The preaching of the Recollects in this territory is mingled with the beginnings of that religious family in the Filipino archipelago. One may say that this was the region where the first discalced missionaries and the parishes established by them tasted the first-fruits of their evangelizing zeal, those first-fruits being offered to the Catholic church as a testimony of the purity of their doctrine, and submitted to the crown of Espana as its most faithful and disinterested vassals, Although they arrived at these shores in the year one thousand six hundred and six, in the following year they had already overrun this province--to whose inhabitants they taught the mysteries of our religion, and gave helpful instructions in the social life, in contradistinction to their barbarous state. The first who sowed the seed of the gospel in the province of Zambales were the calced Augustinian fathers. Because of the lack of the above religious, the captain-general of these islands and their metropolitan cabildo entreated the vicar-provincial of the Recollects to assign religious for the spiritual cultivation of that unfilled vineyard. In the year one thousand six hundred and nine, our laborers went to Zambales, although visits had been made two years previously by those who were laboring in the province of Bataan, in order to increase the gospel seed. The meekness and resignation of the fathers in the midst of so much wretchedness and hardship arrested the attention of those barbarians; and the fathers succeeded in catechizing and converting many through their gentleness and kind treatment, and reduced them to settlements. The Recollect fathers were charged with the spiritual administration of this province until the year one thousand six hundred and seventy-nine. In that year, being obliged to go to take charge of the province of Mindoro, and to preach the holy gospel there, they were forced to hand over the missions of Zambales--eleven in number--to the Dominican fathers, who assumed charge of them.