Indians, working with them, and introducing among them Christian policy and civilization so far as they were capable of receiving them. This avocation of his would have sufficed most men for their full duty, but he did it in addition to his regular work as vicar-general. The villages were at such a distance from Manila that it took more than a day to go there by sea, and much more by the rivers. [32] In order to teach the new fathers the manner of working with the Indians, and to begin to acquaint them with the language of the natives, which he knew very well, he went with them to the villages commonly known as Bataan. Those who had the fortune to go with father Fray Christoval were very well pleased, inasmuch as they were beginning to obtain that which they had followed with such desire from España. The rest of them, desiring greater convenience for living according to the custom of friars than could be afforded them in the house of the bishop (although he was a holy man), went to the convent of St. Francis, where they were received and entertained as might have been expected of fathers so religious and so zealous in following the rules of their great father and ours, which we accepted exactly as if we were of the same habit. Nothing less could have been expected, since those fathers then had as custodian the holy Fray Pedro Baptista, afterwards the most glorious martyr in Iapon, and as guardian father Fray Vicente Valero--another Nathaniel in guilelessness of soul, joined with a most solid virtue and devotion to his vows, which caused him to be esteemed and venerated among lay and religious. Some days afterward the Indians of Pangasinan were entrusted to our religious. They lived forty leguas distant, and, being all heathen, had need of someone to labor among them. The order likewise took charge of the Indians of Bataan, to whom, as has been said, the father provisor ministered because he had no one to send; as also of the Chinese or Sangleys, who up to that time had had no ministry. Many thousands of them had come and were still coming every year from their own country, on account of their trade and commerce in this colony, which is very great. Many of them were traders, and many were mechanics. No one desired to undertake the ministry to them, because of the great labor and the little fruit; but since the new laborers had come fresh, and were eager for work, this claim of itself was sufficient for them to regard it as a great favor to be permitted to occupy themselves where the toil was greatest. The father vicar-general sent for the absent brethren, and gathered all together in the convent of St. Francis; and there offered a long prayer for them, asking for the grace of the Holy Spirit. He then made them a spiritual and devout address. After it was concluded, he who in lesser things had never been accustomed to proceed without consultation, now, without further consultation than that which he had had with God, assigned and distributed them