The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803; explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commericial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the beginning of the nineteenth century; [Vol. 1, no. 24]

I630-I634]

TAVORA TO FELIPE IV

213

exhaustion and weakness, that I greatly fear that I
shall not be able to leave this place. If I shall not
do that, I shall have fulfilled my duty by giving my
life in the service of your Majesty. Your Majesty
knows that I am not fit for the burden of government
since the death of Dofia Magdalena, who is in
heaven. Everything has been hardship for me; and
I have become so exhausted that I can scarce rise
from my bed, and I have been very near my end
twice or thrice. May God fulfil His will, and may
your Majesty be pleased to give orders that I be
relieved, if you wish affairs to be safe here; for
surely the country will be very quickly in the power
of the auditors, if some person does not come from
there who will not let it be lost. If God give me
life, I shall be contented even with retiring to the
post with which your Majesty has favored me, as
your commissary of war. Notwithstanding that I
assure your Majesty as your faithful vassal, and as
a person who would prefer to lose a thousand lives
than to utter one falsehood to his king, that the
Filipinas have been worth nothing to me, during the
six years of my residence herein; but rather I have
lost the twenty thousand pesos which I have spent
from the dowry that Doina Magdalena brought me.
And had not our Lord been pleased to give me a son
(at whose birth she died), she would not have had
enough whereby to have returned safely home to her
parents. I confess that it must seem to politicians
that one does not come so far not to gain a bit of
bread; but it is certain that if one is to serve your
Majesty to the letter, and live as a Christian, it is
difficult to acquire much property. I arrived at
these islands very deeply pledged, for the expenses