e island of Paragua,
one of the islands of Calamianes. The confirmation of the pact with
his ambassador is awaited from Borney, so that that district may
really be incorporated with the rest which is subject to the king our
sovereign; and consequently, to introduce by means of our religious,
the Catholic faith among those new vassals of his Majesty."

831. Then he goes on to treat of the unsupportable hardships suffered
in Calamianes by the evangelical ministers. I have thought it best
not to omit his relation, in order that one may see how much merit is
acquired in the promulgation of the faith amid such anxieties. "But
the devil," he continues, "who watches that he may not lose the souls
of which he finds himself in quasi possession, has raised up at this
time a cloud of dust, by which he has prevented and is preventing
in many of these remote parts the obtaining of many souls and is
occasioning the loss of others. For as I am advised by the letters
of the religious of Calamianes, under date of the eighteenth of the
current month and of the twenty-second of the past month of April,
that the alcaldes-mayor who have governed that jurisdiction (and
even more he who is governing it at present, who is a lad of 21,
a servant of the governor and of these islands) cause so great and
continual troubles both to the father ministers and to the natives of
the country, that the latter, although Christians, have retired from
their villages of Taytay, Dumaran, and Paragua to the mountains in
order to escape their intolerable oppression. They exclaim that they
are not withdrawing from obedience to his Majesty and that they do
not intend to abandon their profession as Christians, but that they
do not dare to live in the more than enslaved condition in which
the alcaldes-mayor, carried away by their insatiable greed, confine
them. The father prior of Taytay writes me that he has entered the
mountains with every danger from the enemy, in search of his terrified
and scattered sheep; and notwithstanding all the efforts and warnings
that he has made and given them he has not been able to succeed in
getting them to return to their villages, unless another alcalde-mayor
be assigned to them, and relief offered for the extreme oppression
that is offered to them. They answer the arguments of the father by
telling him not to tire himself, 'for we can ill hope,' they say,
'that he who tramples on the sacred dignity of a priest, will have any
mod