Note 11 — MANILA AND THE PHILIPPINES ABOUT 1650

25. During those days I gave instruction and confession and administered the communion to all. There were no adults to baptize, but there were children. As the heat increased, together with the danger of the enemy and my lack of health, I resolved to return, although not a little sorry to leave two more visitas, twenty leguas from that place. I reached Nanhoan by passing again through the same villages by which I had come. During that voyage I observed that, having ascended a river and told the Indians to prepare me a place wherein to say mass and another in which to sleep that night, they made the whole thing in two hours, by making a covering above that place with only the leaves of the wild palm. That night a very heavy shower fell, but not a single drop leaked inside the shelter. Then and on many other occasions I have noticed that each leaf was so large that an Indian carried it by dragging it; and since they are fan-shaped, and have channels, and are strong, they could withstand as much rain as might fall. In another village an incident happened that caused the Indians great fear, and myself not a little wonder. The Indians were down at the shore, mending the boat in which I was going to embark, when suddenly a well-known fish came out of the water, which we call picuda,11 and the Portuguese vicuda. It seized an Indian so firmly by the instep that it began to drag him into the sea. His companions hastened to his rescue and made the fish loose its prey by means of clubs and stones, and return to the water. They brought the young fellow to me wounded. He confessed, and was very sick. He recovered his health afterward, but was lame in that foot. Those men were astonished, for they had never seen or heard that that fish went ashore, and much less that it attacked men.