and that they give him a considerable number of ducados—­obtained or stole in Yndia certain letters written to your Majesty by the Audiencia and despatched via Yndia in the time of Don Antonio Rodriguez, which were the duplicates of others written via Nueva Espana.  He directed them to this city, together with other letters written by the inhabitants and religious.  The governor opened and read them, with so little fear and respect that one of his adherents went about the streets publicly reading to private persons the letters that the Audiencia wrote to your Majesty.  Consequently he has taken occasion to write to your Majesty with tricks and cunning, as is said.

4.  The fourth is that, in consequence of this and other things, occasion was given for it to be said very openly, this year, that he opened the packets from your Majesty, which were handed to him first, and extracted whatever he wanted, if they contained anything that answered his purpose; and then resealed them and ordered the person who bore them (and whom he sent for them) to return very secretly as he had entered, and to enter a second time publicly with the packets damp, so that it could not be seen that they had been opened.  In this too was involved your Majesty’s new seal which they said would be found in one of the packets, but it does not appear.  Therefore they charge the governor with concealing it; and all that is without the aid of authority to make investigation.

5.  The fifth is that your Majesty orders by a decree that came to the Audiencia this year that the vessels that sail hence to Acapulco be not despatched late.  The fact of the matter in this is, Sire, that the Audiencia is powerless to remedy that, beyond the repeated telling of it to the governor.  If they should do more, besides not being obeyed by a single man, at the least little thing, the governor would seize the auditor who said it and clap him into prison; and, as he is the sole and absolute ruler, he is, notwithstanding what has been said to him this year, despatching the vessels when he wishes, and answers that he is attending to it very well and is doing his duty.  It is said that, this year as in others, he has made a great cargo by the schemes and methods mentioned in the duplicates.  Others say that he has done it, because it is common talk that news came to him that in Acapulco a small casket of gold in bars, and jewels and pearls, had been confiscated from him as contraband goods, although the officials did not know the owner of it; and that one Don Fernando Falcon, who took under his charge a considerable amount of the governor’s property last year, went to Piru from Acapulco with most of it, and the governor is obliged to claim compensation.  Because of awaiting ships from Macan to make chests, the ships are not yet despatched, and it is the thirtieth of July; nor does anyone imagine that they will leave the islands even by the fifteenth of August.  That, the governor says, is because of the enemy.  Thus and with other