Page:The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 (Volume 07).djvu/227

ments with Don Gonçalo Ronquillo for a special location to be assigned to them for their own use, and priests were to be given them who should learn their language and teach them in it. When this had been all arranged, and a priest had been appointed, the whole thing was undone through obstacles which arose at that time. Then I appealed to all religious orders to appoint some one of their religious to learn the language and take charge of the Sangleys. Although all of them showed a desire to do so, and some even began to learn it, yet no one succeeded; and the Sangleys found themselves with no one to instruct them and take up their conversion with the necessary earnestness, until, in the year eighty-seven, God brought to these islands the religious of St. Dominic. Their coming was for the welfare of the Sangleys, as the result proved, and as I shall relate further on. Godsoon showed us that the religious had come by His will, to take charge of the Sangleys. This city, being built on a narrow site with the sea on one side and a river on the other, was all occupied, and there seemed to be no place where the Dominicans could settle; but there was soon discovered a site of which no one had thought until then, and which now is the best in the city. The site adjoins the Parián of the Sangleys, and that gave the religious of that order occasion to begin to hold intercourse with them, and for the religious and Sangleys to become mutually attached to one another. For, whenever the Sangleys come and go from the Parián, they pass by the church of Sancto Domingo, and, being a very inquisitive people, they often stop and watch what is taking place there. When the confraternities of the Rosary and of the Oaths, which are founded in that house, hold their