THE PLANT WORLD 85 



through Punta Lafag and to the eastward of a north-and-south line 

 passing through the point where the road descends the cliff on the north 

 coast to Talague. 



I have given the preceding bearings thus in detail because I have 

 been unable to make them plot on any of the charts of the island I have 

 seen. It seems to me that the whole east coast of the island has been 

 imperfectly survej'ed ; the position of Santa Rosa as indicated on the 

 charts is certainly wrong. It should be plotted much nearer the east 

 coast of the island.* 



While we were looking northward the misty horizon suddenly cleared 

 and we saw the island of Rota very distinctly. This is the next island to 

 Guam in the chain of the Ladrones or Marianne Islands. It was fre- 

 quently the place of refuge in the early days for natives who were driven 

 from Guam by the persecution of the Spaniards. At the time of its colo- 

 nization the northern part of the island was thickly populated ; now it 

 has not a single village; only the names of their sites have survived. 

 In the reports made by the early missionaries it is recorded that in the 

 year 1674 churches had been built in the villages of " Ritidyan " and 

 Tarragui ' ' and the natives of those villages plied themselves dili- 

 gently many hours each day and even a great part of the night to the 

 study of the Christian doctrine. Their zeal was undoubtedly increased 

 by the burning of a number of villages of which the inhabitants had 

 refused to accept the teachings of the fathers and had harbored enemies 

 of the faith. The little children never tired of singing prayers and 

 hymns, and the fathers translated some of the principal mysteries into 

 verse in the language of the island. These couplets the natives sang as 

 they walked along the roads by day and in their houses and villages by 

 night, "the sweet name of Jesus and Mary resounding on all sides where 

 so few years before these words had never been heard." The facility 

 with which the children learned was marvelous ; in less than two 

 months, says Padre Garcia, they knew all the prayers and couplets of 

 the Christian Doctrine and such other articles of faith as they were 

 capable of mastering. The older people learned the doctrine also, though 

 it took them much longer to do so, and little by little the chanting of 

 myths and traditions of their ancestors was replaced by the singing of 

 sacred songs taught by the missionaries. 



The following pages I take literally from the annual report of the 

 missionaries for the year 1674, published at Madrid in 1683, in the work 

 of Padre Francisco Garcia already cited. They will illustrate without 

 comment the methods used in converting these simple people who had 

 so kindly welcomed the Spaniards to their little island : 



•A map of the island of Guam will be published later in this series. 



