[107] Much more might be said about these points, which Father Medina treats with as much skill as delicacy....  Not to go into certain details, wearisome beyond measure, I shall only say, that even now were it not for the direct intervention of the Spanish priest in the collection of the cedula or tribute, the treasury would lose some hundreds of thousands of pesos.  Many are the parish priests, especially in the Bisayas, who oblige the heads of barangay to deliver at the convent the result of the collection; for if they did not do so, not one-half of what the town should furnish would be deposited in the royal treasury.  While the writer of these lines was in a certain town of Iloilo a few years ago, the parish priest had in his convent the sum of 15,000 pesos, belonging to the collection of the tribute.  He petitioned the corresponding authority for an armed force to conduct the revenues of the state safely to the royal treasury.  That authority considered it suitable to answer him that it was not part of the duty of the military force to act as a custodian for the conveyance of the state revenue....—­Coco.

[108] Fray Juan de Villamayor took his vows in the Augustinian convent of Toledo, and was conventual and prior of Halaud in 1590 and 1593 respectively.  He ministered at Aclan in 1596, at Jaro in 1598, at Sibucao in 1599, at Potol in 1603, and finally at Aclan, 1605-1608, where he died the latter year.  See Perez’s Catalogo, p. 38.

[109] The lay brother Fray Andres Garcia was assistant for some years at the mission at Aclan.  He died in 1623.  See Perez’s Catalogo, p. 75.

[110] The island of Bantayan (province of Cebu) has now a population of 18,325, all civilized.  See Bulletin No.  I, ut supra.

[111] And of pearls.—­Coco.

[112] Antique; in 1893 it was a province with twenty-one villages and a population of 119,322, under the charge of sixteen Augustinians.—­Coco.

Its present population is 134,166, of whom 131,245 are civilized and 2,921 wild.  The reports of population for several other years are as follows:  1818, 50,597; 1840, 48,333; 1850, 84,570; 1870, 108,855; 1887, 115,434.  See Bulletin No. 1 (ut supra) and U.S.  Gazetteer of the Philippine Islands.

[113] Father Fray Nicolas Melo, or Moran, Portuguese by birth, and the lay-brother Fray Nicolas de San Agustin, a Japanese, were sent on an important commission to Europe in 1597.  They went to Malacca, and thence to Goa—­where, not finding facilities to embark, they determined to make the journey by land.  They journeyed toward Persia, in company with other Augustinian religious, who were going to our missions in that empire.  Thence they went to Moscow, where Father Melo comforted the persecuted Catholics (to whom he administered the holy sacraments), and tried to convert the Calvinist heretics, for which reason they were imprisoned and suffered penalties without number.  When they reached Nisna, near the Caspian Sea, brother Fray Nicolas de San Agustin was beheaded on the thirtieth of November, 1611, for refusing to apostatize from the holy Catholic faith.  Father Nicolas Melo was burned alive in Astrakan, together with Princess Barbara Noski, a tertiary of our order, on the first of November, 1616.—­Coco.