Our three religious opposed themselves to so profound darkness as this, with the light of the gospel, and without taking other arms than the cross and the scourge of penance, by which all the wretchedness and misfortunes there were changed into delights and comforts.  The suffering of great hardships was inevitable; for since those brutes were intractable and ferocious, they did not show the fathers any hospitality, that had any mark of reason and sense.  The fathers sought them through the thickets and fields where they were living, and, alluring them with loving words, gave them to understand their error and the blindness of their souls.  They preached to them with the ardor that came from their hearts of the Triune and One Lord, who governs the universe, and told them their obligation to love Him and to bow to the mild yoke of His law; but those people preferred to condemn themselves forever to the pains of hell.  The fathers retired at night to some very small huts that they had made, in order to take the necessary refreshment, which consisted only of beans [frijoles], and at most a little rice, which they obtained but seldom.  Then they gave some rest and repose to their weakened and fatigued bodies.  That rest was, however, broken by three cruel disciplines, which all took every two hours, in order to soften and mollify the diamond hearts of those barbarians with their blood.  With that efficacious medicine and their tireless care, they continued gradually to soften those rocks—­although from the wretched life that they were living, and their immense toil in going by day through those rough mountains, seeking the sheep whom they desired to corral with the flock, within the sheepfold of the Church, and from the worse sufferings in their nights, they sickened and died.

[Accounts of the pious deaths of Fathers Miguel de Santa Maria, and Pedro de San Joseph, and Brother Francisco de Santa Monica, the three laborers in this first mission, follow in this same section.  The first named had long been renowned for his asceticism, both in Spain and in the islands, having been one of the first to join the new order.  The second had been a calced Augustinian, but had transferred his allegiance to the Recollects after their arrival in the islands, and was very useful on this mission because of his thorough knowledge of Tagal.  The narrative continues:]

By the death of those three religious, the others might well fear to go to complete the reduction of Marivelez, and to prosecute what was already begun with the perfidious Zambales.  But being full of the love of God, and of zeal for souls, each of them offered himself, just as if it were to obtain the greatest comfort and abundance that men generally seek; and all demanded it anxiously, each as best he could, as their most ambitious desire to go up there and be honored.  The city opposed it, for they thought that it meant to send those fathers to their death—­and all the more as they saw that,