these islands until Fray Juan persuaded him to do so, stood security for him, and undertook the duty of confessing him and of aiding him with his good advice, that he might the better fulfil the office. This he did in spite of the fact that this was certain to be, as it was, to his own damage; for suitors who did not receive what they desired immediately threw the blame on Father Juan, whom they well knew that the governor consulted as to the appointments which he made. Father Fray Juan knew all this well, but accepted it very readily, in order that he might undertake the direction of so upright a man as Don Luis. In spite of the fact that the esteem which was felt for Father Juan within and without the order was very great, the counterweight of humility and the consciousness of his own inferiority which he had was much greater. He regarded himself as the most useless in all the province, and treated himself as such. Hence, when he was named for vicar-general of the province, he managed that this title and office should be given to father Fray Juan de Sancto Thomas. [In the same way, when he was nominated prior of the convent of Manila at the time when father Fray Diego de Soria went as procurator to España, he succeeded in bringing about the election of another religious. He likewise strove to resign the office of commissary in favor of father Fray Bernardo de Sancta Cathalina, or Navarro. Such was the character of father Fray Juan de San Pedro Martyr, whom the province was willing to spare for the mission to Camboja. They would have spared an even more perfect religious if they could, well knowing that he who had to preach the gospel in a heathen kingdom like this should be such as father Fray Juan was, or even greater in all things. The companion of father Fray Juan, father Fray Pedro de Jesus or de la Bastida, a religious of great virtue, had come to the islands in the previous year, 1591, with the rest who were brought from España by father Fray Francisco de Morales. He had displayed high qualities in the mission to Bataan, to which he had been assigned. He had come from the very devout province of Aragon, of which he was a son. When they reached the great river of Camboja, father Fray Juan endeavored to carry out his mission, both for the conversion of those tribes and as an ambassador of the king our lord. He was contemptuously treated by the king, [26] the son of that king who had sent to ask for religious. The present king was wholly in the hands of Mahometan Malays, who persuaded him that the embassy involved some evil to him. When father Fray Juan asked his permission to return to the ship which they had left in the port, the king refused to grant it, and thus showed that he was plotting treachery. Father Fray Juan saw no opportunity for preaching the gospel, as the country was disturbed and in arms; and as the two captains, Diego Velloso and Blas Ruiz de Fernan Goncalez,