and sometimes they must get along with sweet potatoes, gabes, [13] or [other] roots. But God made amends for these privations and toils with various inner pleasures; for they succeeded in obtaining some conversions that they had not expected, and even among the blacks, from whom they feared death, they found help and sustenance. [The author here relates a vision which appeared to an Indian chief, of the spirit of Father Marcelo Mastrilli as the director and patron of Father Abarca; and the renunciation of a mission to Europe which was vowed by Father Patiño in order to regain his health--which accomplished, he returns to his missionary labors at Iligan.] He returned to the ministry, where he encountered much cause for suffering and tears; because the [military] officers [cabos] who then were governing that jurisdiction, actuated by arrogance and greed of gain, had committed such acts of violence that they had depopulated those little villages, many fleeing to the hills, where among the Moros they found treatment more endurable. The only ones who can oppose the injustice of such men are the gospel ministers. These fathers undertook to defend the Indians, and took it upon themselves to endure the anger of those men--who, raised from a low condition to places of authority, made their mean origin evident in their coarse natures and lawless passions; and the license of some of them went to such extremes that it was necessary for the soldiers to seize them as intolerable; and, to revenge themselves for the outrageous conduct of the officials, they accused the latter as traitors. Not even the Malanao chief Molobolo, who always had been firm on the side of the Spaniards, could endure their acts of violence, and, to avoid these, went back to the lake. This tempest lasted for some time, but afterward some peace was secured, when those officers were succeeded by others who were more compliant. The venerable Father Pedro Gutierrez went to Iligan, and with his amiable and gentle disposition induced a chief to leave the lake, who, with many people, became a resident of Dapitan; and another chief, still more powerful, was added to Iligan with his people. These results were mainly seemed by the virtue of the father, the high opinion which all had of his holy character, and the helpful and forcible effects of his oratory. The land was scorched by a drouth, which was general throughout the islands, from which ensued great losses. The father offered the Indians rain, if they would put a roof on the church; they accepted the proposal, and immediately God fulfilled what His servant had promised--sending them a copious rain on his saying the first mass of a novenary, which he offered to this end. With this the Indians were somewhat awakened from their natural sloth, and the church was finished, so that the fathers could exercise in it their ministries. The drouth was followed by a plague of locusts,