Under the mild and pacific government of our father provincial Fray Diego de Ordás, this afflicted province was able to lift the burden of so many troubles as the adversity of the times and the great lack of religious occasioned. That lack increased to the pass that many were giving out under the heavy burden that necessity forced them to assume; for those most privileged by their age and by sickness carried burdens that were enough for two, and most of them the burden of three, so that many succumbed and made the lack greater. With these disasters came the time for the celebration of a new chapter, to the great sorrow of all the province at taking farewell of the mild and prudent government of our father Fray Diego de Ordás. They also grieved because there were few experienced persons to substitute in his place; for a time so full of dangers needed a pilot experienced in the government of a province so assailed by its adversaries. The capitular members assembled in the Manila convent, and all were unanimous in [their purpose to] elect as provincial father Fray José de la Cuesta, prior of Bulacán, an able religious. He was very learned and experienced in the Greek language, which chair he had filled by substitution in the university of Salamanca, because of the death of his father, Master Andrés de la Cuesta Olmedo, the regularly-appointed professor of that subject. But that hope was frustrated, for God had taken him to himself two days before the chapter, to the general sorrow of all the province--especially of our father Fray Diego de Ordás, who had brought him from his province of Castilla in the fine mission that entered this province in the year 1635. Accordingly, the chapter was convened under the presidency of father Fray Juan de Borja, the third definitor, because of the deaths of the [two] others, Fray Pedro Mejía and Fray Pablo Maldonado. Our father, Fray Alonso Coronel, [104] a religious of great virtue and prudence, and such an one as the times needed--also of the said mission conducted by our father Fray Diego de Ordás--was elected, April 29, 1662. The definitors elected in the chapter were fathers Fray Gonzalo de la Palma, [105] Fray Luis de Medina, [106] Fray Isidro Rodríguez, and the lecturer Fray Antonio Carrión, and the visitors, father Fray Juan de Vergara [107] and Fray Juan de Isla. [108] They passed the acts necessary for the efficient government of the province and for the administration of the doctrinas where were missions of new reductions of people, especially on the outskirts of the province of Ilocos--which is also the farthest [from Manila] in this great island called Luzón. There father Fray Benito de Mena [109] was progressing finely with the conversion of the Indians of Aclán and Vera in the mountains contiguous to Cagayán, of which we shall treat more fully hereafter.