[62] This promise was fulfilled June 21 of the same year, and the letter is given in the Cartas, pp. 93–111.
[63] i. e., The district ruled over by a dato.
[64] The pagatpat (Sonneratia), called also palapad and palatpat, is frequently found along the beaches. It grows to the height of twenty feet or so. Its wood is strong and is used in ordinary construction. The fruit is very sour and a vinegar is made from it. See Blanco, pp. 296, 297.
Letter from Father Pedro Rosell[1] to the Father Superior of the Mission[2]
Caraga, April 17, 1885.
My dearly beloved Father Superior in Christ:
Although it is scarcely three weeks since my arrival from the visit which Father Pastells and I made to the villages of the southern part of this mission, I received your Reverence’s both affectionate and short letter of December 30 of last year, together with the authorizations which you were pleased to send me under separate covers. Ex intimo corde[3] I acknowledge to your Reverence both letter and authorizations, and give you a thousand thanks for them. And now desiring to pay so pleasing a favor with something more [than thanks], I am going to write you a minute relation of the last two excursions that we two fathers made together, for I know the great consolation that your Reverence receives by the reading of such relations, for besides the fact that you learn from them of the condition and progress of your dear missions and of the fathers and brothers who work in them, whom your Reverence loves with the true love of a father, there is also seen in the same relations the not small fruit that is obtained in souls by the mercy of God. Almost never is there lacking the relation of some remarkable event or edifying deed in the conquest of the heathens to our holy faith, which recreates the spirit and invites one to praise the goodness of our sweet Jesus. Some events of such a nature have occurred during the last two excursions which I have carefully noted in order to relate them to your Reverence.
We made our first excursion in December of last year, after the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the most holy Virgin to the visita of Santa Fe, which is distant two hours’ journey from this capital, and which is located at the end of the small bay which is the terminal of Points Alisud de Caraga, and Sancol de Manurigao. About five hundred and sixty-nine Christians who have been reduced from the beliefs of the Mandayas in the space of the eight years since it was founded by our fathers, form its population. This village is one of the three which have been for a considerable time the aim of the repeated attacks of the Baganís or assassins of the mountains of Bungádon and Manlubúan. During the same days that we stayed there, the murder of three Mandayas, sácopes of Captain Ciriaco Lanquibo, who was recently converted to Christianity, happened in the fields which are located between that village and that of Manurígao. A week after we had returned to Caraga, we were informed that another like murder had been committed on another unfortunate friendly Mandaya near the said village of San Luis. So bold do those barbarians show themselves, because there is no force with which to pursue them, and they feel so secure in the places where they reside!
At the date on which we went to Santa Fe, it had been quite a long time since the said village had experienced any aggression from the baganis. Consequently, the people were living somewhat free from their past misery, and relieved of the frequent alarms and consequent frights. However, they were suffering great famine on account of the said aggressions, and because they had lost almost all the crops of maize and sweet potatoes (the only things which they cultivate), during that time because of the great and prolonged heat and the lack of rain. They were supporting themselves on the few sweet potatoes that had been saved, thanks to the humidity of the ground, and the shade of the trees, and on the soft parts of convolvulus and palms which grow along the shores of the rivers. In spite of so many and so severe troubles, thanks be to God, there has not been hitherto, but two families of San Luis who have become fugitives. That action has not at all been because they repent of having become Christians, but for other very different reasons. Those families have, however, now established relations with the father and promised him to abandon the Dacungbanua or lands of Magdagasang, where they are living at present, as soon as they shall have harvested the palay of their fields, and settle in a village other than the one in which they lived formerly. What a fine example, then, Father Superior, of Christian fidelity and resignation have those newly-reduced people given us in general, and how evident a proof of their true conversion to Christianity! In my opinion, these are results that ought to be attributed, after divine Grace (without which no good thing can be done), especially to the plan which Father Pastells has always followed in so far as it has been allowed him, in the reduction of heathens. It is exclusively a system of attraction by means of great charity, great mildness, continual patience, and solid foundations upon which the village recently established rests; namely, the foundations of a good inspector who continues to form gradually in the village the good customs of the Christians, of good authorities who rule and govern the people without exactions and injustice, or excessive rigor, of good masters who instruct and educate the children, with the visit of the father, as often as possible in order further to exercise his spiritual ministries, and to ascertain how they all observe their important obligations.