righteous life, subdued their leader, whom the rest obeyed, and baptized them all.  This leader said that the father’s anito (thus they style their deities) was greater than those of other men, and for that reason they recognized him as superior.  This pagan priest, while offering his infamous sacrifices, was possessed by the Devil who caused him to make most ugly grimaces; and he braided his hair, which for his particular calling he wore long, like that of a woman.  But he, beginning (like the Magdalen) with his hair, cut it off publicly, and with it the power of the Devil, who held him captive; and receiving baptism, constrained the others by his example to do the same, consigning his idols to the fire where they were consumed.

In this baptism of five hundred people, there were two old women whose conversion showed the special and admirable providence of our Lord.  One of them, at least, showed an age of more than one hundred years; and both came down with the rest from the mountains, desiring holy baptism.  Hardly had they received it when, leaving this mortal life (for they could no longer sustain the burden of so many years), they were renewed and bettered by the eternal life for which our Lord in his infinite mercy had preserved them during so many years.

The Tagalos, which is the name of the whitest and most civilized race of Manila, were not the only ones who descended from the mountains and from afar to range themselves alongside the sons of the new Jerusalem, that is, the holy church [76]—­which multiplying in numbers, augmenting the joy at the sight of the vineyard of the Lord, and producing new plants, extends its shoots until it penetrates the sea and embraces and incorporates all its islands.  After the men came the beasts of burden (namely, the Negrillos, who are more fierce, and dwell in the mountains) who came with outstretched hands to place themselves in those of their swift Angels, sent to succor this abject and ruined people.  By this I mean that the Negrillos, of whom I have already spoken—­who are the ancient inhabitants of some of these islands, including Manila, in which there are many of that race who live, as I said, in the mountains, merely like wild beasts—­impressed by the example of the others, began to be peaceable and tame, and to prepare themselves for holy baptism.  This, for those who are acquainted with their savageness and brutality, is wonderful beyond exaggeration.  But this very brutal and barbarous nature renders them (a marvelous thing!) less incapable of our holy faith, and less averse to it—­because in their state of pure savagery they have not, as I know from observation, any idolatries or superstitions, neither are they greatly averse to the gospel and baptism.  The others—­who to their own detriment and misfortune, are more civilized—­abandon more regretfully their idols, ceremonies, priests, sacrifices, and superstitions; and, although they renounce them in holy baptism and are converted (vanquished by the