ho, although they pay tribute,
are not baptized for lack of ministers. Their encomenderos are twelve
in number, and the Indians in their encomiendas, ten thousand four
hundred, or more than forty thousand souls. In proportion to the
others, they will need twenty ministers for their conversion.

17. In the same island of Luzon, in the provinces of Ylocos and
Pangasinan are twelve encomenderos, with sixteen thousand Indians
paying tribute, which means about seventy thousand souls. Very few of
these, not eight thousand, are baptized. They need thirty ministers
for their conversion and instruction.

18. Besides the above, in the same island, another thickly-inhabited
province in this region, one week's journey from Manila, was explored
two years ago, by order of Governor Gomez Perez Dasmarinas. According
to the report given to the said Fray Francisco de Ortega by friars of
his order, at least forty ministers are needed there for the welfare,
assistance, and conversion of those natives. Thus, all together, two
hundred ministers of the gospel are necessary for the administration
and conversion of the natives of those islands--which are under the
protection and dominion of your Highness, to whom they have rendered
obedience and whom they recognize as king and sovereign. This number is
in addition to those who are there now, reckoning among these latter
the descalced fathers of the order of St. Francis, who sailed in the
fleet now on the way for Nueva Espana, in order to go to the said
islands. And in order that your Highness may consider as excellently
employed all that you have spent from your royal exchequer in the
furtherance of this apostolic and sovereign work of conversion, he
[Ortega] gives a report as to the monasteries of religious and the
ministers of the three orders there, and the great results produced
by the preaching of the gospel among those natives. This is to the
great merit of your Highness, since they [the monasteries] have been
the chief instrument of the relief and salvation of the Indians.

19. There is one monastery with four religious of his order of
St. Augustine, in the island of Cubu. They have baptized about six
thousand, large and small, of the Indians in their charge there.

20. There is another monastery of the same order in another small
island, called Batayan. It has two religious, who have baptized three
thousand souls.

21. In the island of Panay, the best island after that of Luzon, ar