The missionary zeal of the Jesuits carried them even to Mindanao, an island so inaccessible by reason of its mountains and volcanoes, its impenetrable jungle, its unnavigable rivers infested with alligators and pirates, its fierce and savage inhabitants always at war with one another, that the Spanish Government exercised only nominal sovereignty over it, and was not ever able even to get its interior surveyed. When the Jesuits came there some years ago they found a Christian population only on the east and north coasts, and in a few isolated spots of the other coast regions. Of the interior tribes many were known only by name. Owing to the zeal of these fathers, not only in missionary enterprise, but also in geographical and ethnographical exploration, the network of rivers in the great island is now very well known, the fathers having recorded the results of their explorations in numerous sketches and maps. They have also fully described the manners and customs of the heathen tribes. As an instance of the savagery of the Mindanayas, for the most part fanatical Moros or Mohammedans, it may be mentioned that head-hunting seemed till lately to be the great object of their existence. The man who had chopped off sixty heads was entitled to wear a scarlet turban for the rest of his mortal life, and scarlet turbans are still far from uncommon among them. As there was an inordinate desire among the doughty and dusky warriors to wear these turbans, it follows that the population was being gradually but surely thinned out. Yet even here, on the sea-coast of Mindanao, the Jesuits established their stations, living in the midst of their small flocks, with their lives in their hands, in close proximity to pirates, savage alligators, and still more savage scarlet turbans. The correspondent of the Daily Telegraph blames the missionaries for not teaching the elements of the Christian doctrine in Spanish to the natives, contrary, as he says, to an express law, of which they have been continually reminded by the Governor.