served as medicines and remedies for the ills from which they suffered; and for their convalescence, though they had no worldly luxuries, that fruit was much better which, more and more every day, was borne by this new plant of the church. From it they recovered health, strength, and new courage to carry on the work which they had begun. To give them still greater spirit, the Lord came to them working miracles. The first mass which was celebrated in the village of Pia took place on St. Bartholomew's day, the twenty-fourth of August. [Before the end of the month, a sick person who wished to be baptised beheld some fierce and abominable forms which dissuaded him from baptism, and reminded him of the rights and customs of his ancestors, charging him not to change the faith in which his fathers and grandfathers had lived. These dreadful forms were driven away by three persons, clad in black cloaks with white garments beneath. The sick man was often asked if he knew these three persons who had delivered him, and he said "no." When he was asked if they were religious of our order he also said "no," because he had never seen any of the religious wearing their cloaks. He always declared that he had been awake and not asleep; and the narrative was accepted as certain. At one time, a religious who was himself in poor health was left in charge of thirteen newly-converted Christians, who were all confined to their beds by sickness. Being unable to give them the care which he desired, he placed upon the abdomen of each of them a little roasted rice-bran, very hot, begging the Lord to make up by His pity for the lack of medicine. When he came back the next day to visit them, all but two were well, and had gone to work in the field; and the others soon recovered. The same treatment given by another Indian or by the sick man to himself had no effect; and thus it is plain that the healing was due to the desire of the Lord to honor and to give authority to the hand which applied the remedy. The Indians themselves observed that, after they had religious, far fewer died than before they had them. In their ancient days of superstition, when a man fell sick he generally died, because he was treated only by the witchcraft of the aniteras, whose sole purpose was to get gold from the sick persons by false promises. The sorcerers did them no good and indeed rather harmed them, since cures came from our worst enemy, the devil; while now the Lord was giving them, by means of the religious, health that was health indeed. One of the religious in this region, father Fray Juan Naya, [43] fell ill, and grew worse so rapidly that he was given up as a consumptive. By the advice of another religious, he made a vow to our Lady to serve in that province among the heathen, if she should be pleased to grant him sufficient health for him to carry on this work. He made the vow for seven consecutive years from the day of the Visitation, July 2, 1605.