Weapons and gunpowder are always opportune, and generally the lack of these causes a great deal of trouble.  I accordingly beg your Majesty to be pleased to command that as large an amount thereof as possible may be sent, and that the forces at Manila may also be supplied.  I suggest that although what is now of most importance, and what must primarily be considered, is merely the regaining of the fort and island of Terrenate, still the care and attention which will be necessary to protect and sustain the conquest, at least for the first few years, will not be small.  During that time it will be necessary for us to keep it under control with arms in our hands.  We shall have contests every day with the natives of the country, and likewise with the Dutch, who will not at once be willing to abandon it without testing the defense which it can offer, for the reasons which they publish there and in the other Maluca Islands, and in the islands of Banda.  With regard to this matter I have written to your Majesty.  We must be on the watch everywhere, making Terrenate our center.

By the first section of the orders which your Majesty was pleased to command to have sent to me for this expedition, it appears that the captains who come on the expedition receive sixty ducados a month and the privates eight, whether they were recruited in Hespana or in Nueva Hespana.  I was commanded that if this rate of payment for the soldiers might be moderated in view of what is paid the soldiers here who are of the same rank, I should reduce it, but with fairness.  I have to state that the pay of a private in this garrison is six pesos a month.  This is little, in view of the fact that the country is incomparably more expensive than when their rate of pay was fixed, as I have previously written your Majesty.  The eight ducados which the soldiers of the expedition receive is high pay; and accordingly, in my judgment, it would be well to pay the infantry in both forces at the rate of eight pesos (of eight reals) a month, in addition to the thirty ducados of extra pay which are allowed every company in Hespana and other regions.  I should advise that the captains of both forces should be paid at the rate of fifty pesos, the ensigns at twenty pesos, and the sergeants at the rate of ten, as they are now paid here.  The captains here receive only thirty-five pesos, while those of the expedition are paid sixty ducados, which amount to eighty-two pesos and six reals.  Your Majesty will give such commands as you shall be pleased to issue.  Until we receive the decision of your royal will in this matter, the accounts of the members of the expedition will not be closed.  May our Lord keep the Catholic and royal person of your Majesty, as Christendom has need.  Manila, July 1, 1605.

Don Pedro de Acuna

[Endorsed: “The requests in this letter were honored, in virtue of advice given to his Majesty by the council, August 5, 1606.”]