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

that one may not faint in the ministry. All this is
the effect of solitude, and of one's nature becoming
suffocated under the continual annoyances and
troubles which administration [of these missions]
involves. Nor is it easy to explain, without actual
eyewitness, the various modes of suffering which
here present themselves, so unusual, extraordinary,
and acute. In these workshops patience is wrought,
purified, and assayed until it becomes heroic, with
the heavy hammer of mortifications, troubles, and
petty details, which chance each day arranges and
disarranges.
To this must be added the continual dread of invasions by the Moros, of whose barbarous and inhuman
cruelty alone the missionaries are assured, fleeing to
the mountains amid thorns, woods, miry places, and
precipices. On the coast from Yligan to Samboangan, I saw with great sorrow various churches and
villages that had been burned. The ministers saw
themselves in the greatest danger of being captured
or slain, and in their flight they suffered unspeakable hardships. Nor are dangers wanting among
even the Indians themselves; they were very near
putting to death by treachery Father Joseph Lamberti at Hagna, and Father Gaspar de Morales at
Ynabangan, in the year I746. For others they have
laid ambushes, others have been wounded, and even
some have been injured by witchcraft - so that in all
directions there is danger.
Finally, let him who wishes to survey the missions
which the Society has in these islands, open the map
of Asia; and in the western part, in the ]Egean
archipelago, he will see the Apostle of the Gentiles
journeying from Jerusalem to Tarsus, to Ephesus, to