Among the excellent arrangements made by this chapter was the chief one, which was that father Fray Álvaro de Benavente should go to España as procurator; he had a few months before returned from China, where he left our missions very well established in the kingdom of Cantón, with houses at Xaoquinfú and Nanhiunfú, and two others in other places of less note. At the same time he was appointed definitor for the general chapter which was to meet in Roma, to which father Fray Alvaro was very desirous of going on account of the affairs of the missions conducted by the regulars in China, from whom he carried letters and authority to act in regard to the remission of the oath of subjection to the apostolic vicars. They gave him the necessary despatches, and he determined to make the voyage by way of the Cape of Good Hope, because that year there was no galleon going to Nueva España, the cause of which will be told later. He embarked for Batavia on a Portuguese vessel, and as his companion was assigned the brother Fray Juan Verganzo, who had come with the mission of the year 1684. He arrived at Batavia, where he encountered great difficulties in making the voyage to Amsterdam; but all these were overcome by a Dutchman, a Calvinist preacher named Teodoro Zas--a very benevolent and courteous man, and very fond of doing good to others; this caused grief in those who knew him, at seeing him misled by the false doctrines of Calvin, when he was so eminent in the moral virtues. Father Fray Alvaro carried with him the first part of this History, which after a long time came from the press, although only as far as the year 1616--while I had given it to him complete up to the year 1647--because at that time this province had not funds at Madrid sufficient to print it all. That first division of the history was printed at the said court in the year 1698, by Manuel Ruiz de Murga; and it was dedicated to her Ladyship the Duquesa de Aveiro, although it was my intention that it be dedicated to the king our sovereign, in his royal and supreme Council of the Indias. The rest of the said first part remained laid aside and forgotten in the convent of San Felipe at Madrid, until I determined to write it again and complete it, by means of the rough drafts that had remained here. [107]