the swarms of locusts from their grain, so
the latter by bearing palm-branches and seeds to the church effect
the same result. An old custom of theirs has been condemned--namely
setting up in the fields great beams, which they call _Omalagars_,
upon which they believe the souls of the dead to sit. Here fifty have
been initiated in the Christian mysteries, and more would have been
if ministers had not been wanting. Forty couples have been joined
with a more holy bond. Several persons were found by the marvelous
providence of God (for it would be impious to regard that as a chance
which was wrought for Ours, kept safe in so many perils), who, being
scattered over the mountains, so that they could have no one else,
begged for a father to whom they might confess their sins. There were
also found in a little island forty lepers loathsome with filth and
stench, unclothed, and without food, lacking everything. To all of
them first the teaching of Christ, then baptism, and finally food
and clothes were given. But one man found God sterner, who, though
warned by Ours to desist from his impious habit of swearing, yet never
obeyed. He was often wont to use an expression by which he devoted
himself to the crocodile; and not long after, being made the prey of
one, he taught others by his evil fate to do that which he had refused
to do before. As compared with his death all the more happy was that
by which Father Alfonso Roderico was taken from us. He had professed
the four vows, and was dear alike to Spaniards and to Bisayans. He
was so devoted to the good of both that he was not satisfied with the
narrow space of twenty-two years, during which he was permitted to
live among us, but at his death used the very words of St. Martin:
"Lord, if I am still needed by thy people, I do not refuse to labor."

XI. The attention of Ours at Tinagon has wisely been given to the
women, since they are more ready to take an interest in sacred things,
and are more seldom absent from the village--except when one or another
makes her escape from the hands of some procurer, preferring to pass
the nights in the forests and mountains in the midst of serpents,
rather than at home to suffer danger to her chastity among men that are
as deadly. As for the other affairs of this establishment, they may
nearly all be included under two examples, one of divine compassion,
the other of divine justice. An Indian woman was carelessly crossing
a stream, and was carr