The Orders of St. Dominic and St. Francis here maintain very strict discipline among themselves, for which many thanks should be rendered to God. In the matter of instruction they are doing wonders in teaching, by word and deed, and in every way are very exemplary. They are, too, no great burden on the Indians, which is a serious consideration; but in the matter I mention, of leaving some missions, and abandoning them to perdition, those fathers are the most lacking, which is a very serious evil. There is no lack of friars to go to other realms, yet to relieve the royal conscience of your Majesty (for which purpose they came to these islands) and the consciences of the encomenderos, and aid these poor Indians to be saved, to take in charge mission-houses, and sustain the children that they have baptized--for these are their children indeed, to whom they are under greater obligation in spiritual matters than if they were their fathers in the flesh--these things they do not attend to. This gives me great sorrow, and particularly as I find that my friars are not very faithful in these matters, and the devil has disturbed them of late years with a spirit of unrest. There is not, and has not been discovered, a people better disposed to conversion than the Indians of these islands--I mean, as God has now disposed affairs. It is very necessary that your Majesty should send a visitor for the religious of St. Augustine. He should be a friar from over there in Hespana, a man of great ability, very observant, fond of poverty, etc. He should not come alone, but with a considerable number of similar religious. He must not come as visitor and vicar-general for a limited time--for the affairs of this Order here are not such that they can be set right in two, three, or four years--but as some friar named de Montoia went to Portugal. If things are as reported--and they must be so, in large part at least--affairs are in a ruinous condition. The one thing that most needs remedy in these islands, Sire, is this matter of the Order of St. Augustine. At present one of these fathers, [23] named Fray Juan Gutierrez, is being sent by their superiors to the feet of your Majesty. He has been definitor, and has had three offices in his Order, and it has been proposed to make him provincial. I consider him a very modest and religious friar, who will earnestly plead with your Majesty in this matter of the inspection and improvement of his Order. I beseech your Majesty to favor and aid him in all ways.