“We were greatly aided in facilitating their instruction by the method of [learning by] decuries which your Reverence imparted to us.  Dividing them by tens, as if in classes, some learned the Pater-noster, others the Ave Maria; and thus they came to acquire with much facility and ease all the prayers of the primer.  I baptized one hundred and forty persons, some of whom were old men of rank.  One of them was very anxious that his mother should become a Christian, and on the day when our Lord accorded him this mercy he was greatly rejoiced; he made a great feast, inviting the people to eat at his house, and furnished to them a bountiful repast.  We celebrated the octave of Corpus Christi with a solemn procession, in which we bore the most blessed sacrament through the streets, which were decorated and adorned for the occasion with as much splendor as was possible.  They laid all their riches and gold chains on the platform; and although it was all insignificant enough, greater was the good will and love with which they offered it.

“With the report that those two islands had been converted to the faith, the island of Cauayan and others of Samar were led to ask for fathers to instruct them.  I repaired to Cauayan, and in fifteen days I baptized, after some instructions and sermons, one hundred and seventy adults, with four or five little children.  I inquired if any one yet remained to be made a Christian; they replied that only one was left, an old woman, outside the village, but that I need not concern myself about her, for, on account of her great age (she must have been more than a hundred and thirty years old), she had not sufficient understanding or judgment to penetrate into the things of God.  I had her conveyed to the village with great care, and they brought me a clod of clay, which had only a little perception, and hardly any understanding; sight had forsaken her, and her hearing was very dull.  She had no more power of motion than a stone, for wherever they placed her, there she remained without stirring.  She had great-great-grandsons living, and I believe that the descendants extended even further.  I began to catechize her, or rather to test her, to see if she had the use of reason; but for the time I could not convince myself whether she had it or not.  I had her conveyed to the house of a worthy Christian, an Indian woman of much judgment, by whom the old woman could make herself understood; and I asked her to talk with the old woman very carefully about the things of God, and to draw from her all that she could.  Relying upon what this good woman told me (she acted as my interpreter in the church, and as catechist in her own house), I was finally persuaded that the old woman had the use of reason; but when I began to instruct her in the things that were absolutely necessary, the Christian woman told me that, as for the other truths, it was morally impossible, on acount of the old woman’s limited capacity, to give her further