Signor Cuarteron entrusted a large amount of his funds to the Papal Government, as a permanent support for his mission, but they have been applied to the pressing secular needs of the Pope; and, on my return to Borneo, last year, I found the Italian priests had left, and nothing of the mission remained but closed churches and Signor Cuarteron, and that the funds he had retained in his own hand were being rapidly dissipated by his own unsuccessful commercial pursuits. I believe he has since returned to Manilla; so that practically the mission has closed. This I think a very fortunate circumstance, as Signor Cuarteron was totally unfit to conduct so important an undertaking, and his constant intriguing and mixing in political affairs were productive of serious mischief. I may add that the courtesy shown by the authorities of Brunei was exemplary; they submitted patiently to language to which they were totally unaccustomed, and put no obstacles in the way of the missionaries. The sultan made them a present of a piece of ground on which they built a church, and said they might have as much land as their converts could cultivate. Signor Ripa, the Italian priest who had charge of this mission, intended to have made it the nucleus round which those among the Manilla men who desired to rejoin the Church, might congregate, and his object was to afford them sufficient assistance to enable them to make gardens round the church, and support themselves by their agricultural operations. As he was himself well acquainted with agriculture, being the son of a landed proprietor living near Lecco, he hoped in time to establish a sort of model village, and a superior kind of cultivation. All the Italian priests who came with this mission were from Milan, and had an interesting story to tell, as they had all been engaged in the effort to throw off the yoke of Austria in 1848. Two had carried muskets, and two had attended to the wounded on the field. The eldest, Signor Reyna, appeared to me to be one of those remarkable men occasionally found among the missionaries of the Romish Church, of the most pleasing manners, winning address, and acute mind, and yet he was sent with four companions to New Guinea, where three of them were killed and eaten by the inhabitants, while he escaped in shattered health to die shortly afterwards.