23. We arrived at the village of Santiago, which has a very poor climate, and is much exposed to the attacks of the hostile Camucones. The year before, some of them had been captured; and one of them said to me: "Father, my wife was giving birth to a child in this house, when the enemies arrived. I jumped through that window and some followed me. The others, especially the women who were in my house, were captured. They were taken along that path, and my wife, being weak and exhausted, could not walk. To make her go forward they kept striking her with clubs, and I watched it from behind here, quite powerless to aid her. She was carrying the newborn infant on one arm, and while there those men cleft it in twain from its head down with a catan and left it there." O barbarous cruelty! All that saddened my heart, and fear would not allow me to sleep, and daily I found my health getting worse. I said to the Indians that we should go to another place which was more healthful and safe, and they agreed to it. In a short time they built a chapel there and a little house for me. They built huts in their own manner for themselves, which are sufficient to protect them from the air and the rains. Cold there is not, but the heat is excessive. 24. One of the Chinese boats which was en route to Manila by way of that island stopped there. The Chinaman, named Gote, told me how he had outwitted six hostile boats by a trick and his boldness. His boat carried a father of the Society, and one Spaniard. Seeing that the enemy were about to attack him, he anticipated them. He ran up his flag, sounded his gongs, summoning and inviting them to fight and made for them. The enemy got together to take counsel, and the result was that they fled. The Chinaman told me, in his broken Spanish: "Those people neither saw nor knew what I was carrying in my boat. They also fear death. Had I fled, without doubt I would have been killed. Was it not better then to attack? They must have thought or suspected that I had arms; for who would risk his own life?" On the day of St. Philip and St. James I was in great tribulation. I was confessing in the chapel. I noticed that the seat in which I was seated, which was of bamboo, was shaking. I imagined that some dog was under it, and asked the Indian to drive it away from there. He answered: "No, Father, it is not a dog, but an earthquake." It increased in violence so much that, abandoning my penitent, I knelt down and begged God for mercy. I thought that surely the end of the world was come. I have seen many earthquakes, but none so severe as that. At the close I said: "If that earthquake has been as violent in Manila, not one stone has remained upon another." I learned afterward that it had caused some damage, although it was not great. The distance thence to Manila is very nearly one hundred leguas and there is a goodly stretch of water in between.