Note 3 — Chapter II

738. There are at present one hundred and five villages (besides those called active missions, which do not enter into this account) at present in the charge of our holy discalced branch, and they lie in more than twenty islands. In the principal island of Luzón, where the city of Manila is located, the order administers fifteen villages; in that of Mindanao, the second in size, thirty-four; in that of Parágua and others of the Calamianes, twelve; in that of Mindóro, twenty-four; in that of Romblón and its outlying islands, eleven; and in that of Masbáte and its intermediate islands, nine. It is seldom that one of those villages has no infidel inhabitants; and the religious are kept quite busy in converting them. For beginning with the island of Luzón and the mountains of Zambáles, the villages of Marivélez, Cabcáben, Móron, and Bagác are surrounded by blacks who are there called “de Monte” [i.e., “of the mountain”]3 who are being constantly converted to our holy faith, for they are of a very peaceful disposition. Súbic is a new conquest, where various Indians are settling who wander about and are forgotten by the Christianity of those districts. The settlements that follow from that point to Bolináo are so near to the black Zambals and Aetas that, when the latter revolt, one cannot go there without running great risk of his life. But when peace makes them tractable, some souls are obtained for God. The villages of Uguit and Babáyan, which have recently been founded in this century with the converted blacks and wild Indians, [Zimarrónes] clearly attest that fact. In Mindanao the territory conquered by our religious, namely, the district of Cagayáng and the province of Carágha, ought to be considered as the rose among the thorns, oppressed by Moros, Mindanáos, and Malanáos, and by infidel Tagabalóyes and Manóbos. Of those peoples, the former keep the evangelical ministers in continual fear, because of their persecutions; the latter keep us in a perpetual mission for converting them to our holy Catholic faith. As proof of the great and continual advance of Christianity there, it suffices to state that at the end of the last century the tributes which those who have been subdued paid to the king did not equal the expenses occasioned to the royal treasury by the maintenance of the said province; in the year 1720, the expenses and collections were equal; but now the royal income exceeds the expenses necessary for conservation.4 Since the expenses have not decreased—for there is always the same number of infantry forces in the presidios of Tándag, Catél, and Lináo, to which all the expense is reduced—it is inferred that the royal tributes have increased, and consequently the number of Christians.