of the port, and its more equable climate.  He arranged other annexed locations within a distance of twelve leguas, where his tireless industry gathered about one thousand five hundred souls.  Assuring this stronghold, he opened a gateway by which to pass to the coast beyond.  The Zambales Indians tyrannized over it, and no boats could touch there without danger of their lives.  Those were Indians of barbarous ferocity, and very bloody-minded.  It was very difficult to soften such monsters, so blinded by their superstitions and by their barbarous customs, that in no way would they accustom their ears to other things.  One very extraordinary event procured respect for the father among them, and thereupon they paid more attention to his evangelical words.

6.  Father Fray Rodrigo was one day passing through a thicket.  That thicket was, according to their customs, one of the reserved ones, and it was considered sacrilegious to cut anything from it, and that such act would be punished with immediate death.  So infatuated were they with that blindness that no one, even though in great need, dared to take anything from that place, being restrained by fear.  The father saw a beautiful tree, which they call pajo, laden with ripe fruit.  He ordered his followers to gather some by climbing the tree.  They strenuously resisted, but father Fray Rodrigo insisted on it.  They declared that they would not do it under any circumstances, and that it meant sure death if they offended the respect whose fatal sentence comprehended all the trees of that place.  The father severely chided them for their error, and to show them that it was so, he determined to gather the fruit himself.  He began to break branches and to clear the trunk, in order to facilitate the ascent.  The Indians were grieved, and urgently begged him to desist from that undertaking, which they considered as so rash.  But the religious, arming himself with the sign of the cross, and reciting the antiphon, Ecce lignum crucis, managed to gather some of the ripe fruit, which the tree offered.  He ate it in front of them and liked the fruit very much, for indeed it is savory.  They looked at his face amazed, expecting his instant death.  When that did not happen, they recognized their delusion, and detested their cheats They also ate without experiencing any harm.  The father charged them to say nothing upon their arrival at the village.  He took with him a goodly quantity of that fruit, and divided a great portion of it among the chiefs.  Esteeming the gift, they, in their ignorance, ate it without fear.  In a sermon on the following day, the father disclosed the secret and checked their vain fears; so that, undeceived by experience, they followed him with their axes, and in short order felled that thicket, which was a confused center of perverse iniquities.  Thereupon, many of those infidels submitted to the true knowledge.