uas, four wide and twelve
long. [59] Masbate has the reputation of having the richest gold
mines that were found by the first Spaniards, and from which they
benefited to a great extent. Their working has not been continued,
either for lack of people suitable for this work or for other
reasons which do not concern us. That of Burias abounds in the palm
called Buri, of whose fruit and even of whose trunk, the Indians
make an extraordinary bread. That of Ticao produces many woods,
excellent for the construction of medium-sized boats. The natives
of those three islands are of the same qualities as the rest of the
Philipinas. However, they have become very sociable because of the
almost continuous intercourse that they have with the Spaniards,
on account of the many who pass on their way to other countries.

1109. Those islands were reduced to the crown of Espana in 1569 by
Don Luis Henriquez de Guzman, a knight of Sevilla, whose conquest
made them thoroughly subject in everything to Captain Andres de
Ibarra. Thereupon, scarcely had the way been opened by arms, when the
venerable father, Fray Alonso Ximenez, an Observant of our order,
entered Masbate to preach the law of grace. He, as is asserted by
father Fray Gaspar de San Agustin, may be called the apostle of that
island, in consideration of the great amount of his labors therein for
the extension of the Catholic faith. Other apostolic workers of the
same institute followed his tracks later, and they went to Ticao and
Burias. Consequently, in the year 1605, the province of Santo Nombre
de Jesus founded a mission composed of the above three islands. The
first prior appointed was father Fray Francisco Guerrero, instructor of
Christian doctrine, who was of well-known zeal. But our calced fathers
kept the care of their administration only until the year 1609, when
the intermediary chapter resigned that district and its villages into
the hands of the bishop of Nueva Caceres, Don Pedro de Arce, in order
that he might appoint secular clergy as he wished, who could attend
to the Christian Indians with the bread of the doctrine. [60] From
that time until the year 1688, various curas had successive charge of
the administration of those souls in order to teach them the road of
glory. But notwithstanding that that district had only two hundred
and fifty families when they took charge of it (as the above-cited
Father Gaspar confesses) whose number continued to decline afterward
becau