I can scarcely express to you, my reverend Father, how I have been moved at the sight of these poor Indians, of whom there are many who die without receiving the sacraments of the church, in great danger of their eternal salvation: because there are so few priests here, that the majority of them have charge of two villages at the same time. When it happens that they are occupied in one place, fulfilling the functions of their ministry, they are not able to assist those who die in the other. I have been still more greatly moved by the forsaken condition in which we found several other persons, who died in the islands that are called Pais. Although these islands are not far from the Marianas, their inhabitants have no intercourse with those of the latter group. The discovery of this new country has this year been made certain, as is here recounted. In making the visitation with the father provincial, as I have already said, we arrived at the village of Guivam, [6] on the island of Samal, the largest and southernmost island of the Eastern Pintados. We found there twenty-nine Palaos, or natives of these newly-discovered islands. The easterly winds which rule over these seas from the month of December to the month of May had blown them three hundred leguas from their islands to this village on the island of Samal. They had come on two small vessels, that are called here "paraos." This is how they relate their adventure. They had embarked, thirty-five persons in all, intending to go to a neighboring island, when there arose a wind so violent that they were not able to gain the island where they wished to land, or any other in the neighborhood, and were carried out to the open sea. They made many efforts to land on some shore or some island known to them, but without avail. They sailed thus at the will of the winds during seventy days without being able to make land. Finally losing all hope of returning to their country, and seeing themselves half-dead with hunger, without water and without food, they resolved to abandon themselves to the mercy of the winds, and land on the first island they could find toward the west. Scarcely had they taken this resolution, when they found themselves in sight of the village of Guivam on the island of Samal. A man from that village who was on the seashore saw them, and, judging by the structure of their little vessels that they were some strangers who had lost their way, he took a piece of cloth and made them a signal to enter by the channel that he indicated, in order to avoid the rocks and the banks of sand upon which they were about to run aground. These poor men were so frightened at seeing this stranger that they began to put back to sea; however much effort they made, they were not able to turn about, and the wind blew them a second time toward the shore. When they were near, the Guivam man made them understand by signs the route that they should take; but, seeing that