[136] "The cultivation of the indigo had already been encouraged and improved by another Augustinian, Fray Matias Octavo, with the generous aid of a worthy merchant of Manila, Don Diego Garcia Herreros, applying the method then used at Guatemala; (thus) it was possible in 1784 to make a shipment, by the warship Asuncion, which found a good market in Cadiz. With these antecedents, the Company did not have to do much to exploit this product, and limited itself to making advances to the farmers for the purchase of implements needed * * *, and buying everything that was offered for sale; thus in 1786 it was able to export one hundred and forty quintals of this valuable article, and double that in 1788." (Ibid., pp. 133-134). [137] "With the same eagerness the Company devoted itself to promote the cultivation of the sugar cane, and very soon began to reap the harvest of its well-calculated attempts, and shipped for the Peninsula in 1786 eight hundred and sixty arrobas, and in 1788, nine thousand six hundred and sixty three arrobas for the same place, and for China and India; and thus this article continued to progress, always heading the list of exports from the country, since in a memorial or report sent to the king in 1790 by Governor Don Felix Berenguer de Marquina, it is stated that the amount of sugar exported the year before was between forty and fifty thousand piculs." (Ibid., pp. 134-135.) [138] Azcarraga says that upon cotton, which--at different times, especially during the revolutionary war in the United States--had been recommended to the chiefs of the provinces as an article to whose cultivation they should especially devote themselves, the company placed a great deal of hope, because of its good quality; it could compete with what the English exported from the coasts of Malabar, and thus, by promoting its cultivation in great scale, at the same time that the projected textile factories of the country would be supplied with raw materials, it would supply the constant demand of China; these expectations were confirmed by the good sale which the first shipment of one hundred and fifty sacks to China had, and thus the directors adopted this article as the chief commodity for its trade. (Ibid.) [139] Text of decree is given in Montero y Vidal, Historia, Vol. 2, pp. 302-303. [140] Estadismo, Vol. 1, p. 273. [141] Azcarraga, Chapters 9, 10, and 11; Mas, Part II, pp. 31-35; Vidal, Historia, Vol. II, pp. 297-307.