At the time, however, when he conceived the desire to enter into direct communication with New Spain, he was at the beginning of his remarkable career. Only two years had passed since Taikun Hideyoshi had bestowed upon him, as a reward for his services as a general, the eight provinces, which were designated “The Kwanto,” and ordered him to take up his residence at the then unimportant town of Yedo, the present Tokio. Considering that since 1542, when the first Portuguese trading vessels visited Japan, the Portuguese had been enjoying the monopoly of a system of trade by barter, it was certainly a new departure for General Iyeyasu to attempt to establish direct communication between his new domain and Mexico. It was his idea that this result might be obtained if he could but induce the merchant vessels which plied between the Philippines and Mexico to touch at one of the ports of “The Kwanto.” With this object in view, he sought the advice and aid of the learned Franciscan friar, Geronimo de Jesús, who wrote for him a Spanish letter to the governor of the Philippines, in which, as an opening to future negotiations, Iyeyasu courteously invited the Spanish merchant vessels to seek shelter in any of the ports situated in his domain, if ever overtaken by the dangerous storms so prevalent in these regions. This letter, which was written in the same year in which the second expedition to Corea came to an end and a number of Coreans were brought from that country to Japan, was not sent when written, for the negotiations were suspended by the stirring events which culminated in the famous battle of Sekigakara, which, in 1600, established Iyeyasu’s supremacy in Japan. It was not until 1601 that Iyeyasu found leisure to revert to his plan, and sent Shinkiro, a wealthy merchant of the City of Sakai, as bearer of the above letter and some costly presents to the governor of the Philippines. The latter, deeply involved at that time in the war which Spain was carrying on in Cambodia against Siam, responded by saying that Iyeyasu’s proposal pleased him extremely, and that he would accept it as soon as he was free and able to do so. Meanwhile he begged him to accept certain gifts in return for those which he had received with much gratitude through the Japanese envoy Shinkiro. In the month of May of the following year, a new governor, Don Pedro Bravo de Acuña, was appointed for the Philippines. In September of the same year Iyeyasu dispatched Shinkiro again with another letter, also written in Spanish by the Franciscan friar, Geronimo. The original draft of this interesting document, which is preserved in Japan, is in Japanese, from which language it was translated into French for Señor Lera, so that he, in turn, could translate it into Spanish, from which language I have made the following literal translation.