24.  In another province, called Bombon, where there are two large lakes, the shores of which are all settled, within a territory twenty leguas from the city of Manila are established eleven monasteries of his order of St. Augustine.  Here there are nineteen thousand five hundred tributarios, or more than eighty thousand souls.  Of these more than sixty thousand are baptized, while the rest are regularly being converted.  The said monasteries have twenty-six religious, all priests.

25.  The monasteries belonging to the order of St. Augustine in those islands in the villages of the Indians number forty-three, with one hundred and five ministers, who have in their charge, as reported, two hundred and eighty-nine thousand souls, of whom two hundred and forty-four thousand are baptized, while the remaining forty-five thousand are being converted daily.  In addition there is another monastery in the city of Manila, with twenty-five ministers—­ten of them priests, and the others without sacerdotal orders.  This is in addition to novices, of whom there are usually some in the monastery.  The members of the convent have in charge certain Indians near the city along the seacoast.  Thus there are forty-four monasteries with one hundred and thirty ministers.

26.  The monasteries of the order of St. Francis in Indian villages in those islands, number twenty-three.  They have forty-nine ministers in these; and in the city of Manila they have another monastery of their order, with fifteen religious—­priests and brethren, laymen and choristers.  He [Ortega] does not know the exact number of Indians in their charge, although he thinks that they have baptized something like thirty thousand persons.

There are four monasteries of the order of St. Dominic in Indian villages, and two in Manila—­one among the Chinese settled there, and the other among the Spaniards.  All six convents have eighteen ministers, and he thinks they have baptized something like fourteen thousand souls.

Fray Francisco de Ortega presents this report to your Highness, as one who has an experience of twenty-four years in those islands, and what remains from thirty-nine years in Nueva Espana.  He presents the report with all sincerity, so that your Highness may have detailed information, and may deem yourself to be well served by his order.  His hope is that the necessity of ministers—­both for preaching to the natives already converted, and for the conversion of so vast a multitude of people still to be converted—­being evident, your Highness, with your royal and usual kindness, may have a great number of ministers of the gospel sent; since God is sending the remedy that is drawing this people from their blindness, by the hands of your Highness, for whom He is keeping the reward of so noble and sovereign a work as this of converting a new world to the knowledge of God our Lord.

[Endorsed: “Fray Francisco de Ortega of the order of St. Augustine.”]