Sacred Royal Catholic Majesty: 

When I arrived in these Filipinas islands in the year sixty-five, I despatched a ship to discover the return route to Nueva Espana.  I also sent to your majesty a relation of the events of the voyage, and of my colonization in this island of Cubu, where I should await the reply that your majesty should be pleased to have sent me; and stated that I was writing to Nueva Espana that they should provide me with all the most necessary things; and those we lacked most.  Seeing so much delay on all sides, last year I sent another ship with the relation of all that had occurred here, begging your majesty to be pleased to order that we should be helped and provided, with all possible expedition, with the things that we have asked for, and which were extremely necessary and important; and that the matter be committed to some one in Nueva Espana, who should provide and have charge of it, because although they sent us reenforcements of men, they sent us nothing else that we had asked for.  They said that they had not your majesty’s commission for it, and that they were expecting every day the warrant that your majesty will be pleased to give in this case, so that by virtue of it they could supply us with what was needed.  This great delay has subjected us to hardship and distress, and to great danger and risk—­especially through our lack of powder and ammunition, and rigging and sails for the vessels, of which we are quite destitute, and of which there are not, and cannot be, any here.  I beg your majesty to have the goodness to have these things seen to, as is most in accordance with your royal pleasure, with the expedition required in a matter of so great importance; and that henceforth this matter be entrusted to some one in Nueva Espana, at your majesty’s pleasure, who shall administer it as is most fitting to your royal service and the good of those here.

By the vessel that left last year, I sent your majesty seventy quintals of cinnamon which we got in trade with the natives; and this vessel about to sail carries one hundred and fifty quintals more.  There is abundance of it, and we could send more, were it not for the lack of articles of barter; for those we bring are valueless, and these natives do not desire them.  There are also other drugs, aromatics, and perfumes which our people do not know; nor do the natives know them, for they have but little curiosity, and care nothing for these things.  In some places there are oysters, and indications of pearls; but the Indians neither know of them nor fish for them.  There are gold mines; pepper might be had also if it were cultivated and cared for, because pepper trees have been seen, which some chiefs keep in their houses as curiosities, although they value the pepper at little or nothing.  The country is healthful and has a fair climate, although it is very rough and mountainous.  All trade therefore is by sea, and almost all the natives live on the sea-coast and along the rivers and creeks that empty into the sea.  In the interior there are few settlements, although in some islands there are blacks living in the mountains, who neither share nor enjoy the sea, but are most of the time at war with the Indians who live down on the seacoast.  Captives are made on both sides, and so there are some black slaves among the Indians.