cattle. I am aiding both of them with various alms and grants, and,
as I have informed your Majesty, I regularly assign to that of the
Spaniards eight toneladas, which are worth eight hundred pesos each
year; and to that of the natives four, which are of proportionate
value. I took possession of that of the natives in your Majesty's
name, according to the royal patronage, and audited the accounts,
a sworn statement of which will go with this.

7. _That the seminary for the training of girls is in good condition,
and the building finished; but it has little income, and will have
to be reduced to a convent of professed nuns, and its income somewhat
increased._

The Seminary of Santa Potenciana is in very good condition; for
not only has the church been finished for some years, but it has
a capacious building entirely of stone, in which some thirty women
are leading a religious life. Most of these are the maiden daughters
of honorable men; others are poor mestizas, and still others have
been left there who have husbands or fathers absent on your Majesty's
service; there are also a few older women. They have a superior who is
a woman of quality, and who lives a very exemplary and pious life. All
of them intend either to remain there in the service of God, or to
leave married, and in a bettered situation--as several have done and
are now doing (thanks to the good name which the institution has),
which is the holy intention of your Majesty. They have a director
and a confessor who do not live in the building, as no apartment has
been built for them. For two months past the holy sacrament has been
administered there. These women, thus secluded, celebrate the divine
offices with singing, and with as much veneration and as fittingly
as if it were a convent of nuns founded forty years ago. It has four
hundred pesos of perpetual income and as much more temporarily from a
shop in the Parian of the Sangleys; but this is not enough to maintain
it, and so they are in great need. I contrive to help it with alms
and various grants wherewith it may be supported. I have tried to
reduce it to a convent of professed nuns and have done my best with
the viceroy of Nueva Espana, to have him send me two religious women,
of pious life, from Mexico to found it. He answers me that there is
no one who dares to go to these islands, on account of the difficulty
of the journey and the inconvenience of the ships. I beseech your
Majesty that--as thi