supplies. I
also beg that what is necessary for the expenses of the fleet and for
other requisite objects may likewise be sent. I further request that
for the regular expenses of the government a liberal supply may be
placed in the treasury of the islands on a separate account, since
the treasury is so needy and so heavily burdened with obligations.

Weapons and gunpowder are always opportune, and generally the lack of
these causes a great deal of trouble. I accordingly beg your Majesty
to be pleased to command that as large an amount thereof as possible
may be sent, and that the forces at Manila may also be supplied. I
suggest that although what is now of most importance, and what must
primarily be considered, is merely the regaining of the fort and island
of Terrenate, still the care and attention which will be necessary to
protect and sustain the conquest, at least for the first few years,
will not be small. During that time it will be necessary for us to keep
it under control with arms in our hands. We shall have contests every
day with the natives of the country, and likewise with the Dutch,
who will not at once be willing to abandon it without testing the
defense which it can offer, for the reasons which they publish there
and in the other Maluca Islands, and in the islands of Banda. With
regard to this matter I have written to your Majesty. We must be on
the watch everywhere, making Terrenate our center.

By the first section of the orders which your Majesty was pleased to
command to have sent to me for this expedition, it appears that the
captains who come on the expedition receive sixty ducados a month
and the privates eight, whether they were recruited in Hespana or in
Nueva Hespana. I was commanded that if this rate of payment for the
soldiers might be moderated in view of what is paid the soldiers here
who are of the same rank, I should reduce it, but with fairness. I
have to state that the pay of a private in this garrison is six pesos
a month. This is little, in view of the fact that the country is
incomparably more expensive than when their rate of pay was fixed,
as I have previously written your Majesty. The eight ducados which
the soldiers of the expedition receive is high pay; and accordingly,
in my judgment, it would be well to pay the infantry in both forces
at the rate of eight pesos (of eight reals) a month, in addition
to the thirty ducados of extra pay which are allowed every company
in Hespan