Note 8 — Letter from Father Pedro Rosell1 to the Father Superior of the Mission2

That fine feast came, and I saw for the first time how the good inhabitants of Caraga celebrated it. I noted no rich jewels and refined music in the church. All was simplicity and poverty, like a new parish recently separated from its metropolitan, and given over to its own life with few resources, in a most wretched country. Neither did I observe in the village anything of that excessive luxury, and the annoying diversions with which in other parts, the Christians of divided heart try falsely to honor God. Caraga, in spite of its antiquity of two centuries, with its excellent lands, and its established reputation of producing excellent cacao, coffee,8 and tobacco, is a small, poor, and simple village. The chief causes of that are that it has been deserted by several old families who have settled in the small villages recently established, and although it has increased somewhat with the new Christians, who have been converted from the beliefs of the Mandayas, the latter are as a rule, both simple and indolent and but little accustomed to work, and they need rather to be aided, instead of being able to give aid to the others. But the reason which has had, and has, most influence in the above is their isolation which is caused by the very poor sea and land communication which make that region the most remote and forgotten one of these islands and (if I may use the word), as it were, the finis terræ.9 Hence, it receives but little life from without, and is forced to live on its narrow resources and few means of subsistence.