The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55, 1683-1690: Explorations by Early Navigators, Descriptions of the Islands and Their Peoples, Their History and Records of The Catholic Missions, As Related in Contemporaneous Books and Manuscripts, Showing the Political, Economic, Commercial and Religious Conditions of Those Islands from Their Earliest Relations with European Nations to the Close of the Nineteenth Century
History
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55, 1683-1690: Explorations by Early Navigators, Descriptions of the Islands and Their Peoples, Their History and Records of The Catholic Missions, As Related in Contemporaneous Books and Manuscripts, Showing the Political, Economic, Commercial and Religious Conditions of Those Islands from Their Earliest Relations with European Nations to the Close of the Nineteenth Century
Demarcation line of Alexander VI; Missions -- Philippines; Philippines -- Discovery and exploration; Philippines -- History -- Sources
On the fourteenth of January, 1690, his investigations being concluded,
the examiner left Acapulco, and sent ahead by the fast carriers as
many as twenty loads of his own equipage, with a servant, and verbal
orders that the guards should give them free passage. Information of
this exemption reached the custom-house of this city, and its special
judge, Don Juan Jose de Ciga y Linage, stationed officers on the
route for safety. The examiner set out, by easy stages, because he
was conveying a woman who had lately become a mother--one of his two
maidservants, with whom he traveled, whom he had secretly married while
in the bay, a little before landing at Vera Cruz; and the said lady
died, a few days after leaving Acapulco, and was buried in the town
of Cuernavaca. The said freight and equipage arrived at Mexico, and,
notwithstanding the orders of the examiner, the following articles
were unloaded in the custom-house: twenty-one chests, four boxes,
two escritoires, three boxes, one screen, four china jars [tibores],
[170] one trunk of clothes, and four civet-cats. Permission was given
that the animals be sent to the house of Don Geronimo de Chacon, to
whom the above goods came directed; but the rest was kept [at the
custom-house], the packages being opened, and a list of the goods
being made. The said examiner being asked for a load that had gone
astray on the journey, he replied, desiring to shield himself and
another person, that it did not belong to him, and he knew nothing
about it. The cause of this search was, it seems, that secret warning
had been given [to the customs officers] of perfumes, fine stuffs,
and other goods improper for [the possession of] an examiner.
On the fifteenth of February, 1690, after various protests and
threatening statements that the said boxes contained only his
clothing, and especially that three contained only the private
papers and documents of his visitation and commission, as he resisted
surrendering the keys the locks were broken of the said three boxes;
and in them was found not one paper. The contents of these, as in the
boxes above mentioned, were as follows: three ornamental boxes and two
writing-desks of lacquered wood, perfume-caskets, trays, combs, fans,
porcelain cups, and curious articles of japanned ware. Besides these,
there were forty cases of fans; item, eighty-six bundles of untwisted
silk, and several libras more of spun silk; item, two hundred and
seventy-five pieces of stuffs--satin, lampotes, ribbed silk, Chinese
silk, velvets, and other wares from Canton; item, one hundred and
fifty-eight onzas of musk; item, three hundred and forty-four pairs
of silk hose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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