neral, carrying the staff
of office and making them lower the banners to him, and address
him as "your Lordship," and his wife as "my lady." He immediately
appointed his elder son to the post of sargento-mayor of this camp,
and his younger son to a company, while another company was assigned
to a relative of Auditor Don Matias Flores y Cassila. Others were
assigned to brothers of the said Don Matias, the fiscal, and other
auditors, except Don Albaro, who refused to have anything given to
his household. Upon seeing the illegality of those appointments,
I issued an act declaring them vacant and restoring those posts to
those who had held them before.

I did the same in regard to the posts that I found filled for the
ships which I am despatching now to Nueva Espana, as those appointments
were not made to suitable persons. Such were holding them with their
followers by illegal means and had no services or qualifications,
although there are persons of excellent abilities, as are those who
now hold them.

The ships are the best and most suitable that have sailed hence
for a number of years past, and are of five hundred or six hundred
tons burden apiece. They are well equipped with artillery and other
necessities. They are heavily laden, for, although the enemy was along
the coasts in smaller craft than other years, this year the Chinese
came and have brought the Portuguese from Macan. Regarding the danger
that might be feared on the coast of Nueba Espana from a Dutch fleet
which we heard would pass through the strait of Magallanes, I left the
viceroy warned, so that when those ships can reach that coast, he will
have a sentinel and lookout at the island of Cedros, in front of the
gulf of California--where they are ordered to reconnoiter the enemy's
condition, and where the foe never expect them--and with a port to
windward of the cape of Corrientes, which is the place where they may
be awaited; with that I trust, God helping, that they will be secure.

Eleven of the fourteen Dutch ships that passed [the strait] this
year went to Capulco; they were those which the pirate took from
Olanda. Seven of them were large ships, and four small; three of them
were captured in Piru. They reached Terrenate with all of them, and
with eight hundred men aboard. Accordingly I believe that they will
come here in a few months; and as this state and its conservation
depends on maritime forces (as does that of all the islands of the
world); a