nature that, if your Majesty wishes to continue it--an enterprise so
long desired, and in which God has afforded your Majesty so fortunate
and evident a result--it offers God a great increase of his Catholic
faith, which may be cultivated in these regions, and to your Majesty
an increase of great kingdoms and seigniories. As I have said above,
the continuance of the liberty due to our government in these lands
would assure your Majesty of being served with the greatest diligence
and care, such service being especially necessary. I have to report, as
your Majesty's faithful servant and vassal, that the persons appointed
to your Majesty's royal service are of little experience, and that any
business, however light it is, gives them a fright. Accordingly, they
content themselves with doing little, and continually oppose certain
things which have been discussed touching the royal treasury--as has
occurred in the case of the fifths, for which my companions asked,
during my absence, in a certain council that was held, telling
the captains that for the present these ought not to be given. And
although I do not believe that the amount is yet so heavy that it
could swell your Majesty's royal treasury, through the good custom
and law permitted by God, which that would put an end to--the answer
that I gave when they notified me of it, was that, since they were
like myself, your Majesty's servants and vassals they were in duty
bound to increase your Majesty's crown and royal estate, to the best
of their ability, and ought to do so.

It is especially necessary that your Majesty order that the people
who are to come to these parts from Nueva España shall be sent
without regularly appointed captains, but that they shall bring
a person suitable to command them as far as these islands, to the
point where the governor, Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, shall reside, in
order to deliver the people to him and give up the command; and that