Note 18 — JESUIT MISSIONS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

The soil is very poor, and the greater part of the provisions and clothing must be carried from Manila; and consequently a thousand miseries are suffered during the year without recourse. The feeling of loneliness is very great; we are in this world, which, besides being a vale of tears, for us is as it were, a limbo,18 separated by thousands of leguas from the rest of the world; it is exceedingly seldom that the missionary meets any person through whom he can obtain any alleviation of his troubles, or any assistance or consolation. Few Spaniards traverse those regions, and those who do pass through are usually of such character that merely the knowledge that they are going about through the country causes grief, anxiety, and vigilance to the minister. During the entire week the Indians are on the sea, in the mountains, or in their grain-fields, and on Sundays they come together in the village—but usually little to the comfort of the missionary. Rather, they increase his annoyances, in [having to] settle their lawsuits, quarrels, misunderstandings, and accounts; in defending them from the alcaldes and petty officials, and from one another; and in the minister’s defending himself from all—for there are a thousand entanglements, snares, and deceits. Hardly do they set foot in the missionary’s house, except when they go to ask for something; they are like the cat, and only look the father in the face when they are expecting some scrap of meat; and when this is seized, friendship, homage, and gratitude are at an end. Would to God that these qualities were left in the Indians! But it cannot be said that all are of this sort, but that there are enough of them for exercising the patience of the minister, although others serve for his comfort and consolation. If the minister is sick, he has no physician or apothecary to resort to; and his only resource is an Indian medicaster who applies some herbs, and whose prescriptions are quickly exhausted. If the sickness be a distressing one, it is necessary to go to Zebu, to which place [Ours] make a voyage of thirty or forty leguas, with the risk of not finding [there] a blood-letter. If radical treatment is needed, there is no other remedy than to sail a hundred or two hundred leguas to Manila, where there is not an over-supply of Galens. Fortunate is he who, without failing in his obligations, can preserve his health unimpaired; for in this land certain diseases quickly take root [in one’s system] which are a slow and most grievous martyrdom through life. And there is, almost peculiar to these countries, a sort of profound melancholy, which, like a corrupt root, renders all that he can do either insipid or repulsive. Sometimes it disorders the mind,19 and even life itself becomes abhorrent. It persistently oppresses the mind, which needs great courage, and aid from above, in order that one may not faint in the ministry. All this is the effect of solitude, and of one’s nature becoming suffocated under the continual annoyances and troubles which administration [of these missions] involves. Nor is it easy to explain, without actual eyewitness, the various modes of suffering which here present themselves, so unusual, extraordinary, and acute. In these workshops patience is wrought, purified, and assayed until it becomes heroic, with the heavy hammer of mortifications, troubles, and petty details, which chance each day arranges and disarranges.