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]

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THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

[Vol. 24

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 Dasmarifias. 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