ng, so many hardships and
misfortunes, both in wars and in the loss of wealth and prestige, that
it has been very close to entire ruin. This has arisen and arises
not from unavoidable accidents which ordinarily happen in states
and communities, but from those which the persons in charge of the
government and who reside there could avoid, but do not prepare for;
and they are notoriously due to the fault and misgovernment of the
persons to whom your Majesty has entrusted the administration of these
islands--partly on account of their scant energy and vigilance, but
most of all through what has resulted from their not being willing
to fulfil the orders, instructions, and royal decrees which your
Majesty had previously issued for the attainment of your objects
and for particular ends; these they have directly violated. Since
such conditions require a remedy, and as this must depend upon the
royal will of your Majesty, who are not informed of the actual truth
concerning events which have occurred here, these states must remain
without relief on your Majesty's part, and with the said danger of our
ruin. Owing to the general obligation which rests upon us as vassals
of your Majesty, and that which in conscience especially obliges us
as regidors of this city, which is the capital of all these islands,
the following account has been written.

In the first place, a matter whence many other losses have resulted
is this. Your Majesty having ordered the conquest of the kingdom of
Mindanao to be entrusted to Captain Estevan Rodriguez de Figueroa,
conformably to the edict or ordinance which treats of the conquest of
newly-discovered countries and settlements in the Yndias, and this
order having been despatched to the said Captain Estevan Rodriguez
de Figueroa, Governor Don Louis Das Marinas arrived here in the year
96. When the former reached Mindanao with his expedition, he (and he
alone) was killed by the natives of that island on the unfortunate
day of St. Mark of the same year. When Don Francisco Tello arrived
in the following June of the said year and took this government, he
immediately undertook to send a person to conduct the said conquest
of Mindanao. As all the troops were there which had been taken by
the said Captain Estevan Rodriguez, and as Don Joan Ronquillo (your
Majesty's commander of the galleys and of naval affairs in these
islands) had gone there with another detachment of troops, and had
remained in the said isla