which he ran in this service, it was one of the most important which have ever been performed in these islands for your Majesty.  I have desired to give the sargento-mayor some testimonial for his honor and gratification, but I have not done so because I had not the means to do so.  I have therefore offered him this, to give him a good encomienda; and accordingly it will be given and allotted to him in the name of your Majesty, at the first opportunity.  He has, moreover, earned it by the services which he performed long ago.  It is fitting that it should be known that your Majesty favors and honors those who serve him, so that others may be encouraged to do the same.  It has seemed best to me to give an account of this to your Majesty and to beseech you, as I do, that you should be pleased to command that the affairs and claims of the sargento-mayor always be favored, and that honor and grace be done him; for in this affair I can assure you, the service which he has done here was greater than appears by this writing.

The punishment of the Sangleys being accomplished, there remains to us another care no less great, which is the suspicion we have that within a short time a great fleet is to come from China to take possession of this country, as I wrote your Majesty last year.  This arises from the coming of the mandarins, and from information that some of those Chinese who were punished for their guilt in their uprising were trying to circulate.  Accordingly all the people were persuaded that this rebellion depended upon that; and at one time a rumor was current to the effect that seven hundred Chinese ships had been seen not far from here—­on which occasion it seemed best to me to put things in order as thoroughly as if I had certain advice that the said fleet was on this coast.  Among other precautions which I took, I appointed for the company left vacant by Don Tomas Brabo (my nephew, whom the Sangleys killed in the uprising), Captain Juan de Villacon, as he is a soldier who has spent many years in Flandes, and during that time had been the alferez of Don Luis Brabo de Acuna, my brother; and because he has had experience in the conduct of war in besieged cities—­as it was expected this one must be so in a short time, and as we had very few or none to whom we could have recourse in such a case.  It was necessary for me to urge and coax him, and he accepted it because it was on such an occasion, and to please me.  Although the auditors were in the midst of so many cares, and I was hard at work fortifying the weak places, erecting bulwarks and opening trenches, they issued an act in which they commanded me to make appointments according to the royal ordinances, and that in the meantime there should be no changes—­as if that were the time for such offices to be filled by whomsoever the auditors wish and ask to do it, or in which to be considering ordinances, instead of what was most fitting for your Majesty’s service and the good of the