for failing to consult his tribesfolk or kinsmen in the matter. This Lomboy used often to visit the churches and convents of the religious; and, simulating carelessness, looked on with great curiosity to see how they lived. He beheld their great innocence, their penitence, their continual prayer, their frequent scourging; he saw that they ate but little, labored much, went afoot from one village to another to give aid to all, without fear of the great heats and the no less dreadful storms of rain which follow each other in this country, according to the seasons; above all, he was impressed by the great uniformity displayed by the life of the fathers in all these holy exercises. He saw them so poor and so completely without covetousness that they not only did not strive for temporal gain, but shared freely the little which they had with the poor. He saw them so patient that they paid with good works for the bad deeds and the worse words which the heathen Indian did and said to them. He saw them so chaste that they did not seem to be made of flesh and blood, and seemed to be sinless in this respect. When this Indian saw and thought of all these things he said: "You know me, fathers, and you see that I am exiled for my sins. I too have noted the manner in which you live in your convents, and the way in which you treat each other. So good are your ways in all things that I cannot help seeing that the law which you preach is a good one; and therefore I have determined to bring my evil life to an end and to seek for God. Therefore I beg of you the training that is needed by my faults and my wretched conditions of my life, and I put my will wholly in yours." The religious encouraged him to go on as he had begun, taught him, and baptized him; and his conversion was of great value, since it resulted in the baptism of many who heard him tell all these things as a witness at first hand from within the convent, from whom nothing could be concealed if anything to the contrary had existed. It kept the good provincial from many gray hairs to hear and see all these things; and he gave thanks to the Lord for the fortitude and perseverance which His grace had inspired within him in previous years, when not only the well-affected Spaniards and the religious of other orders, but even the bishop himself, had advised him to withdraw the religious from that province, where there was nothing but immeasurable labor to be done, to the great danger of their lives, while the Indians gave no hope that they would be converted. Rather, they strove with all their might to dismiss the religious from their country, offering a great quantity of gold for that purpose, so great was their obstinacy and their opposition to the gospel. To this the good superior had answered: "Then it is these bad Indians whom I wish my friars to strive to convert." Indeed, he had even commanded them to persevere in that which they had begun,