[19] Gomez Perez Dasmarinas was corregidor of Murcia and Cartagena in Spain when (in 1589) he was appointed governor of the Philippine Islands.  Arriving there in May, 1590, he at once began the task of providing suitable fortifications for Manila, and a body of paid troops in place of the irregular and unpaid soldiers who had hitherto been the only dependence of the Spanish colony.  In October, 1593, he formed a naval expedition to recover the fortress at Ternate; but on the way thither he was treacherously slain, with nearly all the Spaniards in his galley, by the Chinese rowers thereon.  See Morga’s account of him in Sucesos, cap. v, or in Stanley’s translation (Hakluyt Society’s publications, no. 39), pp. 32-39; also La Concepcion’s Hist. de Philipinas, ii, pp. 177-213.

[20] The proceedings of Sanchez at the Spanish court, and the decisions of the government regarding the Philippine colony, are fully recounted by La Concepcion in his Hist. de Philipinas, ii, pp. 103-148.  Sanchez did not return to the Philippines, being assigned by the general of his order to various duties in Spain; his death occurred not long afterward.

[21] For account of Sanchez’s embassy, and of his instructions, see the “Memorial” adopted by the junta of 1586, with accompanying documents, in Vol.  VI.

[22] Regarding the rates thus levied, see Vol.  V, pp. 29, 30.

[23] This last sentence is literally translated from the MS which we follow; but there is evidently a defect or error in the text—­probably arising from some mistake made by the first copyist, as the MS. is not the first original, but a copy made apparently by some government clerk.

[24] For the text of this decree, see p. 137, ante.

[25] With this document cf., throughout, the “Relation” by Miguel de Loarca, in Vol.  V of this series.

[26] Juan de Plasencia, who entered the Franciscan order in early youth, came to the Philippine Islands as one of the first missionaries of that order, in 1577.  He was distinguished, in his labors among the natives, for gathering the converts into reductions (villages in which they dwelt apart from the heathen, and under the special care of the missionaries), for establishing numerous primary schools, for his linguistic abilities—­being one of the first to form a grammar and vocabulary of the Tagal language—­and for the ethnological researches embodied in the memoir which is presented in our text.  He died at Lilio, in the province of La Laguna, in 1590.  See account of his life in Santa Ines’s Cronica, i, pp. 512-522; and of his writings, Id., ii, pp. 590, 591.

[27] The betel-nut; see Vol.  IV, p. 222.