The residence of Dulac has in its care, among many others, the two large villages called Dagami and San Salvador (which is Paloc), both populous; their people are well instructed and submissive, and our fathers have labored among them with great success.  Father Melchior Hurtado writes that in San Salvador, during the celebration of the Christmas feast, almost eight hundred infidels were baptized, and that the confessions and communions were such as might be expected in Espana—­so many, that the fathers could not attend to them all.  This is occasion for much glory to our Lord, especially in a land so new, which the Society had entered but six years before to instruct its people, and had found them so obdurate, as I have already stated.  From the letters of this father, and from others of Father Juan de Torres and Father Francisco Vicente, some special incidents have been drawn, which I shall here relate.

A father, passing through a little village belonging to that residence and inquiring who were Christians, was told of an old man who lived out in the country, alone in his little hut, and remained there unable to walk.  The father gave orders that this man be brought to his presence, and asked him concerning his life, not expecting him to recall much of the doctrine; but he gave so good an account of himself as to leave the father astounded.  Among other things the old man said:  “Although I remain in this life with my body, my desires are in heaven; and so much so that at night I dream only of the things of the other life.  There I see all the dwellers of heaven covered with splendor, and especially one, who excels all the others in brightness.  O, father, would that I might be there, freed from this decaying and burdensome body!” The father showed him a print of the judgment, in which heaven was depicted with splendor and beauty, and then asked him if it looked like what he had seen.  He answered, Aba, which is one of their words of surprise, and, as it were, of disdain.  “That and nothing more, Father?  Much more, much more!” Then the father wondered as he beheld the riches which God our Lord had deposited in that clod of earth; and he felt sure that, as the old man said, his only occupation thereafter would be to repeat “Jesus” and “Mary”—­which would never leave his memory or his lips, until he should end this life and begin that which is eternal.  Two of Ours, passing a wretched hut, found a man, who must have been more than eighty years old, stretched upon some reeds, unconscious and dying.  So thin was his body that it was hardly more than skin adhering to bones; and so wasted that he seemed the living picture of death.  In their pity for him they prayed our Lord to have compassion on that poor soul.  In a short time he recovered consciousness, and gladly asked for the waters of holy baptism, which he greatly desired; this was plainly evident in the ardor with which he declared his belief in our holy faith.  After being baptized, his senses were entranced, and he very sweetly invoked the most blessed name of Jesus, and that of Mary; and then he died.