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

repeated misfortunes-was so zealous for the Catholic religion, its maintenance, and its progress that
even in times so hard he did not grudge the grant of
forty-seven missionaries for this province. He also
gave orders that they should be supplied at Sevilla
with a thousand and forty ducados, and at Mexico
with thirteen thousand pesos - a contribution of the
greatest value in those circumstances, and which
could only be dictated by a heart so Catholic as that
of this prince, who every day renewed the vow that
he had taken that he would not make friends with
the infidels, to the detriment of religion, even though
it should cost him his crown and his life. On Holy
Tuesday, March 31, in I643, forty-seven Jesuits
embarked at Acapulco; and on the second of April
mass was sung, and communion was celebrated - not
only by the missionaries, but by almost all the laymen who came in the almiranta, where was established a distribution [of their labors] as well planned
as in an Observant college. For at daybreak7 a bell
was rung for rising; there was a season of prayer;
mass was said, once on working-days and twice on
feast-days; the priests who did not say mass received
communion every day, and the lay-brothers, students,
and coadjutors two or three times a week; there was
reading at meal-times; and at the approach of night
the litanies were recited and the Salve sung. Every
night a father went to the forecastle to explain the
Christian doctrine, and ended with some brief
address. When night began, the father procurator
rang a little bell, in order that they might pray to
God for the souls in purgatory and for those who
are in mortal sin, imitating the example of St.
17 Spanish, al reir del alba, literally, "at the smile of the dawn."