126 THE PlyANT WORI^D 



the Mariannes ; the building of the ship San Diego at Cavite and his 

 sailing therein, first crossing the ocean to Acapulco, as was then the 

 custom, owing to adverse winds and currents in the latitude of Guam ; 

 his appeal for aid to the Viceroy of Mexico and the wonderful earthquake 

 which caused it to be granted ; his arrival at Guam and his emotions on 

 seeing the islanders coming out to meet him in their canoes ; the estab- 

 lishment of himself and his fellow missionaries on the island of Guam, 

 together with a few secular assistants ; his zeal in the work of teaching 

 the natives; the hardships which he endured and his final martyrdom. 



In order that he might instruct the natives so that they could be bap- 

 tised he applied himself to the study of the language, receiving assistance 

 from certain shipwrecked sailors who had been cast ashore thirty years 

 before on one of the islands of the group. These, together with some 

 of the Filipinos who accompanied him as secular assistants, and who 

 soon learned the language of the natives, helped him in his teaching of 

 the catechism and the explanation of the doctrine. The natives were a 

 merry set of people, fond of singing and dancing, working only suffic- 

 iently to construct their canoes and to provide food and dwellings for their 

 families (they needed little clothing); proud and arrogant, yet warm- 

 hearted and hospitable ; believing in caste distinctions, and recounting 

 in chants the deeds of their ancestors and their myths and legends, vying 

 with one another in spear-throwing, stone-slinging, and in feats of wrest- 

 ling, jumping and diving; wailing for their dead with passionate grief 

 and placing upon the tumuli over their graves paddles and spears after 

 the manner of the ancient Greeks; monogamists, as a rule, yet permit- 

 ting certain license between the sexes before marriage. 



When the interest of the natives in his lessons could not be main- 

 tained by other means, Sanvitores, seeing a number of them congregated 

 in a group would sometimes throw himself into their midst, dancing and 

 singing : 



" Alegria, alegria, alegria, buena, buena, Jesus Maria ! 

 Nuesta alegria, Jesus, y Maria ! Amen, Ainen. Jesus, Maria, y Joseph." 



And repeating these words to the sound of clapping hands, he would 

 continue singing and dancing a long time, the natives joining in with 

 him, and he, as the good historian says, dancing like David before the 

 Ark of the Covenant.* 



The first serious stumbling block in the way of the missionaries was 

 a Chinaman named Choco, living at the southern end of the island. This 

 man had been shipwrecked about twenty years before their arrival while 

 going in a sampan from Manila to Ternate. He called the attention of 

 the natives to the fact that many of the children and old people died after 



♦Garcia, " Vida y Martyrio de el venerable padre Diego Luis de Sanvitores," p. 216. 



