[27] Alonso de Alvarado was one of the Augustinian friars who accompanied (1542) the expedition of Villalobos; in 1549 he returned to Spain. Again coming to the Philippines in 1571, he labored as a missionary among the natives of Luzon. Appointed provincial of his order there in 1575, he died at Manila in May, 1576. See Retana's _Zúñiga_, ii, p. 563*, and Pérez's _Catálogo_, p. 11; the latter states that Alvarado was the first Spaniard in the Philippines to learn the mandarin dialect of the Chinese language, and that he ministered to the Chinese converts there. [28] As a result of this journey, Loarca wrote a memoir entitled _Verdadera relacion de la grandeça del reyno de China_, etc. A MS. which is evidently a copy from the original of this document is preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid; its press-mark is "J.--16, 89," and "MSS. 2902." It is possible that Mendoza, in writing his _Historia_, had access to Loarca's work. [29] An officer, superior to the captains, charged with the discipline and instruction of the regiment; he exercised the functions of fiscal, and had the right of intervention in the commissary department and in all expenditures. (_Nov. dicc. lengua castellana_.) [30] Pedro de Alfaro was at the head of the first band of Franciscan missionaries who came to the Philippine Islands, and was the first custodian and superior of that order in the ecclesiastical province of the Philippines. In the autumn of 1579 he went to China, where he founded a mission at Macao. While on a voyage to India, in June of the following year, the ship was wrecked, and Alfaro perished. See account of his life and labors in Santa Inés's _Crónica_, i, pp. 113, 120, 130-140, 160-178. As that writer distinctly states (p. 124), the Franciscans reached Manila in June, 1577--not in 1578, as in our text. [31] Agustín de Tordesillas was one of the Franciscans who first came to the Philippines. At the time when he went to China with Alfaro, Tordesillas was at the head of his convent in Manila. See account of this mission in Santa Inés's _Crónica_, i, cap. vi-ix. [32] Named by Santa Inés (_Crónica_, p. 108), Juan Bautista Písaro (_alias_ "the Italian"), and Sebastián de Baeza, this last the name of a town in Andalusia. They left Manila on this voyage at the end of May, 1579. [33] The title-page of this "Itinerary," as well as some portions of the text (notably the first chapter), are widely different in the first edition of Mendoza's _Historia_ (1585) from the Madrigal edition of 1586 (which we follow). See the Hakluyt Society's reprint (London, 1853) of Parke's translation of Mendoza, vol. ii, pp. 207-209, 232. The Franciscan here mentioned was Fray Martin Ignacio de Loyola, a relative of the Loyola who founded the Jesuit order.