In all these four orders there are persons of much learning and many accomplishments, and good linguists who instruct the natives, among whom they have achieved great results.  In the houses of the Society of Jesus there are two colleges—­one at Manila and the other in the city of Santisimo Nombre de Jhesus—­in which religious of very exemplary life teach Latin to the Spaniards and give instruction to the natives.

Copy of a letter written in the past year (1598) concerning the erection of prebends and half-prebends of the cathedral church at Manila.  Cited in clause 7 of the governor’s letter of July 12, 1599.

Sire: 

In accordance with what your Majesty orders me in his royal instruction, we, the archbishop and myself, made a visitation of the cathedral church, which is greatly lacking in all necessaries, and particularly in chaplains, which is noticeable on feast-days.  Accordingly it seemed advisable to institute two prebendaries, each with a stipend of two hundred pesos per year; and two half-prebendaries, with a hundred and fifty pesos of stipend each per year—­to be paid in the same manner as the other canons.  I beg your Majesty to have this approved, since it has been done in conformity with your Majesty’s order to provide whatever was necessary.  We are considering from what source the other necessaries can be provided, as, outside of the royal exchequer of your Majesty, there is at present no other fund; and the royal treasury is in great need, between the mortality of the natives and the taxations of Don Luis Perez de las Marinas; the yearly income has diminished by more than fifteen thousand pesos.  We shall try our best to order affairs in the best possible way.  May our Lord protect the Catholic person of your Majesty, as we your servants and vassals have need.  Manila, the twelfth of July, 1598.

[Francisco Tello]

Statement of the accounts received from the director of the hospital for the natives.  Cited in clause 8 of the letter of the governor of July 12, 1599.

The accounts which the lord president, governor, and captain-general of these islands, Don Francisco Tello, knight of the habit of Santiago, ordered me, the accountant Bartolome de Rrenteria, to audit from the seventeenth of September of the year ninety-eight, when the said lord president was at the royal hospital for natives of these islands.  He inspected and took possession thereof in the name of your Majesty; and ordered me, the said accountant, to make in his presence an inventory of the income and property belonging to the said hospital, and I did so, as follows: