may St Peter bless it. Amen." In another letter he writes: "For days I have been toiling alone; and when I depart from a village, a considerable time passes before I return to it. But it is evident that the spiritual benefit of those poor people acquits me for this delay, in order that your Reverence may take pity on them. For this reason, my father, let fathers be brought from Espana; and will your Reverence send hither even twenty, for there will be a harvest for all of them. In Loboc and Dita in the last few days nearly four hundred little ones have been baptized; this has given me much consolation in the Lord, for I find great satisfaction in these little creatures. The adults are learning the doctrine with such fervor that even until midnight the sound of their voices is incessant. We have received information that enemies are coming to attack this island, and the people are therefore greatly disturbed. Would to God that we might be made captives for His love, and might die for pure love of Him!" All this is from Father Gabriel Sanchez. The enemies whom the father here mentions are Indians from the island of Mindanao which lies near the islands of Terrenate and Maluco, where the doctrine of Mahoma is professed. In the year one thousand six hundred that people collected an armed fleet of sixty small vessels, which descended upon these islands subject to the government of Manila, and wrought much damage. They laid waste the island of Bantayan and the river of Panai, and burned the churches. Then they coasted along other islands, robbing and murdering, and finally carried away as captives one thousand two hundred souls. But it pleased our Lord that when they came to this island of Bohol, where our fathers reside, they should inflict no considerable losses, nor did they burn our church and house--which they could have done with impunity, for all the people fled to the mountains. Yet they passed on without stopping, as Father Gabriel relates in part of his letter of November 16, which runs as follows: