ge, besides the Bissayan and Tagalo
tongues, which are usually employed for preaching, confessions, and
the other Sacraments. One of the brethren, who was a skilful scribe,
continued the children's school gathered by Father Antonio Pereira,
where reading, writing, and numbers were taught, together with
Christian doctrine and customs.

Of the island of Leite, and those who were baptized there. Chapter
XXIV.

The circuit of the island of Leite is about a hundred leguas--its
length stretching from east to west for forty leguas, and its extent
from north to south being narrow. It is divided almost in the middle by
a large mountain ridge called Carigara, which occasions a remarkable
inequality and variety in its temperature and seasons. For example,
when in its northern part there is winter (which is the period of the
winter months in Espana), in the south there is summer; and in the
other half of the year the contrary occurs. Consequently, when half
of the island's inhabitants are sowing, the other half are gathering
in their harvests; in this way they have two harvests in one year,
both very abundant. This island is surrounded by very many adjacent
islands, inhabited and uninhabited. It abounds in fish from the sea
and its many rivers, in cows from China, in fowl, deer, wild and
domestic hogs, fruits, vegetables, and roots of many species. It is
inhabited by a very numerous people, whose villages therefore are
not far apart; and there is not one of them which does not possess
a large grove of palm-trees and a fine, full-flowing river. Those
palms, as well as other trees which the whole island produces in
abundance, shade the roads to a great extent--providing a comfort
and refreshing coolness indispensable for those of us who must travel
on foot for lack of any other convenience; throughout the island the
roads traverse groves and forests, with foliage so cool and abundant
that even at high noon the sun caused us no annoyance. Many of the
trees have trunks more than twelve brazas in circumference, which are
sawed into excellent planks. The temperature is not so hot as that
of Manila, although the island is two degrees nearer the equinoctial
line--a common condition in that entire province of the Pintados. The
inhabitants are honest, simple, and intelligent, and possess among
other good and laudable customs two in particular, which are common
to all the neighboring islands. The first is, that they have no need,
in jo