just as men were continually showing themselves more penitent. All that night until daybreak the earthquake shocks continued; for there were so many of them that one man counted forty, although to me it seemed as if there were many more. Many came out [from this calamity] crippled and lame; but all recognized that it was a miracle that the city had not been utterly destroyed with so repeated shocks. Later, it was ascertained that some chasms and air-vents in the earth had opened, and which is surely the cause of these disturbances. One chasm opened in the bounds of the village of Bauang, in the province of Balayán; and another in the mountains of Gapang, in Pampanga. Those who arrived here after navigating the seas of these islands recounted the horrible perils in which they had found themselves, tossed by great billows and almost submerged in the swell which was caused in the sea by the earthquake; the sea even rose until, in many places, it swept over the land, occasioning great damage. With this slight mention I will close the sad account of the melancholy termination of these royal festivities. The master-of-camp of these islands died, Don Agustín de Cepeda y Carracedo; he was a native of Talavera de la Reina, a relative of the glorious saint Teresa de Jesús, and more than eighty years of age. He was one of the most valiant soldiers who has belonged to these regions, and with that reputation he has been mentioned in this history in the greatest military exploits of his time, and in the government of Zamboanga and Ternate; and, what is his greatest glory, he was an excellent Christian, devout and charitable, and died with strong indications that he had been very earnestly such. For acting master-of-camp the governor appointed General Alonso López, a soldier of long standing, and also very aged; and therefore he did not long serve in that office. Governor Don Francisco de Mansilla despatched the galleon for Nueva España, appointing as its commander his son, Don Felipe de Mansilla y Prado, a young man of much courage and ability, who at the time was serving in the post of sargento-mayor of the Manila army, which is the second, in the esteem of military men, after that of master-of-camp. As sargento-mayor of the galleon he appointed Juan Ventura Sarra (the Catalan so famous for his successful surgical operations), on account of his being a man of much valor, and experienced in military service in Flandes and Cataluña. This galleon made a very prosperous voyage, both going and returning, as we shall see in the following chapter.