So great is the sorrow of our hearts at seeing and realizing how easily and quickly the Indians who are apostates from our holy faith retreat to the mountains, and the obstinacy which the infidels show in not coming out of them, that we cannot neglect to remind your Lordship a second time of the urgent necessity that expeditions into the mountains [by our troops] be continued, like those that were made in former times with success and useful results. We entreat and charge your Lordship that to this remedy which has been already tried on other occasions the piety of your Lordship will be pleased to add [another,] that of prohibiting to the Indians who are already Christians intercourse and trade with the infidels; for the regular result of this is, that the said infidels withdraw more and more from the mild authority of our holy religion. That religion is considered, by the said Christians, as intolerable, although it is not such, whether in itself, in its effects, or in the obligations which they assume by becoming Christians--which, in the feeble light of their understanding, is the same as being reduced only to subjection to the ecclesiastical minister, the alcalde-mayor, and the burdens of tributes and repartimientos. Finally, Sir, our lofty desire for the general welfare of so many provinces, and the pleasure which we shall all feel in the prosperity and success of your Lordship--which, as [that of] the first and principal head [of this colony], must overflow in all its parts and subjects--impel us to point out to your Lordship how worthy of all assistance and effort in your Christian government is the pitiable condition to which the Christian villages are reduced, now one of poverty and barrenness, even of the native products. And those villages to which, it would seem, their age (which now is more than a century) must furnish greater abundance of produce and wealth rightfully their own, are in the same condition and the same poverty as are the villages that are more recent and less encouraged by the ecclesiastical ministers and the civil officials of these islands; and they can never enjoy any improvement, spiritual or temporal. The remedy for this--which ought to be effective, prompt, and steadily continued--in our humble opinion, is made up of various measures: some for the amelioration and redress of all the evils and difficulties already related to your Lordship, whose peremptory and executive orders must render them effectual; and others which, it seems to us, ought to be charged upon the alcaldes-mayor, and upon the proper ministers who are closest to the Indians themselves (who are the ecclesiastics), in order that they may by every means arouse and animate the slothful natures of the Indians, by instructing them in industries that will be useful to themselves, and in application to an [object of] desire that is honorable and advantageous to the public or to individuals of all the villages.