s abaca costs twenty-four reals per
quintal, and is made into rigging in Cabite by the Indian natives, in
the sizes and diameter required. These Indian ropemakers are furnished,
in repartimiento [50] in neighboring villages, and your Majesty pays
them eight reals per month and a ration of one-half celemin of rice
daily. A task is assigned to them, for they work from midnight and
until the close of the next day.

The total cost per quintal of this native rigging is about fifty
reals. That shipped from Nueva Espana, which is bought in Beta Cruz and
delivered in the port of Acapulco, costs your Majesty two hundred reals
per quintal. It generally reaches the said Filipinas Islands rotten,
and is of no use. If your Majesty will order the ships to sail from
Manila furnished [with rigging] for the return voyage, that would,
in the first year, put a stop to shipping any [rigging to Manila].

The canvas [_lienco_] from which the sails are made in the said
islands is excellent, and much better than what is shipped from Espana,
because it is made from cotton. They are certain cloths [_liencos_]
which are called _mantas_ [_i.e._, literally blankets or strips of
cotton cloth] from the province of Ylocos, for the natives of that
province manufacture nothing else, and pay your Majesty their tribute
in them. They are one tercia [_i.e._, one-third of a vara] wide, and as
thick as canvas [_angeo_]. They are doubled, and quilted with thread of
the same cotton. They last much longer than those of Espana. One vara
of this cloth [_lienco_] costs less than one-half real. The thread
of the same cotton with which they are sewed costs twenty reals per
arroba. The cloth brought from Nueva Espana costs your Majesty, when
set down in the city of Manila, six reals per vara. Also the thread
shipped from Nueva Espana to sew the sails costs, set down there, six
reals per libra. The thread made of hemp when used with cotton canvas
[_lienco_] is of no use, and does not well endure transportation. The
ships sailing from Manila to Nueva Espana carry sails for the return
voyage and nevertheless have to make others in the port of Acapulco.

It is also the custom to ship pikes with their iron heads from Nueva
Espana to the said Filipinas Islands. Delivered in the city of Manila,
they cost your Majesty more than thirty-two reals apiece; but, with
thirty-two reals, they can make forty pikes in the city of Manila. It
is a weapon that is worthless in those isla