The licentiate Hieronimo de Salazar y Salcedo
[Endorsed: “Manila; to his Majesty, 1603. The fiscal Hieronimo de Salazar; July 5. Examined on the second of July, 1604. No response to be given.”]
Copy of a letter which Chanchian, the chief mandarin of the three who came to this city of Manila from the kingdom of China in the month of June of the year one thousand six hundred and three, wrote in the Chinese characters and tongue to Don Pedro de Acuna, governor and captain-general of the Philipinas Islands for the king our lord, and his president in the royal Chancilleria thereof, four days before the said mandarins arrived in the said city; translated from the original of the said letter by a Dominican religious.
Chanchian, of the lineage of Au, who governs the warriors of the province of Hoquien, the envoy of the king of the realm of China, and servant of the eunuch of the lineage of Cou. Because Tio Heng, who is considered a reputable man, has gone to the king of China [16] and told him that from this kingdom there could each year be taken for the king of China a hundred thousand taes of gold and three hundred thousand taes of silver at his expense, so that his vassals should not pay tribute or be molested, the king has sent a eunuch who is called Cochay to take charge of those who have said that there was gold. This Tio Heng with five companions say that outside of the boundaries of Hayten in a place called Lician there is a mountain which is called Heyt Coavite, one lonely mountain in the midst of the wide-spread sea; and that there is no realm to which it belongs or to which the inhabitants