404 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 102 



peaches, apples, and pippins ; it has also very good water. The Indian 

 men and women of this region are the best disposed and the whitest 

 in the whole Kingdom of Peru. In its district it has many provinces 

 and settlements, like Camino de Las Balsas, La Magdalena, La Jalca, 

 Santo Tomas, and others ; there are very rich gold mines, particularly 

 those of Juan Perez de Guevara, near Camino de Las Balsas, from 

 which great wealth of gold has been taken, but for lack of labor 

 these are not working, as is the case with many others all over the 

 district. There are some sugar plantations and [large] cattle and 

 mule ranches ; the mules are exported to all the region of Lima 

 and the upland country. Toward the E. it has many settlements, 

 like Querco and others in its neighborhood, and at 36 leagues, the 

 city of La Frontera de Moyobamba, built in a [fine] valley with 

 a marvelous climate, with about 60 Spanish residents. This is a 

 country rich in gold ; everywhere they raise much corn and other 

 food crops ; it has cattle ranches ; they grow [very] good tobacco ; 

 in the woods the bees produce much wild honey and wax ; the rivers 

 have abundance of excellent fish. 



1191. Near this city are the Provinces of the Motilones and 

 Tabalosos. Gov. Alvaro Enrriquez del Castillo undertook their 

 conversion ; he got together a large force for the conversion of these 

 tribes ; I went along as Chaplain Major of the army which was 

 mustered at Chachapoyas by order of the Viceroy, the Marques de 

 Montesclaros, in the year 161 5. But it all came to nothing, because 

 of the opposition of envious and cantankerous persons, such as the 

 Devil usually chooses as tools on such occasions, to prevent the 

 execution or success of such enterprises in which God Our Lord 

 might be well served and many souls won over to His knowledge 

 and service. The Devil is very [evil], astute and invidious; he fires 

 the stone and hides his hand, rousing passions and creating appre- 

 hensions, as happened on this occasion, and on that of the year 1559, 

 when Gen. Pedro de Ursua set out on his expedition down the Rio 

 Maranon, to explore it and the provinces along it, at the instance of 

 the Marques de Cafiete ; the Father of Discord, possessing with 

 such unjust title [and unjustifiably] all those blind tribes, is afraid 

 he will be deprived of them, and as possessor, tries to create delay. 

 That is what happened to us ; we spent many ducats, being over 

 200 men setting out with holy zeal in the service of God and His 

 Majesty and for the cure of those souls ; in fact, I alone spent for 

 my part in church vestments and supplies and in supporting two 

 soldiers at my expense and in military stores, over 4,000 pesos, and 

 we all came out of it impoverished and disconsolate to see our holy 



