ing set; for
the great affection with which our Lord and your Majesty are thereby
served merits it. This city petitions your Majesty to be pleased to
grant the said order license to send as many religious as you may
please from those kingdoms to these islands, in consideration of the
remarkable necessity for religious in their so distant missions--where,
because of the poor nourishment from the food which they use for the
sustenance of human life (treating themselves like actual beggars),
with the great abstinence which they observe, and where no discomforts
of sun or rain keep them back (for they go through dense forests and
over inaccessible mountains in order to reduce to our holy Catholic
faith the thousands of souls in those districts who have no knowledge
of it), many have perished in that work; for in this year alone such
number more than twelve. To some of them no companions have come for
this vineyard of the Lord, and the increase of the royal estate and
crown of your Majesty--whose Catholic person may the divine Majesty
preserve, as is needed in Christendom. Manila, April 30, 1648."

242. These letters--which are authentic, and preserved in our general
archives--are those written in the year 1648 by the city, the cabildo,
and the royal Audiencia. The order to demolish Tandag was given in the
year 47, and it was apparent to them that the fear of the [Indians']
insurrection and flight with the other motives for suspending the
execution proceeded only from that junta of the captains, and that
there was no resistance on the part of the minister. Further, it was
clearly proved in the year 55 that that information was not written
by the royal Audiencia (nor could it be, since that is a fount whence
the truth flows with so great purity); but that the secretary Was
mistaken in thus ascribing to so upright a tribunal what was only
signed by an inferior, who desired to dazzle by giving the first news
which generally arrives very much garbled.

[Section iv is a vindication of the Recollects in regard to
the demolition of the convent and church of Tandag. Juan Garcia,
alcalde-mayor and captain of the fort of that place at the time of
the demolition, declares (July 29, 1654) that "he proceeded with the
razing of the building without the religious losing their composure,
or threatening that their natives would revolt; and that neither
before nor after was there any insurrection or disquiet in Tandag or
throughout its dist