almost continuously with paganism fortified in the mountains contiguous
to the districts reduced to their administration, although they were
disappointed by not few fatigues, without being able to sing victory,
they were at last crowned with triumphs when it appeared fitting to
divine Providence. We have seen and shall see several activities that
prove this truth. At the present we are offered the feats performed
in the mountains of Bislig.

601. The district of Bislig, which is the last and most distant from
Manila among those possessed there by our reformed order, is located in
Carhaga, in the island of Mindanao and consists of five villages. These
are Bislig, which is the chief one, Hinatoan, Catel, Bagangan, and
Carhaga. At its beginning the province was named from the last one, as
it was then the settlement of the greatest population. Two religious
only are generally designated for the spiritual administration of
this district, and they have too much work in the exercise of it. For
the villages are located at great distances from one another, the
people are especially warlike, they are contiguous to the Moros,
those irreconcilable enemies, while the sea of those districts on
which they have to travel from one village to another, is extremely
boisterous, rough, and at times impassable, and on its reef in the
dangers already mentioned, several religious have lost their lives,
as will be patent further on in this history. But, notwithstanding
that the two religious assigned to those villages can scarcely attend
fully to the direction of the Christian Indians, and although because
of the dearth of religious from which our reformed order almost always
suffers in those islands, but rarely could more subjects be employed
there, those few following the maxim practiced there of one doing
the work of many, they did not cease to solicit ever the conversion
of the surrounding heathens, who are very numerous in those mountains.

602. There is especially so great a number of heathen Indians and
barbarous nations in certain mountains that extend along the coast,
from opposite Carhaga near Bislig (a distance of about twenty-five
leguas, while it is not known how far they extend inland), that even
the Christian Indians do not know them all. The nearest nation to our
villages is that of the Tagabaloyes, who are so named from certain
mountains which they call Balooy. They live amid their briers without
submission to the Catholic fai