who, upon perceiving me, formed a row on one side of the street and saluted me all together, uncovering their heads, and making a low bow.  I, inclining my head, removed my cap and passed on.  They appreciated my politeness, and considered themselves so favored and honored by it that, upon my return, they displayed the same courtesy, standing in line, and then they all fell upon their knees, as if they desired to excel me in politeness; for that which I had shown them when I first approached seemed to them all too much.  My greatest aid to them was at Lian, three leguas from Balayan, in which place—­as well as in another near by, called Manisua—­I converted many to Christianity and heard many confessions.  I was here on Ash Wednesday; not only did the adults receive the ashes with incredible reverence and devotion, but all the mothers brought all their children to receive the emblem, and were not willing to depart until they and all the others had received.  For this journey I thank and am deeply grateful to the bishop who was most earnestly desirous that Ours should aid in so important a ministry.  As it was clearly evident that the villages of Taitai, Antipolo, and others of that encomienda—­which was six leguas from Manila, up the river, and in which there were already some Christians—­contained many infidels who should be converted, he entrusted it to the Society.  Through the grace of Jesus Christ our Lord, such fruitful results were accomplished as shall be seen in the course of this narrative.  I shall simply state for the present that, at the end of ten years, I was in the habit of saying (in imitation of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus) that I was most thankful to our Lord, for, when I entered the place, I found hardly forty Christians, and at the end of that time there were not four infidels.  If I am not mistaken, we baptized with our own hands more than seven thousand souls; and today it is one of the most flourishing of Christian communities that Holy Church possesses, and none in those regions is superior to it.

How the village of Taitai improved its site.  Chapter IX.

At that time the village of Taitai lay along the water, on the banks of a marsh or stream formed by waterfalls from the mountains of Antipolo, which emptied into the river near the same mouth by which it flows out of the lagoon.  It was situated in a most beautiful and extensive valley, formed between the lagoon and the mountains; and so low that each year, when the waters of the lagoon rise on account of the floods from the many rivers which enter it, the valley is flooded and submerged as is Egypt by the Nile, and remains thus inundated from August until October or November.  At this period the valley itself becomes a lagoon of more than an estado in depth, and can be traversed only by means of boats.  This inundation abundantly fertilizes the rice fields and seeded lands with which the valley is covered, and, as a result, rich and abundant harvests are gathered.  The