[Fol. 155 b:] The testimony of the venerable Father Mastrili, and the voluntary choice of so many distinguished Jesuits and martyrs who embraced these missions with the greatest eagerness, are sufficient recommendation for them. With just reason they can be esteemed, as being among the most laborious and difficult which the Society maintains anywhere in the world. This title is deserved by the missions of Philipinas, and among them those to Mindanao and the Subanos are some of the most difficult. No one accuses this statement of being exaggerated, and still less of being arrogant, before he has examined it minutely; and then he cannot find more moderate terms [than the above] in order not to fall short of the truth. Whatever dangers, inconveniences, and privations are experienced on land are also experienced on the sea, with an [additional] sort of circumstances which renders them more grievous, and besides this there are the hardships natural and peculiar to that element; and even that which on land is chosen for convenience and relief costs on the sea inconvenience and trouble--as, for instance, sleeping, eating, and taking exercise. Every boat is a prison without chains, but more closely shut than the narrowest jail; it is a broad coffin, in which the living suffer the discomforts of death. Whoever sets foot in a boat resolutely confronts all the elements, which conspire in arms to terrify and destroy him. The water upon which he journeys, the air by which he sails, the fire by which he lives, the land which he so anxiously seeks--all are declared enemies of the traveler. The sea is, by antonomasia, the theater for [all] perils; and no one who has not been tossed upon its foaming waves can speak with justice of its dangers, just as the blind man cannot dispute about colors. A heart of steel or of diamond, say the ancients, he must have had who first boldly launched himself upon the [waters of the] gulfs, so many perils did they conceive of an element which has as many treacheries as waves. Therefore, as nearly all the missions of this province are established along the seas, on which our missionaries go about, continually on the move, these are the (or among the) most difficult, arduous and perilous that exist on the whole round globe. To this sacrifice charity gladly constrained us. Let to all this be added the nature of the country, in which earthquakes, baguios, hurricanes, storms of thunder and lightning, and tempests often occur. The winds are violent and hurtful, the season hot; the rainy season gloomy, dark and persistent; the wet soil producing many disgusting insects that are troublesome and vexatious. The care for the temporal welfare of the people--seeing that they pay their tributes to the king, and that they plant their fields in time--is an employment that is troublesome, tedious, and necessary. Nor is it a less task to take care for the provisioning of the [missionary's] own house, without