with my signature attached, and sealed with the seal of my arms. Given in Manila, August twenty-four, one thousand six hundred and one. DON FRANCISCO TELLO * * * * * In the same year of one thousand six hundred, two merchantships left Manila for Nueva España: the flagship the "Sancta Margarita," with Juan Martinez de Guillestigui as general, who had arrived the year before in the same capacity; and the "San Geronimo," under Don Fernando de Castro. On their way, both ships met with storms in the latitude of thirty-eight degrees and at six hundred leguas from the Filipinas, and suffered great hardship. At the end of nine months at sea, after many of the men had died and much of the merchandise had been thrown overboard and lost, the "San Geronimo" put back to the Filipinas, off the islands of Catenduanes, outside of the channel of Espiritu Santo, and there was wrecked, although the crew were saved. The flagship "Sancta Margarita," after the death of the general and most of the crew, ported at the Ladrones Islands and anchored at Zarpana. There natives who went to the ships, seeing it so abandoned and battered, boarded and took possession of it, and of its goods and property. The few men whom they found alive, they took away to their settlements, where they killed some and apportioned others to various villages, where they maintained them and gave them better treatment. The Indians wore the gold chains and other things of the ship around their necks, and then hung them to the trees and in their houses, like people who had no knowledge of their value. [144] In the month of May of the year six hundred and one, the galleon "Santo Tomas" arrived at the Filipinas from Nueva España with passengers, soldiers, and the return proceeds of the merchandise which had been delayed in Mexico. Its general was Licentiate Don Antonio de Ribera Maldonado, who had been appointed auditor of Manila. A small patache had sailed in company with the galleon from the port of Acapulco, but being unable to sail as rapidly as the "Santo Tomas," after a few days' voyage, it dropped behind. When they arrived off the Ladrones Islands, some natives went out, as usual, to meet the ship in their boats, and brought with them five Spaniards of the crew of the ship "Sancta Margarita," which had been lost there the year before. The loss of that vessel was learned from those men; also that as many as twenty-six Spaniards were living in the towns of those islands; and that if the ship would wait, the natives would bring them.