all that be then, if they have to attend also to the reduction
of so great a number of souls, who live lawless in idolatry in sight
of the law of grace! I repeat that our Recollects, equal in their zeal
to the other gospel laborers, exceed them there without difficulty in
the necessary opportunities for suffering. Moreover, if our brothers
have the advantage at all times in this regard of other missionaries,
those of the triennium of which we are speaking, excelled themselves,
for they labored more than ever in the administration of the faithful
and in the conversion of the heathen.

720. But the greatest efforts that the venerable father provincial
put forth, and the places where the religious assigned for that work
labored with excessive fervor, were in the districts of Butuan and
Cagayan, which are located in the island of Mindanao. There was a
heathen Indian called Dato Pistig Matanda, who had been living for
many years on the banks of the river Butuan between the villages
of Linao and Hothibon. He was of noble rank, a lord of vassals,
and had great power and a not slight understanding, although he was
corrupted with an execrable multitude of vices. He, instigated by
the devil, had caused all the efforts of the evangelical ministers
to return fruitless for many years; for idolatry maintained not only
in the castle of his soul, but as well in all the territory of his
jurisdiction, the throne which it had usurped, and the continual
assaults which were made without cessation against that obstinate
heart by the members of our discalced order had no effect. Several
religious had endeavored to make him submit to the sweet yoke of
the evangelical law, and they availed themselves with holy zeal of
all the stratagems which, as incentives, generally attract the human
will to reason and open the door to grace in order that it may work
marvels. Especially did the holy father Fray Miguel de Santo Thomas,
make use of all the means that he considered fitting to reduce the
Indian chief to the true sheepfold as well as those who were strayed
from it in his following, during the whole time that he graced that
river by his presence. But experience proved that God reserved the
triumph solicited on so many occasions for the happy epoch of which
we are treating at present, for his own inscrutable reasons. At
that time then the divine vocation working powerfully and mildly,
and availing itself as instruments of our religious who resided i