[5] Alluding to the floods which, as often in former years, had recently inundated a part of the valley in which lies the City of Mexico. In 1627 heavy rains caused the bursting of the dams that confined the Quauhtitlan River, and parts of the city were overflowed. The same experience was repeated in 1629, but to such an extent that the entire city was under water, in most places more than five feet deep. It was more than four years before the city was freed from this calamity, and not until 1634 was this accomplished for the valley, by a series of earthquake shocks. See Bancroft's account of these floods, and the drainage works undertaken to prevent them, in his _Hist. Mexico_, iii, pp. 7-11, 85-91. [6] The petition here addresses the governor instead of the king. [7] See _Vol_. VIII, pp. 127, 133, where the encomiendas of Butuan and Oton are mentioned as held by Dona Lucia de Loarca. This would indicate that Silva's wife was a granddaughter of Miguel de Loarca, and that her father was a son of the latter. [8] The above matter in quotation marks, as appears from a footnote in the Ventura del Arco MS., is taken from a letter written by Father Manuel Azevedo, rector of Manila, May 3,1630. Evidently "Manila" is an error for "Malaca," and the letter was probably written to Manila, and the above section embodied in the relation written from that place. [9] See account of the establishment of this mission, in _Vol_. XVIII, p. 213. [10] The festival here mentioned would seem, from its length, to mean the two feasts observed by the Chinese in the first month of the year--New Year's and the "feast of lanterns." See accounts of these and other feasts in Williams's _Middle Kingdom_, ii, pp. 76-84; and Winterbotham's _Chinese Empire_, ii, pp. 49, 50, 138-142. [11] Fray Juan de Medina was born at Sevilla, and entered the Augustinian convent of that city. On reaching the Philippines he was assigned to the Bisayan group, and was known to those natives by the name of "the apostle of Panay." A zealous worker, he was wont on feast days to preach to his flock in three languages--Bisayan, Chinese, and Spanish. He was minister at Laglag in 1613, at Mambusao in 1615, at Dumangas in 1618, at Panay in 1619, and at Passi in 1623; prior of the convent at Cebu in 1626; and definitor in 1629. After twenty years of missionary labors, being soul-tormented, he asked and secured reluctant permission to return to Spain; but the exigencies of the weather prevented the ship from making its voyage. Three years later he obtained permission to make the same voyage, but died at sea (1635). Diaz, in his _Conquistas_, says that Medina composed many things in aid of his missionary work; but only the present history and four volumes of manuscript sermons in the Panayana language are known with certainty. See Perez's _Catalogo_, pp. 83-85; and Pardo de Tavera's _Biblioteca Filipina_, p. 255.