a Purificacion (who passed a
considerable portion of their well-employed lives in those missions,
and whom I knew in Manila, and who attained a venerable and exemplary
age) that from the admission of that territory by our province to
the year 1704, the multitude of infidels who were turned by the
preaching of our brothers from the unhappy liberty of paganism to
the mild yoke of the Catholic faith, was vast. For, notwithstanding
that there were three or four epidemics in all those villages in
the above-named period, which occasioned the death of an excessive
portion of the old Christians, the settlements were replaced by
those newly converted. Consequently, the lack was not observed, for
the same number of tributes were collected for the king during the
latter years as during the first. This same thing is attested by the
documents and depositions that I have before me, which designate the
Recollect religious who lived on the Contracosta with the character
of laborers in the living missions because of the many souls that
their apostolic zeal drew to the sheepfold of the Church.

72. But notwithstanding that, the fruit must have caused entire
consolation as it was so visible, and given greater earnestness to
continue. That fatal interruption of missions in which no workers
of our Recollect family passed to Philipinas from Espana from the
year 1692 to that of 1710, having occurred, the province found it
impossible to give, as it had done hitherto six or eight religious for
those missions because their exhaustion made them needed for other
missions. Although our brothers were more than men in their zeal,
in material work they could do nothing more than men. Therefore, it
was impossible to look after so great an employ as they had in their
charge, since they had so few subjects. And already it is seen that
if necessity obliged them to abandon any district, it must be that of
the Contracosta. They did not regard that as a conquest proper, but
as received in trust. It was so, for in the provincial chapter held
in the year 1704, after that apostolic province had possessed those
doctrinas and convents for more than forty years, it was resolved to
abandon them all, and return them to their first masters, the religious
of St. Francis, as they could not attend to their administration. Those
seraphic workers, learning the reason; took new charge of those souls
in order to attend to them with the bread of the instruction. On this
acc