reason for the natives of Nueva Espana, who now use the wine that comes from Castilla, to drink none except what the Filipinos make.  For since the natives of Nueva Espana are a race inclined to drink and intoxication, and the wine made by the Filipinos is distilled and as strong as brandy, they crave it rather than the wine from Espana.  Consequently, it will happen that the trading fleets [from Spain] will bring less wine every year, and what is brought will be more valuable every year.  So great is the traffic in this [palm wine] at present on the coast at Navidad, among the Apusabalcos, and throughout Colima, that they load beasts of burden with this wine in the same way as in Espana.  By postponing the speedy remedy that this demands, the same thing might also happen to the vineyards of Piru.  It can be averted, provided all the Indian natives of the said Filipinas Islands are shipped and returned to them, that the palm groves and vessels with which that wine is made be burnt, the palm-trees felled, and severe penalties imposed on whomever remains or returns to make that wine.

Incited by their greed in that traffic, all the Indians who have charge of making that wine go to the port of Acapulco when the ships reach there from Manila, and lead away with them all the Indians who come as common seamen.  For that reason, and the others above mentioned, scarcely any of them return to the said Filipinas Islands.  From that it also results that your Majesty loses the royal revenues derived from those islands, inasmuch as all those Indians are tributarios there, and when absent pay nothing.

Among those Filipinas Islands is one called Mindanao which is more than one hundred leguas long.  It is very densely populated by its natives, who are exceeding great pirates and hostile to all the other natives of all those islands subject to your Majesty. and chiefly to the Spaniards.  They generally go in a certain kind of boat called caracoa on piratical expeditions, in which they commit signal depredations in all the ports and along all the coasts of those islands, killing and capturing the people of them, and burning and ruining the country.  They have done that on many occasions, particularly in the former year six hundred and seventeen, when they allied themselves with the Dutch enemy, who came that said year with ten galleons to attack the city and port of Manila.  The said Mindanao enemy came at the same time with ninety caracoas to the aid of the Dutch, and destroyed and burned many places along those coasts, and took many of their people captives.  Among other things they arrived at the shipyard of Pantao with their fleet, where at your Majesty’s orders a galleon and two pataches were being built.  These were more than half built, and the Mindanaos burned them and captured more than four hundred persons, besides killing more than two hundred others.  After burning all the military stores, they proceeded on their voyage toward Manila, and went to within ten leguas of the port of Cavite, whence they returned upon learning that the Dutch fleet had gone on ahead.