a hospital, in which, with the good example of those religious, and their instruction and continual assistance in the sicknesses of the Chinese, they have gained so great a harvest that from its foundation (which was in the former year of 1588) to the present year of 1677, [29] seldom has a patient died without receiving the water of holy baptism. This religious order also have at San Juan del Monte a sanctuary which is the object of devotion of all that colony; and at the port of Cavite, three leguas distant from Manila--where the galleons and other vessels of smaller size are built--they have the convent of San Thelmo, the religious of which assist the soldiers, mariners, and sailors with their preaching and instruction, so that all of them may live Christian and orderly lives. This religious province administers the functions entrusted to it without any worldly advantage, receiving neither imposts nor fees for burials, marriages, feast-days, or sermons--its religious being supported only by the stipend which your Majesty assigns to the ministers in the mission villages; and from this amount they spend much and distribute [alms] among the poor and needy Indians of their districts. Nor is there in any convent of the said province any fixed income; nor has the province ever accepted deposits or valuable articles, or permitted its individual religious to keep these things in their cells, or anything except a breviary and the holy Bible, for the preaching of the holy gospel. Their clothing is of coarse, rough frieze without, and their inner garments of what your Majesty (whom may God guard) grants them as alms. All this is evident by the publicity of the facts, and by official information which on various occasions has been sent to the glorious Catholic sovereigns, your Majesty's predecessors, and to their royal and supreme Council of the Indias by the governor and royal Audiencia of the islands, and the cabildos, ecclesiastical and secular, of the said city of Manila.