27. Item:  That it is the practice or abuse that fowls are given to your governor, auditors, and other officials of the royal Audiencia at lower prices than are current; and that the governor of the Chinese is ordered for that purpose to allot the share of all [the Chinese], and each one is obliged to give weekly so many fowls at a certain low price, and he who does not give them is punished and fined.  The worst thing is that on this occasion the governor of the Chinese steals as many more, at the same price.  That amounts to a vast sum; for, since there is no other flesh eaten except beef and pork, these fowls amount by the end of the year to more than twenty thousand.  In this way signal injury is done to the Chinese.

They also provide their houses with rice, which is the usual bread; and they take it as well as other things from your royal storehouses, at the prices for which they are given to your Majesty as tributes.  It results that your Majesty’s treasury, in the course of the year, encounters a deficiency of supplies, on account of the great expense, and these must be bought afterward at very high rates.  He mentioned this so that your Majesty should provide what may be deemed advisable; for it is a pity to see your Majesty’s treasury poorly administered, since it is so necessary there. [93]

28. Item:  Inasmuch as certain regidors of the city have their encomiendas in the Pintados Islands and other districts, and as the governors, in order to annoy them, command them to go to live on the encomiendas, thus obliging them to leave their offices, to their own great loss and inconvenience; and as that is even the cause of their being unable to exercise their offices with freedom, in order not to anger the governor:  he petitions your Majesty that, if your governor thus urge a regidor to go to live [there] in person, he may maintain in the said encomienda a soldier in his stead, since it is the same thing; and it shall be understood that he is under no further obligation.  The same also is to be understood with the leading citizens of Manila.

29. Item:  That your governor of Filipinas, in recent years, requested from your viceroy of Nueva Espana many kinds of supplies, such as rigging.  One year they carried him fifty thousand pesos’ worth of it; but the freight charged for carrying it from one sea to the other alone amounted to a vast sum of money, and the rigging arrived at the islands rotten and useless.  For ten thousand pesos, the Indians would make twice as much as what cost fifty thousand pesos.  He sent for damask for the flag to the sea of Damascus; and six varas of it cost less than one in Nueva Espana.  He sends for garbanzos, habas, biscuit, soap, and many other things, which cost their weight in money; and when they reach the islands, they are rotten and useless.  Those things can be provided in the Filipinas with great advantages; and where your Majesty spends one thousand, they can