Depopulation of the Ladrone Islands.--About 1680 a governor was sent to the islands, and they were organized as a dependency of Spain. The policy of the governors and the Jesuits was conversion by the sword. The natives were persecuted from island to island, and in the history of European settlements there is hardly one that had more miserable consequences to the inhabitants. Disease was introduced and swept off large numbers. Others fell resisting the Spaniards, and an entire island was frequently depopulated by order of the governor, or the desire of the Jesuits to have the natives brought to Guam. Many, with little doubt, fled to other archipelagoes. If we can trust the Jesuit accounts, there were in the whole group one hundred thousand inhabitants when the Spaniards arrived. A generation saw them almost extinct. Dampier, who touched at Guam in 1686, says then that on the island, where the Spaniards had found thirty thousand people, there were not above one hundred natives. In 1716 and 1721 other voyagers announced the number of inhabitants on Guam at two thousand, but only one other island of the group was populated. When Anson in 1742 visited Guam, the number had risen to four thousand, and there were a few hundred inhabitants on Rota; but these seem to have been the whole population. The original native population certainly very nearly touched extinction. The islands were from time to time colonized from the Philippines, and the present population is very largely of Filipino blood. Conflicts between Governor and Archbishop.--Meanwhile, in the Philippines the conflict of the governor with the archbishop and the friars continued. The conduct of both sides was selfish and outrageous. In 1683 the actions of Archbishop Pardo became so violent and seditious that the Audiencia decreed his banishment to Pangasinan or Cagayan. He was taken by force to Lingayan, where he was well accommodated but kept under surveillance. The Dominicans retaliated by excommunication, and the Audiencia thereupon banished the provincial of the order from the Islands, and sent several other friars to Mariveles. But the year following, Governor Vargas was relieved by the arrival of his successor, who was favorable to the ecclesiastical side of the controversy. The archbishop returned and assumed a high hand. He suspended and excommunicated on all sides. The oidores were banished from the city, and all died in exile in remote portions of the archipelago. The ex-governor-general, Vargas, being placed under the spiritual ban, sued for pardon and begged that his repentance be recognized.