Nueva Espana aids me with very little money; for this year not more than two hundred and thirty-four thousand pesos has come for the expenses of the treasury, and during all the past years aid came in almost the same way.  The viceroy thinks that he is doing his duty in not sending more.  I would like him to have charge of affairs here, to see whether he could maintain armed fleets, infantry, friars, ministers of justice, the extraordinary expenses of presidios, and many other expenses—­which will be seen there from the reports which your Majesty asked, and which are sent this year—­with so little cloth.  He also sent me only ninety soldiers as a reenforcement, for whom, I am assured, twenty warrants were given.  The best of all is that I am told very positively that the levy will begin very early, just as if that had the tune that was to attract many men.  If the captains who raise the men were the ones who had to bring them, they would make men.  But as they are not the ones to bring them, and as the matter is reduced to three companies who have to come here, and the captains of these come to obtain the men on the wing—­that is, on the road or at the very port of Acapulco—­they find that already the men have deserted to the other captains.  Many of them die here, and there is but a low birth rate in this country.  Thus the garrisons at Terrenate and the other presidios lack men, although the visitor thinks it all too much.  I am not surprised at that, for his desire is the same as mine, namely, to cut short your Majesty’s expenses.  But it is certain that some economies come to be wasteful.  He told me that I should reduce the soldiery in these islands to the number that was established by Gomez Perez Dasmarinas.  As he does not know what it means to have Dutch enemies about us, he thinks that we could get along with fewer men [than we have here].  I find, Sire, that your Majesty does not have another military establishment more important in the Yndias than the Filipinas Islands.  And, that it may be evident whether I make a wrong assertion, consider what part of the Yndias the enemy have made their own—­except Xava, where they hold Xacatra, three hundred leguas from here.  There they have their principal fort, and have their ammunition and magazines.  Here, Sire, here, is where your Majesty, joining Malaca and Macan to this government, must maintain your forces and oppose them to those of the enemy.  If that is not done, there is but little to hope from these Yndias, which will be ruined in a short time; or, at the least, will incur so many expenses that they will be of no use.  May God take me to that court, where I hope to make the affairs of these regions understood as they are, and not as people imagine there.  Neither heavy expenses nor large fleets are necessary for this.  The continual plying of four galleons and two pataches, and four galleons in the strait of Malaca, will keep the enemy so hemmed in that they will make no captures or have any trade;