Japon, because all malefactors of rank who are condemned to death cut open their own abdomens, and wound their bowels with their own knives [catanas], and thus kill themselves, that they may not die at the hands of another." [52] His obligations to his wife and children, and his duties of obedience as a soldier, were insisted upon; but he remained resolved to die as a Christian, not taking his own life, but offering it. He was not imprisoned, and visited his spiritual father, Fray Juan Joseph de San Jacintho, in a little village a quarter of a legua from Firaça. At the appointed time he dressed himself in new white clothes, washed his head, and gird on two swords. He then went to the cross-roads where he was to suffer, and died with a rosary in his hand and a little picture of the descent from the cross on his bosom. His holy body was exhumed by the Christians, and was kept by the fathers of St. Dominic, who afterward, when they were driven from the country, took it with them to Manila and placed it in the chapel of the relics. The tyrant commanded that Leon's wife and eldest son should suffer death, because they had been unable to persuade him to recant. Pablo, Leon's friend, who was accused at the same time, was not so happy as he, but was merely banished from the kingdom of Satzuma. On the eleventh of April in this year (i.e., 1609) there arrived at Manila some religious from the number of those who were brought from España to this province by father Fray Gabriel de Quiroga. He died on the voyage before he reached Mexico, and most of the others were scattered, and remained in Nueva España. Father Fray Gabriel was a son of our convent at Ocaña. He was a great preacher, and had come to this province in 1594. He was in the ministry to the Chinese; being unable to learn the language on account of his advanced age, and being in ill health, he returned to España. Here he felt scruples at having left the province of the Philippinas, and asked permission of the most reverend general to return to it with a company of religious. In 1607 he gathered a company in Sevilla, but was unable to come for lack of a fleet. Later in the same year, learning that six pataches were being prepared for the voyage, he arranged to reassemble the religious and to take them in these vessels, though he had already been appointed bishop of Caceres. He quickly got together thirty associates, taking the risk of sailing in December. The storms were so furious, and the asthma from which the bishop suffered was so severe, that he departed this life on the way. Of all those who came with him only eight completed the voyage which they had begun.