In 1718 the merchants of Seville and Cadiz still complained that their profits were being injured by even the limited importation of Chinese silks into Mexico. Thereupon absolute prohibition of import of Chinese silks, either woven or in thread, was decreed. Only linens, spices, and supplies of such things as were not produced in Spain could be brought into Mexico. This order was reaffirmed in 1720, with the provision that six months would be allowed the people of Mexico to consume the Chinese silks which they had in their possession, and thereafter all such goods must be destroyed. Ineffectiveness of These Restrictions.--These measures, while ruining the commerce of the Philippines, were as a matter of fact ineffective to accomplish the result desired. Contraband trade between China and America sprang up in violation of the law. Silks to the value of four million pesos were annually smuggled into America. [78] In 1734 the folly and uselessness of such laws was somewhat recognized by the Council of the Indies, and a cedula was issued restoring the permission to trade in Chinese silks and raising the value of cargoes destined for Acapulco to five hundred thousand pesos, and the quantity of silver for return to one million pesos. The celebrated traffic of the galleon was resumed and continued until the year 1815. An Attempt to Colonize the Carolines.--Southeastward of the Philippines, in that part of the Pacific which is known as Micronesia, there is an archipelago of small islands called the Carolines. The westernmost portion of the group also bear the name of the Pelews, or Palaos. Inasmuch as these islands were eventually acquired by Spain and remained in her possession down to the year 1898, it may be well to state something at this time of the attempt made by the Jesuits in 1731 to colonize them. Certain of these little islands were seen several times by expeditions crossing the Pacific as early as the latter part of the sixteenth century, but after the trade between Mexico and the Philippines had been definitely settled upon, a fixed course was followed westward from Acapulco to Guam, from which there was little variation, and during the seventeenth century these islands passed quite out of mind; but in the year 1696 a party of natives, twenty men and ten women, were driven by storms far from their home in the Carolines upon the eastern coast of Samar. It seems that similar parties of castaways from the Pelew and Caroline Islands had been known to reach Mindanao and other parts of the Philippines at an even earlier date. These last came under the observation of the Jesuit priests on Samar, who baptized them, and, learning from them of the archipelago from which they had been carried, were filled with missionary ambition to visit and Christianize these Pacific islanders.