Innocent's day, the twenty-eighth of December of the
year 1696. The inhabitants of Guivam gathered on the shore, received
them with charity, and brought them some wine and some food. They
ate eagerly some cocoanuts, which are the fruit of the palms of
this country. The meat in them is somewhat like that of chestnuts,
except that it has more oil, and that it furnishes a kind of sweetened
water which is agreeable to drink. The natives presented them with
rice boiled in water, which the people use here and in all of Asia,
as one does bread in Europe. They looked at it with wonder, and
took some grains of it, which they immediately threw on the ground,
imagining that they were worms. They exhibited much pleasure when
some of the large roots that are called palavan were brought to them,
and eagerly ate them.

Meanwhile the natives brought two women whom the wind had thrown upon
the same shore at Guivam some time before. As they knew a little of
the language of this country, they served as interpreters, and it is
through them that we learned what I am about to relate. One of those
women found among these strangers some of her kindred, and they no
sooner recognized each other than they began to weep. The father who
had charge of this village, having learned of the arrival of these poor
people, had them come to Guivam. Some, when they saw him and perceived
the respect that was shown him, imagined that he was the king of the
country, and that their lives and their fate were in his hands. In
this belief they threw themselves upon the ground to implore his
mercy, and to beg that he would grant them their lives. The father,
touched with compassion at seeing them in such great desolation,
did all that he could to console them; and, to mitigate their fears,
he caressed their children, of whom three were still at the breast,
and five others a trifle older, and promised their parents to give
them all the help that was in his power.

The inhabitants of Guivam vied with each other in offering to the
father to take the strangers into their houses, and to furnish them
with all things that they needed, both food and clothing. The father
committed the strangers to them, but on condition that they should
not separate those who were married (for there were some married ones
among them); and that they should not take less than two together, for
fear that those who were left alone would die of grief. Of thirty-five
who had come aboard the shi