nour, but without the forms and order which were before observed. The protegées employed themselves in instructing young girls, whose parents paid a certain stipend, which, added to a yearly income of less than four hundred piastres, the sole remnant of their ancient funds, and the alms they begged from door to door, administered to the urgent calls of Nature. Their condition was still more deplorable in 1746, when, on the 28th day of 0ctober, another earthquake demolished their house, on the ruins of which they dwelt in a few huts built for the occasion.
They were for several years indebted for their support to a charitable ecclesiastic, Dr. Joaquin De Irujo, who voluntarily came forward to serve them in quality of chaplain. At length, in 1766, his Catholic Majesty, Charles III. bestowed on them a perpetual annuity of two thousand piastres. He declared their institution to be of great public utility, both in a spiritual and temporal point of view; and ordered the viceroy to revise the documents which had a reference to the primitive foundation. The latter was at the same time enjoined to regulate the subsistence of the protegées, their pupils, and the recluses; to determine whatever might relate to their good government; and to superintend their welfare and progress, until the establishment should be rendered as perfect as possible.
With these views, the proteg{ées and their companions were removed to the hospital of San Pedro, a large and commodious building, which had formerly belonged to the priests of the oratory. A new college for female Indians, and an hospital for poor women, were annexed to the institution by order of the viceroy, by whose direction the recluses were re-esta-
