n
Butuan and in Linao, softened that erstwhile bronze heart and he not
only received baptism, but also tried by all means to have his vassals
do the same. Hence, leaving out of account a great number of children,
the adults who were reengendered in the waters of salvation and became
sons of God and heirs of glory, exceeded three hundred.

721. At the same time another father, who had a residence in the
village of Linao, notably advanced our Christian religion in places
thitherto occupied by infidelity. The mountains of that territory are
inhabited by a nation of Indians, heathens for the greater part called
Manobos [31]--a word signifying in that language, as if we should
say here, "robust and very numerous people." When those Indians are
not at war with the Spaniards, they are tractable, docile, and quite
reasonable. They have the very good peculiarities of being separated
not a little from the brutish life of the other mountain people
thereabout; for they have regular villages, where they live in human
sociability in a very well ordered civilization. Although the above
qualities, as has been seen, are very apropos for receiving the faith,
notwithstanding that fact, although some of them are always reduced,
they are very few when one considers the untiring solicitude with which
our missionaries unceasingly endeavor to procure it. The reasons for so
deplorable an effect are the same as we have mentioned in regard to the
conversion of the Tagabaloyes Indians. But during the provincialate of
our father Fray Joseph de la Trinidad, either because those obstacles
ceased, or because divine grace wished to extend its triumphs, the
results were wonderful. A very great number of those Manobos were
admitted into the Church--how many is not specified by the relations
which we have been able to investigate, but we only see that they were
many; for it is asserted that while the district of Butuan, to which
Linao belonged, consisted before that time of about three thousand
reduced souls, its Christianity increased then by about one-third, the
believers thus being increased for God and the vassals for the king.

722. In the mountains of Cagayan, shone also the light of
disillusionment, without proving hateful but very agreeable to rational
eyes, for it caught them well disposed. The zealous workers of our
Institute, shaken with the zeal of the venerable father provincial,
devoted themselves to felling that bramble thicket which was f