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. 48]

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THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

[Vol. 48

joy. In building the church of San Agustin, the
fathers were aided by thirty infidels from another village, one and one-half leguas distant, who came of
their own accord, simply because they had heard that
a church was being erected there. Fray Arzaga went
to the upper Italons, by wretched roads; he went on
foot from Pantabangan to Tablayan, the first Italon
village, about eighteen leguas. Many natives visited
him there; he desired to go farther, but was attacked
with an illness which almost proved mortal, and was
obliged to return to Pantabangan. The chief of Tablayan, with his family, accompanied him thither;
and they were ready to build him a church and house
at once, if he could have remained with them. The
missionaries asked for cattle from Manila, and the
provincial sent them two hundred and twenty. As
they grew skilled in the native dialects, they were
able to extend their labors further, and they baptized
many people from the tribes in that region, Abaca,
Italon, and Irapi; and by I704 they had formed several villages and erected five churches. The fruits
of their zeal, and those gathered by other Augustinian missionaries in the islands, are shown by a
certificate given to the governor in that year by the
provincial of the order, which reads as follows:]
"I, Fray Juan Bautista de Olarte, pensioned lecturer in sacred theology, provincial of the province
of Santissimo Nombre de Jesus of the hermits of our
father St. Augustine, do certify that, from the eighth
day of October, I702, until the twentieth of May in
this present year, the two missionary religious of the
said my order who were employed in the conversion
of the natives in the Italon and Abaca tribes, who
dwell in the mountains of Pantabangan and Caran