the Catholic faith among those new vassals of his Majesty." 831. Then he goes on to treat of the unsupportable hardships suffered in Calamiànes by the evangelical ministers. I have thought it best not to omit his relation, in order that one may see how much merit is acquired in the promulgation of the faith amid such anxieties. "But the devil," he continues, "who watches that he may not lose the souls of which he finds himself in quasi possession, has raised up at this time a cloud of dust, by which he has prevented and is preventing in many of these remote parts the obtaining of many souls and is occasioning the loss of others. For as I am advised by the letters of the religious of Calamiànes, under date of the eighteenth of the current month and of the twenty-second of the past month of April, that the alcaldes-mayor who have governed that jurisdiction (and even more he who is governing it at present, who is a lad of 21, a servant of the governor and of these islands) cause so great and continual troubles both to the father ministers and to the natives of the country, that the latter, although Christians, have retired from their villages of Taytày, Dumaràn, and Paràgua to the mountains in order to escape their intolerable oppression. They exclaim that they are not withdrawing from obedience to his Majesty and that they do not intend to abandon their profession as Christians, but that they do not dare to live in the more than enslaved condition in which the alcaldes-mayor, carried away by their insatiable greed, confine them. The father prior of Taytày writes me that he has entered the mountains with every danger from the enemy, in search of his terrified and scattered sheep; and notwithstanding all the efforts and warnings that he has made and given them he has not been able to succeed in getting them to return to their villages, unless another alcalde-mayor be assigned to them, and relief offered for the extreme oppression that is offered to them. They answer the arguments of the father by telling him not to tire himself, 'for we can ill hope,' they say, 'that he who tramples on the sacred dignity of a priest, will have any moderation with regard to us.' They assert this because they saw that the last alcalde-mayor lifted his cane against father Fray Domingo de San Agustin, and struck him while he was putting on his clerical robes to say mass; and that the present alcalde-mayor treated the religious with indignity even to the point of taking from them the one who takes them their necessary support, so that they have had to find for themselves the water that they drink. He has taken from them the sacristans and other servants of the Church without leaving them even anyone to aid them in the mass. He has forbidden the Indians to enter the convent or to assist in any of the things to which they are obliged. He has forbidden them to go out as they ought to the visitas, and to confess, preach, and catechize. It is all directed