the royal officials tell me, amount to forty thousand pesos less this year than the year past. I believe that in the coming year we will have many goods here; for the little which they brought this year has sold very well, and they are content and quite satisfied at the freedom allowed them in their traffic, and that nothing is taken from them without their consent, as they were not before favored in this manner. I have responded to almost all the points of a paper which your Majesty ordered me to write on the sixteenth of February of the past year 1602--as your Majesty will command to be examined in my answer, to which I refer you, merely saying that there I explain everything which might be said in this. Christoval de Azqueta, captain and sargento-mayor of this camp, has passed more than twenty-eight years in these islands. During all this time he has been occupied in the service of your Majesty in the affairs of war, and a very good account of him has been given. He is one of the most serviceable men I have for this employment; for, besides being a very good soldier, he has wide experience in all the islands and their ports. Likewise I was very well satisfied with his person on account of his having so well and so industriously attended to his duty as sargento-mayor at the time when the Sangleys had invested this city. It being understood that a great body of them had fortified themselves at San Pablo and another at Batangas, and that they were in a region where much food could be obtained on short notice, as it was near the harvest time in those provinces, it was resolved that some person of tried valor should go to punish them, being provided with a number of Indian arquebusiers, archers, and other soldiers, and a few Japanese, with one hundred and fifty Spaniards, and the necessary munitions for that purpose. I chose for this the said sargento-mayor, Christoval de Azqueta, and he left with his troops. He went about it so skilfully that the undertaking was successful, and all the Sangleys were left dead except a few whom he brought for the galleys. Therefore, considering the condition in which this colony was, and the risk which he ran in this service, it was one of the most important which have ever been performed in these islands for your Majesty. I have desired to give the sargento-mayor some testimonial for his honor and gratification, but I have not done so because I had not the means to do so. I have therefore offered him this, to give him a good encomienda; and accordingly it will be given and allotted to him in the name of your Majesty, at the first opportunity. He has, moreover, earned it by the services which he performed long ago. It is fitting that it should be known that your Majesty favors and honors those who serve him, so that others may be encouraged to do the same. It has seemed best to me to give an account of this to your Majesty and to beseech you, as I do, that