but all the mothers brought all their children to receive the emblem, and were not willing to depart until they and all the others had received. For this journey I thank and am deeply grateful to the bishop who was most earnestly desirous that Ours should aid in so important a ministry. As it was clearly evident that the villages of Taitai, Antipolo, and others of that encomienda--which was six leguas from Manila, up the river, and in which there were already some Christians--contained many infidels who should be converted, he entrusted it to the Society. Through the grace of Jesus Christ our Lord, such fruitful results were accomplished as shall be seen in the course of this narrative. I shall simply state for the present that, at the end of ten years, I was in the habit of saying (in imitation of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus) that I was most thankful to our Lord, for, when I entered the place, I found hardly forty Christians, and at the end of that time there were not four infidels. If I am not mistaken, we baptized with our own hands more than seven thousand souls; and today it is one of the most flourishing of Christian communities that Holy Church possesses, and none in those regions is superior to it. How the village of Taitai improved its site. Chapter IX. At that time the village of Taitai lay along the water, on the banks of a marsh or stream formed by waterfalls from the mountains of Antipolo, which emptied into the river near the same mouth by which it flows out of the lagoon. It was situated in a most beautiful and extensive valley, formed between the lagoon and the mountains; and so low that each year, when the waters of the lagoon rise on account of the floods from the many rivers which enter it, the valley is flooded and submerged as is Egypt by the Nile, and remains thus inundated from August until October or November. At this period the valley itself becomes a lagoon of more than an estado in depth, and can be traversed only by means of boats. This inundation abundantly fertilizes the rice fields and seeded lands with which the valley is covered, and, as a result, rich and abundant harvests are gathered. The water enters at the proper season when the rice stalks are hardening and are beginning to ear; consequently the copious irrigation helps it to form seed without hindering the grain from hardening, or the harvest from being gathered. On the contrary it is a convenience, as I myself have often seen, to go in boats for the reaping, and in those boats to bring the bundles of grain to the houses, where they are exposed to the sun to dry. When it is thoroughly dry they thresh and clean it, and store it in their granaries. This inundation not only flooded the village--to such an extent that the streets could be traversed only in boats, in which I went often enough--but also, although the floor of the church had been raised and repairs made to guard against the water, it flowed in over the steps, even to the main altar.