nd the increase of
the faithful from the coming of the Spaniards until the present time.

The number of inhabitants whom the Spaniards encountered at their
arrival in these islands is not known with exactness, but it is
calculated by some historians as below two millions; and it will not
be imprudent to affirm that they all scarcely reached one and one-half
millions--whether idolaters, who admitted the plurality of gods; or
Moros, who although they professed (as they still profess) the unity
of God, did not believe (as they still do not believe) the divinity
of Jesus Christ, but who have, on the contrary, been instructed from
their earliest years by their parents and pandits to hate Christianity.

The Spanish missionaries arrived, then, and began the work of
evangelization at the same time as the humanitarian undertaking to
reduce them to a civilized life; for most of the Indians and Moros
were living in scattered groups along the coasts, and in the fields
and thickets in small settlements.

What was the result of their apostolic labors? Let us see. Father
Fray Juan Francisco de San Antonio, [152] chronicler of the Franciscan
missionaries, gives us the following data:

_General summary of souls, reckoning only the natives that were reduced
to Christianity throughout the archipelago of Filipinas in 1735_

In 142 villages in charge of the seculars
throughout this archipelago 131,279
Calced Augustinians (in more than 150 villages) 241,806
Order of St. Dominic (in 51 villages) 89,752
The Society of Jesus (in 80 villages) 170,000
Augustinian Recollects (in 105 villages) 63,149
Discalced Franciscans (in 63 villages) 141,196

Total 837,182

Father Delgado, who wrote in the year 1750, gives almost the same
statistics, but adds the following:

"I do not doubt that the souls that are ministered to, throughout the
islands of this archipelago, by secular and regular priests, exceed
one million and many thousands in addition; for, in the lists made by
the ministers, the children still below the age of seven years are
neither entered nor enumerated. Accordingly, I shall base my count
on the enumeration made a few years ago."

In the work entitled _Estado de las Islas Filipinas_, written by Don
Tomas de Comyn in 1820, and translat