his recovery to the singular mercy of our Lord, and to the fact that he was a Christian; and he often related the affair with no little benefit to his hearers.  Having heard him speak, for some time, so well and so affectionately concerning our Lord and the observance of His holy commandments, I praised his discourse and meritorious sentiments.  He answered that it was no cause for surprise, since all those things had been taught him in the aforesaid vision, and had remained deeply impressed upon his mind.”

The loss of some vessels, and in them of two of the fathers of the Society.  Chapter LXIV.

Among other calamities and troubles which our Lord has been pleased to send upon these islands in the form of loss of life, property, and ships, one was the destruction of two large ships (a flagship and an almiranta) which, in the previous year, six hundred, set out for Nueva Espana with cargoes of very rich merchandise.  These vessels, after having sailed the seas for eight months, with violent storms, and encountered great dangers, and after having lost many men through hunger, pest, accidents, and the billows of the sea (which washed them from the vessel itself), were driven back and stranded—­or rather dashed to pieces—­on the shores of the Ladrones and the Catanduanes, where they were destroyed.  But few persons were able to escape, who only served, like the servants of Job, to carry the news of the disaster—­which, following upon many other losses and misfortunes of war, was keenly felt and bitterly lamented.  In one of these vessels, named “San Geronimo,” went Father Pero Lopez de la Parra, a professed member of our Society, who after this long voyage and another, even longer, of thirty-seven years in the religious life, finally came to port, as we believe, in the Fortunate Land, toward which he was making his main voyage with good works.  In Nueva Espana he taught the arts and theology, and was one of the first founders [of missions] who went thither from the Society; and both there and here he exercised our ministries with good results.  Although we know no details concerning his death, it is believed, from his having been one of the last to die, and from his great devotion to confession and the care of souls, that in that hour of peril he must have been of service to all with much charity, as he always acted thus during his life.  By another disaster and misfortune in these islands, we lost another father and a brother, if we may call those lost who, to win souls and aid their brethren, die with them in a righteous war.  Some heretic corsairs from the islands of Olanda and Gelanda went to those of Filipinas, bent on plunder, in the month of October of the year one thousand six hundred; they had robbed a Portuguese vessel in the North Sea, and in the South Sea, having passed the Strait of Magallanes, some fragatas from Piru.  These corsairs entered among these islands, committing depredations and threatening even greater excesses.  For this purpose their