on from your Majesty to that region,
as I have said, the increase of duties would be very great, and there
would be no difficulty in the way, according to the understanding
here--which, I have understood, is also the opinion of this city. They
petition it from your Majesty, and I do the same, with the desire that
I have and ought to have for you royal service and the welfare of this
country. I find myself daily under new obligations to this country,
which the inhabitants lay upon me by the willingness with which
they respond to the service of your Majesty with their possessions,
persons, and lives, as I have experienced from many on the occasions
that have arisen. According to the limit of my understanding, and
that which I have been able to grasp with it in this particular, I
regard the aforesaid as so important to your Majesty's service that,
considering the matter in case that it should be necessary for the
ships to go together, I would regard it as more advisable for both to
go to Panama rather than to Acapulco--although I think that the said
division is better, and the advantage of the reenforcement of men,
and that which that country [_i.e._, Nueva Espana] can give easily;
for thus results service to your Majesty and good to this country,
and apparently not a little benefit to the commerce of Espana. For
the products and merchandise of Espana that are esteemed here would
be bought and imported in a much greater quantity with the saving
of the freight charges overland, which are so excessive from Vera
Cruz to Acapulco. The cost of those articles is also increased by
the profit of the merchants who buy and retail them in that country
[_i.e._, Nueva Espana]. If the merchandise were relieved from so
high prices as it reaches to in this manner, and if the goods can
be so easily passed on from owner to purchaser without resale, the
shipment here of a great amount of the said merchandise and products,
and of money less that quantity, is certain.

Likewise, in addition to the above, if the enemy should station
themselves on that coast [_i.e._, of Nueva Espana], to await the ships
that sail to Acapulco (as they have already done at other times),
where they have captured some of those that have sailed hence, not
only are there not ships at hand ready to go out to fight with them
and to prevent them from making such attempts, but not one patache
in which to send advice of it out to sea; while in Panama and on its
coast that