which follows the primitive order in the strict observance of the rule, and which is like the primitive church in the conversion of the peoples. This company embarked near the first of July, 1605; and, after suffering the ordinary discomforts of two long voyages following so closely one after the other, they reached Manila the next year, six having died in the voyages and journeys. One of these was father Fray Pedro Valverde, a student in the college of San Gregorio, a son of San Pablo at Cordova, and a religious of superior virtue. He died as the vessel was just beginning to come among the islands, and was buried in an Indian hamlet near the port of Ybalon. Some years afterward, when the father provincial sent a religious for his bones, he found the body still entire, without a foul odor or any decay, just as if it had been newly buried; but neither the Indians nor their encomendero would permit him to take it away, keeping possession of it as a holy body. The day after they arrived, the superior gave them their assignments throughout all the province because of the great need of religious; and many were sent to Nueva Segovia.] Ere long, many of the religious wrote to him thanking him for having brought them to so devoted a province, where they had so much opportunity to serve God and to do good to their fellow-men. In particular, father Fray Matheo de la Villa, a son of Sant Esteban at Salamanca, wrote to him. He was in a large village, the whole population of which was composed of heathen who desired to become Christians. He taught them what they desired much, and he desired more. He wrote that on Holy Saturday he had been obliged to baptize six hundred of them in a church which they themselves were making; and that he now understood the language of the natives sufficiently, though he had been only six months learning it. In spite of this diligence, they were not able to attend to this great spiritual harvest, for the laborers were few; and so, though new and old were apportioned, there were not enough, although they did all in their power, for many villages of heathen who begged for them with great urgency. The provincial, grieved by this, and seeing that he had no answer to make except that he would pray God to bring religious from España, wrote to father Fray Francisco de Sant Joseph, whom he had left in Manila as vicar-provincial, and to the other religious, an account of affairs. In particular he told them that the Indian chiefs from inland had come to him begging him, on their knees and in tears, to give them a religious to teach them the way to heaven; and that one of them had offered to make a village of two thousand inhabitants and the other of nine hundred, in order that the religious might with greater ease give them Christian instruction. The Indians in their heathen condition live in farmsteads and tiny hamlets, where it is very difficult to teach them; and it is impossible that teaching shall enlighten them, because of the