may begin the expedition immediately. I charge you straitly to do with circumspectness, consideration, and caution what I expect from so gallant a soldier. These men are to be well disciplined and drilled, and everything so ordered that the desired and so important effect may be gained, for you see the risk in this and its expense. You shall endeavor, as I charge you, to have the advisable care and order taken in the efficient distribution and collection of my revenues, and the avoidance of superfluous expense. Of the course of events you shall keep me advised on all occasions. After recovering the fort of Ternate, you shall place there and on the island the garrison necessary for its safety. I have ordered the viceroy of Nueva Espana, if he has any opportunity for it, to advise you as soon as the men raised here arrive there [_i.e._, in Nueva Espana], and that he report clearly to you the contingent enlisted in that country, and that will be raised in any other way, as well as the time that they will leave there, so that you may take the necessary precautions concerning them from those islands. If you consider it advisable for these men to stop anywhere and not to go to Manila, you shall so order it, or give any other orders that you deem most advisable, in anything. Valladolid. June twenty, one thousand six hundred and four. After the above decree was sent, its dispositions began to be carried out in Espana. Before this, in the preceding year one thousand six hundred and three, while governor Don Pedro was occupied in the preparations necessary for this purpose [_i.e._, of the expedition], an accident occurred in Filipinas which threatened their loss and other greater misfortunes. In the month of April a fire broke out in Manila and burnt the richest part and more than half of the city, and it was impossible to keep the goods from burning which had been discharged from the ships recently arrived from Nueva Espana which were being kept in the most secure of the houses. Two hundred and seventy houses, wood and stone, were burned, and even the monastery of St. Dominic (both house and church), the royal Spanish hospital, and the magazines; and not a single edifice was left standing in the burned area. Fourteen Spaniards were burned, among whom was Licentiate Sanz, canon of the cathedral, together with some Indians and negroes. The loss was estimated at one million....