The natives give wax also in place of money, at the rate of ten or twelve reals per chinanta, according to its scarcity or abundance. Some gold is paid in certain provinces, as those regions have placers and mineral deposits. The two hundred and fifty thousand tributes which I mentioned are collected annually throughout these islands, and are divided into two parts--one of the royal encomienda, which amounts to two hundred and thirty-one thousand five hundred and sixty-three whole tributes; while the remaining eighteen thousand four hundred and thirty-seven are from the encomiendas of private persons, whom his Majesty has rewarded on account of their useful services, granting to them that part of the royal tributes. But, from those tributes granted them, they give his Majesty two reals per whole tribute, that sum being called "the royal situado." They also pay to the ministers and parish priests, from their encomiendas, the stipends of rice with the alms in reals that belong to them--to the amount of one hundred pesos, and two hundred fanegas of rice, for every five hundred tributes administered, and one-half real from each whole tribute for the wine used in the mass. His Majesty pays the same quantity to the said ministers from his royal encomiendas; he also gives annually one arroba of wine for masses, and ten of oil for each one of the lamps which burn before the most holy sacrament, in all the ministries of the islands. The stipends given by his Majesty to the archbishops and suffragan bishops, the dignitaries of the holy church, and other ministers are in the following form. Pope Gregory XIII, by his bull given at Roma in the seventh year of his pontificate (which was the year 1587 [_i.e._, 1578]), at the petition of the Catholic king of the Espanas, Don Felipe Second, erected the first parish church of Manila, and assigned twenty-seven prebends to it, of which those that are suitable and necessary were accepted. They consist of five dignidades--namely, a dean, an archdeacon, a precentor, a schoolmaster, and a treasurer; three canons, the fourth having been suppressed for the inquisitors, according to custom in the Indias; two whole and two half racions, established by royal decree given at Valladolid, June 2, 1604, and countersigned by Juan Ibarra, his Majesty's secretary. Besides that, there are in the cathedral two curas, two sacristans, one master of ceremonies, one verger, and other officers; so that that holy church is well established and the choir crowded, and their functions and feasts are most splendid.