fiesta
under the title of the Immaculate Conception, during the week before Christmas, with great devotion;
and the Virgin responded to them by aiding them in
their troubles and necessities.
[Fol. 27:] In Marinduque Ours labored very
fervently to reduce the Christians to a Christian and
civilized mode of life; and among them was abolished an abuse which was deeply rooted in that
island-which was, that creditors employed their
debtors almost as if they were slaves, without the
debtor's service ever diminishing his debt. The wild
Indians were reduced to settlement; among them
were some persons who for thirty years had not
received the sacraments of penance and communion.
In the Pintados Islands there was now much longing