shops kept by Sangleys, who lived here in order to sell the
goods which they kept here year by year. These Sangleys were
scattered among the Spaniards, with no specific place assigned
to them, until Don Gonzalo Ronquillo allotted them a place
to live in, and to be used as a silk-market (which is here
called _Parián_), of four large buildings. Here, many shops
were opened, commerce increased, and more Sangleys came to this
city.... When I came, all the Sangleys were almost forgotten,
and relegated to a corner. No thought was taken for their
conversion, because no one knew their language or undertook
to learn it on account of its great difficulty; and because
the religious who lived here were too busy with the natives of
these islands. Although the Augustinian religious had charge
of the Sangleys of Tondo, they did not minister to or instruct
them in their own language, but in that of the natives or this
land; thus the Sangley Christians living here, were Christians
only in name, knowing no more of Christianity than if they
had never accepted it.... 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." [106]


So we find, as the Dominicans undertook their mission, a large
settlement of Chinese, including both a settled and a floating
population, concentrated in the Parián, across the Pasig river from