le turret to finish the wall. He considers himself safe with a
dark retreat which he built to retire to if the enemy should take the
city; but if the enemy should take a single house of the city, he is
as well fortified there as are the Spaniards in their retreat. For,
with the cheap labor of Chinamen, they have built here so that every
house is a fortress. God has granted to this country a Spaniard of
great genius, good birth, and singular virtue, who came with Don Luis
Perez das Marinas. This Spaniard cast artillery very ingeniously at
this post where I am at present, which is on the river in the middle
of Manila. During all the time that I have been here I have not seen
the governor go to examine this work, or have anything more to do with
it than if it were in Constantinople. In short, his God is his belly,
and his feasts, and the vices and sins consequent upon this. That
his drink may be cold he uses from the warehouses of your Majesty
an endless amount of saltpeter, which is difficult to procure. He
expends an immense amount of powder in his feasts.

To fulfil my duty to God and His faith, and to your Majesty, and the
fidelity of a vassal, which I particularly owe, through the obligation
placed upon me by being bishop, I say that this man has no good in him;
nor is there anything bad lacking, to make him in the highest degree
a bad governor. Every instant that the remedy is delayed will bring on
more surely the wrath of God by delivering us into the hands of Japon
and other worse enemies or scourges. The only remedy is to appoint here
the good Don Luis Perez Dasmarinas, a well-known knight, and proved
to be just and discreet, with long experience in these lands--and,
above all, with great respect for God and His laws and those of your
Majesty. He is a friend of prayer, and believes in considering his
affairs with God. He need not be embarrassed in coming here, nor come
loaded down with persons to whom he is bound. And if perchance Don
Luis should not be available--although it certainly appears that he
is so, particularly since the coming of the Audiencia--for the love
of God may your Majesty not send us a person who is so boastful of
being a knight; but rather a nobleman, a prudent soldier, who will
be alone, and neither greedy, nor brought up in the vices of Sevilla,
nor with the braggarts there. It seems to me that I have said enough
of this. Manilla, the last of June, 1598.

It is said that he is sending great