[29] Vide Comyn’s comercio exterior.

[30] The obras pias were pious legacies which usually stipulated that two-thirds of their value should be advanced at interest for the furtherance of maritime commercial undertakings until the premiums, which for a voyage to Acapulco amounted to 50, to China 25, and to India 35 per cent., had increased the original capital to a certain amount.  The interest of the whole was then to be devoted to masses for the founders, or to other pious and benevolent purposes.  A third was generally kept as a reserve fund to cover possible losses.  The government long since appropriated these reserve funds as compulsory loans, “but they are still considered as existing.”

When the trade with Acapulco came to an end, the principals could no longer be laid out according to the intentions of the founders, and they were lent out at interest in other ways.  By a royal ordinance of November 3, 1854, a junta was appointed to administer the property of the .  The total capital of the five endowments (in reality only four, for one of them no longer possessed anything) amounted to nearly a million of dollars.  The profits from the loans were distributed according to the amounts of the original capital, which, however, no longer existed in cash, as the government had disposed of them.

[31] Vide Thevenot.

[32] According to Morga, between the fourteenth and fifteenth.

[33] Vide De Guignes, Pinkerton XI, and Anson X.

[34] Vide Anson.

[35] Randolph’s History of California.

[36] In Morga’s time, the galleons took seventy days to the Ladrone Islands, from ten to twelve from thence to Cape Espiritu Santo, and eight more to Manila.

[37] A very good description of these voyages may be found in the 10th chapter of Anson’s work, which also contains a copy of a sea map, captured in the Cavadonga, displaying the proper track of the galleons to and from Acapulco.

[38] De Guignes.

[39] The officer in command of the expedition, to whom the title of general was given, had always a captain under his orders, and his share in the gain of each trip amounted to $40,000.  The pilot was content with $20,000.  The first lieutenant (master) was entitled to 9 per cent on the sale of the cargo, and pocketed from this and from the profits of his own private ventures upwards of $350,000. (Vide Arenas.)

[40] The value of the cargoes Anson captured amounted to $1,313,000, besides 35,682 ounces of fine silver and cochineal.  While England and Spain were at peace, Drake plundered the latter to the extent of at least one and a half million of dollars.  Thomas Candish burnt the rich cargo of the Santa Anna, as he had no room for it on board his own vessel.

[41] For instance, in 1786 the San Andres, which had a cargo on board valued at a couple of millions, found no market for it in Acapulco; the same thing happened in 1787 to the San Jose, and a second time in 1789 to the San Andres.