. I
beseech your Majesty to be pleased to order that the viceroy of Nueva
Hespana send us this amount for this purpose, as I doubt much if the
obligation can be satisfied here for many years. This commonwealth
has been greatly consoled at seeing that the Chinese have chosen to
continue the commerce, of which we were much in doubt; but they have
actually done so. This was made easier by sending the information,
and the entire failure of one year; in many ways this loss cannot be
repaired. Nevertheless, the lack of money is felt in the treasury;
for the duties on the entry and clearance of the goods from China,
the royal officials tell me, amount to forty thousand pesos less this
year than the year past. I believe that in the coming year we will have
many goods here; for the little which they brought this year has sold
very well, and they are content and quite satisfied at the freedom
allowed them in their traffic, and that nothing is taken from them
without their consent, as they were not before favored in this manner.

I have responded to almost all the points of a paper which your
Majesty ordered me to write on the sixteenth of February of the past
year 1602--as your Majesty will command to be examined in my answer,
to which I refer you, merely saying that there I explain everything
which might be said in this.

Christoval de Azqueta, captain and sargento-mayor of this camp,
has passed more than twenty-eight years in these islands. During all
this time he has been occupied in the service of your Majesty in the
affairs of war, and a very good account of him has been given. He
is one of the most serviceable men I have for this employment; for,
besides being a very good soldier, he has wide experience in all the
islands and their ports. Likewise I was very well satisfied with
his person on account of his having so well and so industriously
attended to his duty as sargento-mayor at the time when the Sangleys
had invested this city. It being understood that a great body of
them had fortified themselves at San Pablo and another at Batangas,
and that they were in a region where much food could be obtained on
short notice, as it was near the harvest time in those provinces,
it was resolved that some person of tried valor should go to punish
them, being provided with a number of Indian arquebusiers, archers,
and other soldiers, and a few Japanese, with one hundred and fifty
Spaniards, and the necessary munitions for that purp