pesos, which comes to eighty [13] pesos.  The payment is made in silver, to exchange which for current money causes a great deal of loss.  Thus all of these pilferings consume the little which is given to the religious.  I pass over the fact that it is impossible to collect money due without taking many steps and hearing many rude answers and sometimes insulting language.  At one time when I was making such claims, one of the Mexican accountants uttered to me, before respectable witnesses, an insult which cut me to the heart, because I felt it as a man; and if he had uttered those words to one of his slaves, it might have wounded him.

In Acapulco.  At the port of Acapulco is the last stopping-place.  I do not even know what happens there, for at the time of writing this report we have not arrived there; but I have sufficient evidence that it must be the most burdensome of all.  It is about three months since I have had three religious there, being obliged to send them in advance that they might prepare there what is needed for the voyage.  One of them with my power of attorney requested the royal officials there to grant them a house, as is usual and customary, that they might collect there the ship-stores which are on the way from Mexico, and might lodge the friars there when about to make the journey.  They presented for this purpose your Majesty’s decree which I possess, and the officials replied that they would not grant them the house without a command from the viceroy.  I sent this to them, and they made I know not what additions, and so have sent it back to me.  During the two months and more that have been occupied with these demands and answers, the poor friars have slept on the ground, without having anyone to take them into his house—­except that, being taken ill, they were received in the hospital.  It is with all these hardships and difficulties that this voyage, so much to the service of God and of his Majesty, is taken, besides those experienced in the voyage itself, which are enough to make the beard of the bravest tremble.  His Majesty requires, in spite of all this, that all of the religious who go from Espana to Philippinas must proceed thither, without permission being granted for any to remain in Nueva Spana; but there is no means less suitable to gain that end than obliging them to pass through so many difficulties.  They come out of them so much grieved and humiliated that their courage and good will in serving his Majesty has come to an end.  To transport them by force most certainly is no profit to his royal service, much less to the service of God.  It does no good to the cause of religion, as I said in the beginning.  Besides this, if your Majesty is pleased that we religious shall pass through so many registries without having our word or oath believed in them, because of the fraud that might exist in the amounts allowed to us from his royal treasury—­if we are not to be trusted in this matter, much less shall be so in