ample to do the same, consigning his idols to the fire where
they were consumed.

In this baptism of five hundred people, there were two old women
whose conversion showed the special and admirable providence of our
Lord. One of them, at least, showed an age of more than one hundred
years; and both came down with the rest from the mountains, desiring
holy baptism. Hardly had they received it when, leaving this mortal
life (for they could no longer sustain the burden of so many years),
they were renewed and bettered by the eternal life for which our Lord
in his infinite mercy had preserved them during so many years.

The Tagalos, which is the name of the whitest and most civilized race
of Manila, were not the only ones who descended from the mountains and
from afar to range themselves alongside the sons of the new Jerusalem,
that is, the holy church [76]--which multiplying in numbers, augmenting
the joy at the sight of the vineyard of the Lord, and producing new
plants, extends its shoots until it penetrates the sea and embraces
and incorporates all its islands. After the men came the beasts of
burden (namely, the Negrillos, who are more fierce, and dwell in the
mountains) who came with outstretched hands to place themselves in
those of their swift Angels, sent to succor this abject and ruined
people. By this I mean that the Negrillos, of whom I have already
spoken--who are the ancient inhabitants of some of these islands,
including Manila, in which there are many of that race who live,
as I said, in the mountains, merely like wild beasts--impressed
by the example of the others, began to be peaceable and tame, and
to prepare themselves for holy baptism. This, for those who are
acquainted with their savageness and brutality, is wonderful beyond
exaggeration. But this very brutal and barbarous nature renders them
(a marvelous thing!) less incapable of our holy faith, and less averse
to it--because in their state of pure savagery they have not, as I know
from observation, any idolatries or superstitions, neither are they
greatly averse to the gospel and baptism. The others--who to their own
detriment and misfortune, are more civilized--abandon more regretfully
their idols, ceremonies, priests, sacrifices, and superstitions;
and, although they renounce them in holy baptism and are converted
(vanquished by the light of Catholic truth), the vestiges of the evil
which they have sucked from their mothers' breasts are not so easi