rom those
places they labored according to their strength, until the arrival
at Philipinas of the band of missionaries which was conducted by
the father commissary, Fray Juan de la Madre de Dios, which entered
Manila in October 1684, when a greater number of missionaries could
be assigned, as was very necessary for the direction of so many
Indians. For the extensive territory which was formerly administered
by only one cura, has later given worthy employment to five, six,
or seven of our religious, to say nothing of the two at the least,
who have been stationed continually in the islands of Cuyo. Hence
one may infer how much the Catholic faith has been extended there,
now by reducing into the villages the many natives who had fled
to the mountains, after abandoning almost entirely their Christian
obligations; now by undeceiving others who lack but little of becoming
Moros, because of their nearness and intercourse with those people; and
now by penetrating into the roughest mountains of Paragua in order to
draw the souls from the darkness of paganism to the agreeable light
of the Christian religion.

830. In regard to these particulars, we consider it necessary to
reproduce at this point a portion of a letter written May 28, 1683,
to our father vicar-general, Fray Juan de la Presentacion, by the
recently-elected father provincial of those islands, Fray Isidoro de
Jesus Maria, a person well known in Europa for the literary productions
which he has published. He speaks, then, as follows: "The urgings
of the Indians of the province of Calamianes to the ecclesiastical
and secular government and to my predecessors, have availed so much,
that this province has judged that the precept of Christian charity
demands us to return to that administration, trusting in God our Lord
for the relief of the very great disadvantages which had compelled our
religious who had administered and reared that field of Christendom
from its beginning, to withdraw from that province. At the present
it has increased by more than two thousand souls who have been drawn
from the mountains in less than three years, as can be seen from the
relations sent to the chapter. Greater fruits are hoped for, because
in the past year of 82, the ambassador of the king of Borney in the
name of his prince, arranged with the governor of these islands for
the cession of a not small amount of land and number of settlements,
which are subject to the said Borney--one in th