those who had to confess, he served as an interpreter. Sometimes they went from one village to another by sea, in tiny boats; but for much of the time it was necessary to go by land, through an overflowed and muddy country, so that they thought it best to walk barefooted and barelegged. After they arrived where they were going, they prepared themselves to hear confession or to baptize, all wet and muddy as they were, as indeed necessity compelled them to do. They had no other food than a little rice, boiled with nothing but water, and sometimes a little bit of fish to eat, if the Indians happened to have any. They had the floor of an Indian hut for bed, and for covers their wet apparel, and nothing else. They lived and labored thus, in order to make these Indians understand that for all their efforts they expected no other return than a harvest of souls for God; and when the Indians saw them so disinterested, and perceived that when they called upon the fathers on any account, whether by day or by night, whether in rain or in thunder, their request never was considered nor seemed to the fathers unreasonable, so that they should put off coming to them, many began to desire baptism, and others were eager to confess, in health or in sickness. Thus, though the labor increased, it seemed lighter and even pleasanter; and after they had tasted this refreshment they were not unready to reach out further than their strength would permit. Hence they all fell sick, one of them to death. This was father Fray Pedro Bolaños, a man more than sixty years of age--who, at a time when others are accustomed to take their ease, undertook these excessive labors with more courage than strength. His efforts were such as would have been very arduous even if they had only occasionally been made; but as the work of every day they were mortal, as they turned out for father Fray Pedro. This father was living in the very devout and strict convent of Nuestra Señora de la Peña de Francia, when he heard with great interest the mere rumor that religious were being collected to establish a new province in the Philippinas and China, which was to be placed by the founders on a footing of most strict observance, as being undertaken by persons who were proposing to convert whole nations of heathen. This came to father Fray Pedro as a voice from heaven; and he consulted with the Virgin, to whom he was devoted, and became more settled in the purpose of undertaking this pious enterprise himself. But because he did not wish to be deceived he talked the matter over with the wisest and most devout of the fathers of that house. They dissuaded him from the undertaking because of his great age, and because he would be obliged to undertake two long sea-voyages on his way to the islands--efforts greater than at his age, after he had spent his energies for the sake of his order, he would be able to make. They went on to say that even after he had