since then, we could not avoid deferring this; it appeared best to carry out our agreement with these people by giving them the money, since they had the cloth to sell, but it has not been possible.  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 purpose.  I chose for this the said sargento-mayor, Christoval de Azqueta, and he left with his troops.  He went about it so skilfully that the undertaking was successful, and all the Sangleys were left dead except a few whom he brought for the galleys.  Therefore, considering the condition in which this colony was, and the risk