Since the inhabitants of this island are scattered along an extended
coast-line of the sea, it was necessary to send six of the fathers for
the greater part of last year to cultivate it, with the results which
might be expected from such missions. We learned from the letters
of Ours that the people of this island who live along the coast
have begun to offer their names in order to receive the Christian
religion, and that all the chiefs have already been purified by
holy baptism. The duty of visiting fourteen places rests upon this
residence. In this year three thousand six hundred and eighty persons,
for the most part adults, have been joined to the spouse of Christ
through the holy waters of baptism. In one tiny island, which had
not been visited for two years, two of Ours who had been sent thither
on mission were received by the whole tribe with such delight that,
all the way from the beach of the sea to the church of the place, they
adorned all the roads with green branches; and then they were led to
the church by a procession of boys and girls singing the Christian
teaching with joyous voices. And when Ours asked to have placed on
the lists the names of those who desired to receive baptism, they
answered that there was no need of a list, that they all wished to
become Christians. The old men--who are generally more perverse than
the rest, and are unwilling to learn the Christian teaching--brought
forward no other ground for the baptism which they so much desired
than that their old age promised them no long life. Thus all by the
divine grace were made children of God, and inheritors of eternal life.
The news that these had thus been added to Christ soon moved other
islands also to desire our fathers. On one of these islands, within
fifteen days one hundred and sixty adults and five children forsook
the dark wilderness of infidelity for the light of the gospel. Among
them was one old woman one hundred and thirty years of age--blind,
deaf, incapable of motion; for, wherever she was carried, there she
remained like an unmoving stone. Afterward in other places there were
baptized five hundred adults and two infants. When they returned on
a second mission, after an interval of three months, eight hundred
and thirty-seven were baptized, and from the most of these their
concubines were taken away. Besides this, in other places many were
plunged into the same waters, the total number reaching three thousand
six hundred and eighty.