that time, with the sequel of innumerable depredations. He put that
idea into practice in the year 1638, after the conclusion of the
war with the koran, in the beginning of which when the sword was
drawn the scabbard was thrown away. But neither his valor nor that
diligence were sufficient for the attainment of his end. For in the
year 1640, now by the Joloans themselves, and now by means of the
Borneans their allies, and now by making use of their vassals who
inhabited the adjacent islands, they tried to find in sea surprises
some betterment of their fortune or some havoc by which to temper
it. With that object they attacked missions belonging to our reformed
order both boldly and treacherously in the districts of Calamianes,
Butuan, and Cagayang; and it is a fact that we always had the worst
of it in those wars. They committed depredations very much to their
liking, with the boldness that their greed gave them and with the
severity which their hatred to the evangelical law inspired in
them. The captives who were taken in our villages on that occasion
numbered three hundred and more. The churches were ruined, the holy
images profaned, the evangelical ministers became fugitives in the
mountains, the sheep were scattered as their shepherds could not attend
to them with their watchful eye, the villages were reduced to ashes,
and all of those fields of Christendom became the necessary object
of the most bitter lamentation.

309. They did almost the same thing in the three following years,
and there was no means of taking worthy satisfaction from enemies so
inhuman who, like wild and hellish beasts, destroyed a great portion
of the rich patrimony of Christ which had flourished in that country
under the care of our discalced order. The devastation was so general
that it appears to have been presaged by heaven with very extraordinary
portents. For on the fourth day of January, 1640, a volcano suddenly
burst forth in the island of Sanguiz, not far from the cape of San
Agustin in the island of Mindanao, which showed very rare and unusual
results. For the ashes, rocks, and burning material which it cast up
traveled for many leguas as far as Zebu. Noises like artillery were
heard, which caused the Spanish garrisons to get under arms, and
the day grew dark from ten in the morning, so that it seemed pitch
black night. The same thing happened in another volcano in an islet
opposite the bar of the river of Jolo. There was a furious