Note 9 — Chapter III

26. The infidels came to hold these religious in great veneration when so noteworthy incidents were made known throughout the province, and the gospel obtained great advantages. The errors in which the idolatrous priests were trying to maintain the infidels were dissipated. The priests, seeing their interests waning by the recent conversions, conspired against the fathers’ lives several times; but they escaped those dangers by a special and divine providence. Several reductions were formed in the province, and in the adjacent island of Siargao. The Jesuit fathers could not take care of all their enterprises in that island. The reduction of Butuan was not assured, with the visits made at long intervals. Those visits, being transient, allowed no place for instruction, nor did those people preserve much of their teaching. The bishop of Zebu communicating that fact to the superior government, it was agreed that the discalced Augustinians should take charge of that administration, with a foundation, as that was important. They accepted it with legal papers, and had much to do on that great and famous river. They ascended its waters even to their source, which is the lake of Linao, about fifty leguas in circuit. There they founded a settlement, in order to assure their labors.9 They [285] coasted the shore to little Cagayan,10 on that excursion taking also into their charge the island of Camiguin. Farther on they passed through the rancherías of Higan and Langaran up to the lake of Malanao. But the opposition of the Jesuits stopped them; for the latter disputed their right to that spiritual progress, to such an extent that they produced controversies in the court. His Catholic Majesty decided the question by the rights of his royal patronage. He ordered the island of Mindanao to be surveyed, and distributed the administration of it between the two contending provinces, granting to that of the Recollects [the coast] from the point of Sulaban11 to the cape of San Agustin, while the rest remained in charge of the Society. Thereby were hostile rivalries pacified, which would have produced nothing good had they continued without so powerful arbitration.