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]

I700-1736]

JESUIT MISSIONS

47

hundred confessions; at this the illustrious prelate
(who was Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano) was
greatly pleased, and thoroughly confirmed in the
extraordinary esteem which he deigned to show the
Society.... One of the greatest hardships and
dangers experienced by the ministers of Bisayas (or
Pintados), in which are the greater part of our ministries, is that they are journeying on the water all
their lives; for, as the villages are many and the
ministers few, one father regularly takes care of two
villages, and sometimes of three or four; and as these
are in different islands, he is continually moving
from one to another, for their administration. I have
known some fathers who formerly had six or seven
visitas, and spent nearly all the year traveling from
one to another. Nevertheless, so paternal and benignant is the providence of God that it is not known
that any minister in Bisayas has been drownedwhich, considering the many hurricanes, tempests,
storms, currents, and other dangers in which every
year many perish and are drowned, seems a continual
miracle. To this it must be added that at various
times vessels have capsized in the midst of the sea,
and the fathers have fallen into the water; but God
succored them by means of the Indians, who are
excellent swimmers, or by other special methods of
His paternal providence.
[Fol. 38 b:] In this year [I628] Manila and the
adjoining villages were grievously afflicted with a
sort of epidemic pest, from which many people died
-some suddenly, but even he who lingered longest
died within twelve hours. Some attributed this pest
to the many blacks who had been brought here from
India to be sold, and who, sick from ill-usage, com