Those islanders had never had a gospel minister to draw them from their ignorance. Our discalced, pitying their wretchedness, resolved to send five religious for that undertaking. Their superior was father Fray Juan de Santo Tomas. He, not fearing any dangers, and armed with the divine strength, planted the tree of the cross in the island of Cuyo. That island is called "the garden of nature," because of the singular pleasantness and beauty that it enjoys, in which it is more fortunate than the other islands of that famous sea. It is six leguas in circuit, as are two others its near neighbors, which rival it in beauty. It abounds in rice, and very savory fruits. The mountains are full of fragrant flowers, and shelter a great number of wild boars. There are many species of birds, and fowls are reared in considerable abundance. Although those islands were densely populated, the people were so barbarous that they seemed not to possess reason. For that cause our religious wished to cultivate that forest in order to sow the seed of the gospel. Notwithstanding [their savagery], father Fray Francisco de San Nicolás, accompanied by another priest, named Fray Diego de Santa Ana, and a lay brother, went to the chief island of the Calamianes. Treating the inhabitants with gentleness, they instructed and persuaded them to live gathered into villages--a thing that they utterly abominated, both because of their natural fierceness, and because they were greatly harassed by the enemies who generally infested those islands. Much was suffered in the attainment of that, but it was accomplished, with the most severe toil on the part of Ours; and they baptized many of those Indians, whose number we shall declare below, when we treat of the convents which were built in those islands in spite of the devil and all hell, who opposed them with all their forces. Although it will be somewhat of a digression, we cannot help saying something of the barbarous customs of those heathen Calamianes. They recognized a first cause, which governed what was visible. They attributed good or evil events to fortune and to the star of each one. They adored a deity who resembled Ceres, to whom they commended their fields and offered their fruits. They worshiped another petty deity who resembled Mars, in order to gain his protection in their battles. They believed in the _humalagar [i.e._, soul of an ancestor] (as we said of the Charaghas)--whom they summoned in their sicknesses by means of their priestesses. The priestesses placed a leaf of a certain kind of palm upon the head of the sick man, and prayed that it [_i.e._, the soul] would come to sit there, and grant him health. They also venerated the moon, asking that it would aid them at the time of death. They celebrated the obsequies of the dead during the full moon.