Note 2 — Extracts from Jesuit letters, 1691–94

After the departure of the vessel which was commissioned with the letters which I wrote during the year past to your Paternity, there arrived another which brought me the order to accompany the reverend father Antonio Fuccio,2 of Sicily, the new provincial of this province. Making with him the circuit of our houses, I have taken a survey of the country of the Pintados. There are large islands separated from one another by arms of the sea, in which the tide renders navigation difficult and dangerous. There are in these islands seventy-seven thousand Christians, under the spiritual direction of forty-one missionaries of our Society, who have with them two of our brothers who provide for their subsistence.