in their Christian faith.  Accordingly, in the month of May in the past year of one thousand six hundred and thirty-two there arrived in this city of Manila a Japanese ship with more than a hundred Japanese, with their wives and children.  They were exiled Christians who had been told in their own country that if they abandoned the faith not only would they not be exiled from their fatherland, but that they would be cared for at the expense of the emperor.  They chose to set out as exiles, fathers parting from their sons, wives from their husbands, and children from their parents, to preserve the faith of Jesus Christ, trusting solely to the providence of God.  They arrived at this city of Manila, having suffered ill-treatment and disease.  As soon as they had landed and been received by the Christians of this city, they all began—­men, women, and children—­to sing Laudate Dominum omnes gentes, and other psalms, so that it would have moved stones to pity.  They were taken immediately to a church, at their own request, in procession.  And no sooner did they find themselves in the temple of the Lord for whom they had suffered so much, than they all commenced to sing aloud Nunc dimittis, from beginning to end, so that the Christians of the primitive church could have done no more.  They were then taken to a hospital, where they are being cared for at present with liberal good cheer, for on every hand they are supplied with plentiful alms.  The heathen Japanese went back astonished at this charitable reception which they received; and therefore they now make martyrs no more, because they realize that this affects the people, and that more are converted in the public martyrdoms which they were inflicting in order to strike the others with fear.  What they now do with the ministers of the gospel whom they can capture is as follows—­as has been done lately with six religious whom they hold prisoners among them, two of these belonging to our order of St. Dominic:  Within the prison they strip the fathers, and throw boiling hot water on them over their whole bodies, until they are horribly burned and wounded, and their skin is quite flayed off.  Then they are cared for; and when they are recovering they are again stripped, and the same thing done, and so they have been kept for a year.

Concerning missions in the kingdom of Camboxa, we learn that four years ago, when the king sent to ask for religious in order to make himself and his kingdom Christian, six belonging to our Dominican order only, went there, and carried to him a handsome present on behalf of the governor of Manila.  The king received them with much kindness at first.  Afterwards, when they instructed him in our faith and told him he must give up his idolatries to receive it, he began to hate them—­until, after two years, he ordered them to return; and so that kingdom is without a Christian, as it was impossible to persuade a single person; for they are wild barbarians, who, like the negroes, go about attired in skins.