hat for others. There, through lack of food, too much
heat, continual rains, and many other discomforts, they are generally
so disfigured and so weak that rivaling Job, they only live because
of a skin loosely stretched over their bones. How many contract
incurable diseases there, who dragging along all their life with
them prove themselves to be stages of the greatest pity! How many by
trampling under foot evident dangers, in hastening to the consolation
of their sheep, to confess the sick, to aid the dying, either gave
themselves into the hands of the enemy to be the victims of their
cruelty, or offered themselves a willing sacrifice to the precipices
of the mountains and to the shipwrecks of the seas! How many, since
the world is unworthy of their noble and Christian intercourse, and,
it seems, tried to cast from itself, wander for months at a time,
naked, an hungered, persecuted, followed on all sides by the shadow
of death, without other consolation than that of God, in whose hands
they desire to finish their lives, delivering to Him their wearied
souls! And how many, finally, obtained the precious crown of martyrdom,
after having coursed the sands of so many hardships, which were ended
either by the edge of the sword, or by a spear-thrust, or at the
spindle of hardships, or at grief at seeing holy things so outraged,
or by the inundations of penalties in atrocious captivities! Mention
has been made of many in the preceding volumes, but some who will
serve to ornament this volume were omitted.

[In the remainder of this section are contained accounts of several
who suffered the martyrdoms above mentioned in their war of the faith,
and all of whom are mentioned by Combes in his Historia de Mindanao,
who is cited at length by our author. [25] The first martyr (see
Combes, book vi, chapter xiv) is not even named by Combes, nor can
Assis give anything more definite of him. He was captured by the
Moro pirates (presumably in 1645) and taken to their home. Induced
by desire for a good ransom, his captors took the father to the Jolo
fort, but no agreement could be reached. Father Juan Contreras, then
chaplain of the fort, tried to aid him in effecting his escape, but
in vain. The captive was thereafter treated so harshly that he became
ill, and in spite of a pitiable letter, which aroused great sympathy
for him in the Spanish Joloan fort, and spurred on the soldiers to
beg that he be ransomed at their expense, he remained