as if they had during all their lives been learning to obey, which is something very difficult even in religious orders. This was true, although the religious instantly laid a general interdict upon all their ancient vices; obliged them to consort solely with their lawful wives; even forced many to abandon their land and their old villages, that they might come where teaching was given them; and, in a word, compelled them to enter all at once, and in a body, into ordered ways of living, in matters both divine and human. They had not a thought of opposing a single command; and this has been achieved without stripes or penalties, but simply by kindness and gentleness. The result has been that those who did not understand anything except killing, and drinking till they could not stand, and running without any restraint after every sort of vice, now never think of doing these things--as I have seen in these first three villages in this district of Ytabes. The day we went among them we found all the men lying about the streets, dead drunk; since that day there has not been one drunk enough to lose his senses. The same reformation has been achieved in all other matters, for they were not compelled to do all this by fear of the Spaniards. Quite otherwise; the Spaniards regarded these Indians as so indomitable and intrepid that, for fear of them, they did not dare go up the river as far as their villages; but after the religious went among them, they were gathered into large villages that they might be more easily instructed in the faith, having been previously scattered among many small ones, like so many farmsteads [in Spain]. There were three villages thus formed: one of about five hundred tributes, named Taban, the church of which was called San Raymundo; and the other two of more than a thousand tributes each--one called Pia, its church Santa Ynes de Monte Policiano, afterwards known as San Domingo; and the last one, named Tuao, the church of which was dedicated to the holy guardian angels because of the incident referred to above. Thus all those people were brought together and united, to reduce them to settlements, and to a civilized mode of life and government; and to the church; but this result was obtained at no small cost to the religious. Of three of them, two immediately fell very sick, and the third still more so, for he died as a result of the illness. This was father Fray Luis de Yllescas, a son of the convent of Sancto Domingo at Mexico, a very humble religious, very obedient and beloved by all. He received the holy sacraments for his departure with great devotion; and went away to enjoy, as may be presumed, the reward of his labors, which had been many in a short time. Yet neither this death nor the failure of health in the rest caused them to withdraw their hands from the work upon which they had begun. On the contrary, the great good which they beheld, wrought by the Lord among these Indians,