The missionaries of our corporation performed their first labors of conquest in this territory. Here were founded the oldest villages on our list; and here took place the first persecutions of our long-suffering predecessors, who had the glory of watering with their blood the country that they were evangelizing, the one that furnished to the province of San Nicolas their protomartyr. Fray Miguel de Santa Maria, accompanied by Father Pedro de San Jose (who, although he had been a calced Augustinian, had become a Recollect in Manila), and by brother Fray Francisco de Santa Monica, were the first to leave the convent of San Juan de Bagumbayan; and prepared by prayer and penance, and full of the spirit of God, set forth to announce His mysteries to the idolaters and heathen, sent legitimately to the mountains of Mariveles to illumine its inhabitants with the light of the Catholic faith. They found those natives enveloped in the most barbarous idolatry, adoring the sun, the moon, the cayman, and other filthy animals. These people regarded certain old men, as corrupt and as deceived as the divinities whom they were serving, as the ministers of those deceitful gods. The customs of those people were very analogous to the doctrines that directed them. Every kind of superstition was practiced; homicide was a praiseworthy and meritorious action; and their sacrifices on some occasions were human lives. In that vineyard so filled with wickedness the above-mentioned fathers announced the triune and one God, the mystery of the incarnation, and the eternal duration of the future life. The missionaries suffered more than one can tell from the inhabitants, who were opposed to and stubborn toward their teaching. In their bodies did they submit to hunger, and to the intemperance and inclemency of the elements; and in their truly apostolic spirit they suffered mortal anguish because of the blindness of their neighbors, which was in proportion to the great love of God and the zeal for His glory which glowed brightly in their hearts. [The Recollects have charge of the villages of Mariveles, with 588 tributes, and 1,852 souls; Morong, with 870 tributes, and 3,154 souls; and Bagac, with 496 1/2 tributes, and 1,743 souls.] Province of Zambales This province is located in the island of Luzon, north of Manila. It is bounded on the north by the gulf of Lingayen and the province of Pangasinan, on the east by the chain of mountains called Mariveles, on the south by Bataan, and on the west by the Chinese Sea; and is more than thirty leguas long in a north and south direction, and seven wide.