are innocent, and clear the guilty. This must be either a design or malice." Our newspaper correspondents at the present time would do well to follow this advice.
The Filipinos at that time were not only oppressed by taxation and corvées, but they were transported as slaves in such numbers as to threaten to depopulate the islands. "There is not a ship sails from Manila, whether it belong to Siam, Camboxa, or the Portugueses, &c., but carries away Indians out of the islands."
A missionary who was in earnest had no easy time of it in those days in the Philippines. Perils from wild beasts, earthquakes, storms, disease and shipwrecks were frequent enough to abash the stoutest heart, and, according to Navarette's naive account, it appears that his fortitude was due more to the presence of courage than to the absence of fear. He was badly frightened by thunder and the upsetting of his canoe, but he managed to absolve his companions who were floating in the water, although he was in great distress that there was no one to absolve himself. Although all his personal possessions were lost in this accident, he rejoices that the bottle of mass wine, being nearly empty, floated and was washed ashore. His first experience with an important earthquake is quaintly told. "Upon St. Philip and Jacob's day I was in great trouble; I was hearing confessions in the chapel, and observed that the cane chair on which I sat moved. I imagined a dog got under it, and bid the Indian to turn him out. He answered, Father, it is no dog, but an earthquake. It increased to such a degree, that leaving the penitent, I kneeled down, to beg mercy of God. I thought that the end of the world had been at hand."
One of his fellow priests was devoured by an alligator, a fate that distressed Father Navarette exceedingly, since such a burial-place could hardly be consecrated, but he consoled himself with the saying of St. Augustine that "a good death is that which follows a good life, be it of what sort it will. . . . The good F. Lewis Gutierrez having lived so virtuously, said two masses that day, and being about to say the third, who is there that can doubt of his good disposition?"
As if the natural dangers of the Philippines were not enough, he was molested by enemies from the lower world. At Batam (Batan?) he was much disturbed by witches or fairies, who made a great noise, threw stones and hurled about chairs in a terrible manner. Evidently the predilection of spirits for furniture moving is not purely American, as has been supposed.
The reception given by the people of Manila to the Japanese Christians, who were driven out of their native land by the great 'cross-trampling' persecutions, elicits the highest praise from one author;
