to
sail many leguas by boisterous seas, or to travel by land in some parts
by rough mountains, threatened in the one place with shipwreck and in
the other by continual dangers. Since the new convent was established
in the island of Ticao, the administration is more tolerable, although
it is always accompanied by indescribable fatigues. For the religious
of Mobo have to sail completely about the island of Masbate in order
to fulfil their obligations, or if they prefer to journey by land,
as they are able, to one or two villages, they have to do it afoot
with the greatest discomfort, through inaccessible mountains, and
exposed to dangers wellnigh insupportable. The missionaries of Ticao,
besides having to coast a great part of that island have to go many
times during each year to that of Burias, crossing the very stout
currents of the sea from the rapidity of which some of the missionaries
have found themselves in the utmost consternation. On the other hand,
all the time that the Indians remained Zimarrones, they allowed no
passage to the zealous laborers without them risking their lives to
innumerable dangers; and even after they had been reduced, the Moros
were a substitute for them on the outside, and inside many sorcerers,
who tried, some by violence, and others by their diabolical arts,
to drive thence, and even from the world, the ministers of souls. And
who can tell all that they suffered from all these causes? It was so
great that some religious, never more alive than when they were dead,
came to die in the campaign like good soldiers.

1120. Father Fray Ildephonso de la Concepcion was one of those
who sweated most in that ministry, and one of those who entered to
cultivate it in its early beginnings. By the ardor of his zeal, by
the example of his life, and by his apostolic preaching, he reduced
many apostates to the Catholic faith. Some of them were gathered into
the villages already established, and others, up to the number of
eighty families, founded through his influence, another new village
on the opposite coast from Mobo. Going then, from one to another part
of the islands, the solicitous fisher of souls had the boat in which
he journeyed swamped twice, one-half legua from shore, while another
time his boat was driven by storms on some reefs and dashed to pieces;
dangers in which many of those who accompanied him were lost, while
the father escaped miraculously with his life after having endured
a thousan