hilippines. The late
restrictions on the possession and enjoyment of encomiendas should be
removed. A letter from Lucas de Vergara, commandant in Maluco, is here
inserted. He recounts the losses of the Dutch in their late attack
on Manila (1617), and their schemes for driving out the Spaniards
from the Moluccas; also his own difficulties in procuring food,
fortifying the posts under his care, and keeping up his troops who
are being decimated by sickness and death. He urges that the fleet
at Manila proceed at once to his succor, and thus prevent the Dutch
from securing this year's rich clove-harvest.

In the third part of the _Memorial_, Los Rios gives a brief description
of the Philippines and the Moluccas, with interesting but somewhat
desultory information of their peoples and natural products, of the
Dutch factories, and of the produce and value of the clove trade. He
describes the custom of head-hunting among the Zambales, and advocates
their reduction to slavery as the only means of rendering the friendly
natives safe from their attacks. The numbers of encomiendas and their
tributarios, and of monasteries and religious, in the islands, are
stated, with the size and extent of Manila. All the natives are now
converted, except some tribes in Central Luzon. Los Rios describes
the Malucas Islands and others in their vicinity, and enumerates the
Dutch and Spanish forts therein; and proceeds to state the extent
and profits of the spice trade. He closes his memoir with an itemized
statement of the expenses incurred by the Spanish crown in maintaining
the forts at Tidore and Ternate. These amount yearly to nearly two
hundred and twenty thousand pesos.

In an appendix to this volume are presented several short papers
which constitute a brief epitome of early seventeenth-century
commerce in the Far East--entitled "Buying and selling prices of
Oriental products." Martin Castanos, procurator-general of Filipinas,
endeavors to show that the spices of Malucas and the silks of China,
handled through Manila, ought to bring the Spanish crown an annual net
income of nearly six million pesos. Another paper shows the extent and
value of the trade carried on with Japan by the Portuguese at Macao;
and another, the kind of commerce maintained by those enterprising
traders with the countries of southern Asia from the Moluccas to
Arabia. All these enumerate the various kinds of goods, the buying
and selling prices of most articles, the ra