came down to us yesterday two other villages of the Tinguianes, or mountaineers, asking us, of their own accord, to allow them to live here.  As an earnest of their desire, they brought as many as forty children that we might baptize them, which we have done.  We value this all the more because these two villages have up to this time been the most obstinate and stubborn in all the island:  but God has now been pleased to soften their hearts.  May He be blessed and praised that, if there had been fathers for all of them, the whole island would now be converted; for, although there are actually in this mission no more than four thousand Christians, its people are so well disposed that on the day when they shall have someone to teach and baptize them they will all be converted.  The very villages that we are unable to teach come frequently to ask that we will go to instruct them and unite them into one, and give them baptism.  But, as so few fathers have been in this island, we have not been able to succor them; and so they remain until God shall send them a reenforcement of fathers—­of whom they themselves are so desirous that they have already built us houses and churches, before a priest has been brought to them, or even mentioned, to my knowledge.  May God, whose plantation this is, send workmen hither, since there is harvest enough in all this island; and when they shall undertake to extend their labors further, there are, near by, some little islands in extreme spiritual want, and entirely deprived of any human succor for their conversion.  Therein might be held some missions most acceptable to God, all the more so because those people are so forsaken; for, as those are insignificant little islands, no one cares for them.  Those people are on the road to hell, if we do not succor them; and we do not aid them for lack of ministers.  One of these islands is called Isla de Fuegos ["Island of Fires"], and is a half day’s sail distant from here.  Several times its chiefs have come to ask that we would go thither.  The people already know how to recite the Christian doctrine, and yet not one has been baptized there (although they are calling for that sacrament), for there is no one who may distribute the bread, and thus they are perishing of spiritual hunger.

“But, to return to our island, there is great cause to glorify our Lord in seeing the esteem with which its people regard the Christian religion, and the fervor with which they one and all fulfil their obligations as Christians, in confession and communion, and in their pious and general affection toward the things of God.  A week ago, there was in our house a young man, an infidel, who had come from another village to see us.  He was laughing and enjoying himself with the others, although quite modestly; yet another lad who was there, a Christian, said to him:  ’How is it that thou, who art not a Christian, dost laugh and sport?’” Thus writes the father; he adds that the new baptisms during this past year amounted to four hundred.  The number was no larger, because they did not dare to baptize converts in other villages until those people could have fathers to maintain them in the faith and in Christian customs.