Part 12
The canvas [_lienço_] from which the sails are made in the said islands is excellent, and much better than what is shipped from España, because it is made from cotton. They are certain cloths [_lienços_] which are called _mantas_ [_i.e._, literally blankets or strips of cotton cloth] from the province of Ylocos, for the natives of that province manufacture nothing else, and pay your Majesty their tribute in them. They are one tercia [_i.e._, one-third of a vara] wide, and as thick as canvas [_angeo_]. They are doubled, and quilted with thread of the same cotton. They last much longer than those of España. One vara of this cloth [_lienço_] costs less than one-half real. The thread of the same cotton with which they are sewed costs twenty reals per arroba. The cloth brought from Nueva España costs your Majesty, when set down in the city of Manila, six reals per vara. Also the thread shipped from Nueva España to sew the sails costs, set down there, six reals per libra. The thread made of hemp when used with cotton canvas [_lienço_] is of no use, and does not well endure transportation. The ships sailing from Manila to Nueva España carry sails for the return voyage and nevertheless have to make others in the port of Acapulco.
It is also the custom to ship pikes with their iron heads from Nueva España to the said Filipinas Islands. Delivered in the city of Manila, they cost your Majesty more than thirty-two reals apiece; but, with thirty-two reals, they can make forty pikes in the city of Manila. It is a weapon that is worthless in those islands, and it is not used in them. And even if they were used, there are shafts in the forests of those islands, and the native Indian smiths can make the heads.
A number of old pipe-staves and iron hoops are also shipped from Nueva España to the said Filipinas Islands. Delivered in the city of Manila they cost your Majesty a considerable sum of ducados. That expense can be avoided; for, when those staves arrive there, they are full of holes and rotten, and quite useless. The hoops alone serve in Manila to make nails and bolts from them, which thus come to cost fifty ducados per quintal. They can be made there for thirty-three reals. It is sufficient to carry those pipes that hold the water and wine in the ships.
For the ships' supply of water, they generally make vats when the ships leave there [_i.e.,_ Manila], each of which carries thirty pipes of water. Further, there are many earthen jars, which are brought from China and Japon. Consequently, one can make the above articles there, and more cheaply, for much less money than what is paid there.
Flour is also shipped in pipes from Nueva España to the said Filipinas Islands, which they say is for making hosts. That is unnecessary, for the said islands have an abundance of flour, which is shipped from Japon and China so cheaply, that it costs sixteen reals per quintal in the city of Manila. That shipped from Nueva España costs your Majesty, delivered in the said city of Manila, more than eighty reals per quintal.
From Nueva España to the said Filipinas Islands are also transported in the [ships], _habas, garbanzos,_" [51] and lentils, which are for the provision of hospitals, fleets, and convents. It serves no other purpose than to arrive at Manila rotten; and if any arrives in good condition, it does not seem so. For the provision of the fleets, a grain [_semilla_] is grown in that land [_i.e._, Filipinas] which resembles beans, and is very cheap. Consequently it is unnecessary for the ships to carry more than what they need for their voyage when they leave Acapulco.
A quantity of _gerguetas_ [52] are also shipped from Nueva España to the said Filipinas Islands. They are said to be for the use of the soldiers, but that is unnecessary, for that land has other kinds of cloth--both those that are produced there, and others that come from China--which are better and cheaper. If your Majesty will order that to be stopped, it will be of much importance to your royal treasury, and will increase it by many ducados; while it will benefit greatly the soldiers who serve your Majesty in those islands, for, when this cloth is delivered there, they are obliged to take it.
In the former year of six hundred and sixteen, seven galleons were stationed at the city of Manila and the port of Cabite, one of which [53] came built from Yndia, and was bought in Pinacan for the service of your Majesty. The other six were built in the time of Don Juan de Silva, and Don Juan Ronquillo [54] took them all when he sailed in pursuit of the enemy at Playa Honda. These said galleys were in the greatest need of being repaired--one because it was very badly used up in the fight, and another because its decks had not been changed for two years; while most of them were holed along the sides by seaworms and leaked badly, and all their masts, yards, and topmasts were rotten. Consequently, Don Geronimo de Silva, captain-general of those islands, was preparing to send them to be repaired (except three) to the island of Marinduque, forty leguas from Manila, in order to avoid the expense of hauling the wood, while awaiting the arrival of the ships from Nueva España in which Don Alonso Fajardo came last year (one thousand six hundred and eighteen), in order to repair the said galleys with that money [brought by those ships]. He also intended to hold them in readiness, in order to comply with your Majesty's orders, sent by a despatch-boat, to keep them so prepared that they might join the fleet that was about to sail with reënforcements by way of the cape of Buena Esperança, to make the journey to the Malucas Islands and drive the enemy from them.
It was necessary to equip two of the said seven galleys so that they could come to Nueba España last year, six hundred and eighteen, with the usual merchandise. Consequently only five were left--or rather six, with that in which Don Alonso Fajardo arrived. Since the said Don Alonso Fajardo has reached Manila and finds himselt with only six galleons, it becomes necessary to build some more; for, if the fleet from España has not sailed and the enemy learn that Manila has but six galleons, they will go to the mouth of the port and repeat their performance of last year, unless they go to El Embocadero [55] to await the ships from Nueva España with the reënforcements, for, in order that the loss of Manila and Maluco may be completed, nothing else is wanting.
As above stated, it will be necessary for Governor Don Alonso Fajardo to devise immediate means for building galleons and to repair the six at Manila. I regard the present building of ships in that country as impossible. For with the former ships and fleets, and with the depredations and deaths caused by the enemy in those districts the natives are quite exhausted; for, as I said above, in the former year of six hundred and seventeen the Mindanao enemy captured four hundred native carpenters and killed more than two hundred others. The year before that, six hundred and sixteen, in the expedition made by Don Juan de Silva to the strait of Cincapura, where he died, it was found from lists that more than seven hundred Indians, of those taken as common seamen (of whom more than two hundred were carpenters), died on that expedition. Before that, in the year six hundred and fourteen, the said Mindanao enemy captured in the islands of Pintados nine hundred odd Indians, of whom but few have been ransomed. In the shipbuilding and in the hauling of wood many have died. Consequently, on account of all combined, there is a lack of natives for the above works. Therefore your Majesty must order the said Don Alonso Fajardo, governor and captain-general of the said islands, that in case galleons are to be built, it should not be in the islands--on the one hand, on account of the short time that those woods last, and on the other because of the lack in that land of natives (occurring through the above-mentioned causes, and because those natives in the islands are serving in the fleets as common seamen and carpenters).
In order that, those islands might have and keep ships that last thirty years and cost the same as in Manila, or less, your Majesty must order the governor to order them built in Yndia in Cochim; for they can be built there very strong, and at less cost if the said governor sends men for it from Manila--both masters and other persons, who know the art of having them built. When built, they can bring a cargo of military supplies, lumber, and slaves from Cochin to Manila for the galleys of Manila, for the said slaves are valued at very little in Cochin. As common seamen the men used in navigating in those regions will serve, namely, the Lascars; and a ship of six hundred toneladas does not carry sixteen Spanish sailors, but negroes and Lascars (who are a Mahometan race), with whom navigation is performed throughout those islands and kingdoms.
Those islands have so few natives, that if your Majesty does not expressly order no vessels to be constructed in them, not any of their people will be left, for as a result the events that have happened in those islands for the last eight years, both murders and captivities, many of those who have been left, who are constantly coming to Nueva España, every year as common seamen in the vessels that regularly sail, remain in Nueva España. In the galleon "Espiritu Santo" which came last year, six hundred and eighteen, were seventy-five native Indians as common seamen, but not more than five of the entire number returned in the said galley. If your Majesty does not have that corrected, the same thing will occur every year, and should your Majesty not correct it, the following things will occur. The first is the great offense committed against our Lord, for many (indeed most) of those native Indians of the Filipinas Islands who come as common seamen are married in those said islands; and, inasmuch as they are unknown in Nueva España, they remarry here. Another wrong follows which is very much to the disservice of your Majesty and your royal treasury, which is caused by the said Indian natives of the Filipinas Islands who come as common seamen and remain in Nueva España; and if it is not checked in time, it will cause considerable injury to these kingdoms. This consists in the fact that there are in Nueva España so many of those Indians who come from the Filipinas Islands who have engaged in making palm wine along the other seacoast, that of the South Sea, and which they make with stills, as in Filipinas, that it will in time become a part reason for the natives of Nueva España, who now use the wine that comes from Castilla, to drink none except what the Filipinos make. For since the natives of Nueva España are a race inclined to drink and intoxication, and the wine made by the Filipinos is distilled and as strong as brandy, they crave it rather than the wine from España. Consequently, it will happen that the trading fleets [from Spain] will bring less wine every year, and what is brought will be more valuable every year. So great is the traffic in this [palm wine] at present on the coast at Navidad, among the Apusabalcos, and throughout Colima, that they load beasts of burden with this wine in the same way as in España. By postponing the speedy remedy that this demands, the same thing might also happen to the vineyards of Piru. It can be averted, provided all the Indian natives of the said Filipinas Islands are shipped and returned to them, that the palm groves and vessels with which that wine is made be burnt, the palm-trees felled, and severe penalties imposed on whomever remains or returns to make that wine.
Incited by their greed in that traffic, all the Indians who have charge of making that wine go to the port of Acapulco when the ships reach there from Manila, and lead away with them all the Indians who come as common seamen. For that reason, and the others above mentioned, scarcely any of them return to the said Filipinas Islands. From that it also results that your Majesty loses the royal revenues derived from those islands, inasmuch as all those Indians are tributarios there, and when absent pay nothing.
Among those Filipinas Islands is one called Mindanao which is more than one hundred leguas long. It is very densely populated by its natives, who are exceeding great pirates and hostile to all the other natives of all those islands subject to your Majesty. and chiefly to the Spaniards. They generally go in a certain kind of boat called caracoa on piratical expeditions, in which they commit signal depredations in all the ports and along all the coasts of those islands, killing and capturing the people of them, and burning and ruining the country. They have done that on many occasions, particularly in the former year six hundred and seventeen, when they allied themselves with the Dutch enemy, who came that said year with ten galleons to attack the city and port of Manila. The said Mindanao enemy came at the same time with ninety caracoas to the aid of the Dutch, and destroyed and burned many places along those coasts, and took many of their people captives. Among other things they arrived at the shipyard of Pantao with their fleet, where at your Majesty's orders a galleon and two pataches were being built. These were more than half built, and the Mindanaos burned them and captured more than four hundred persons, besides killing more than two hundred others. After burning all the military stores, they proceeded on their voyage toward Manila, and went to within ten leguas of the port of Cavite, whence they returned upon learning that the Dutch fleet had gone on ahead.
Consequently, not only for the said reasons, but because of the lack of men among the natives in the said Filipinas Islands, it will be highly important for the conservation of the islands for your Majesty to order that no ships be built in them, since there are so many places, so well provided in everything, as have been proposed, to enable them to be built in Yndia.
On the route between Manila and the Malucas Islands is a port of the above-mentioned island [i.e., Mindanao], called La Caldera. There the boats put in to get water and wood. Formerly, before the alliance between the natives there and the Dutch enemy, the vessels, ships, and galleys put in there and went to get fresh supplies, both going and coming. Now not only are they not permitted to obtain the said supplies, but the vessel, galley, or patache, that puts in there to get water, is surrounded by their caracoas, and its crew killed and captured.
On the contrary, they give the Dutch enemy so friendly a reception that the latter always keep their ships there, lying there in wait until those of his Majesty, that carry the aid to the said Malucas, pass by.
In order to destroy that said island of Mindanao and its pirates, without the necessity of spending for it anything from your Majesty's royal treasury, it needs only your Majesty's orders to make slaves of the said Mindanao natives of that island--since they are infidels; and they have profaned the temples and committed many cruelties in your Majesty's settlements along the coasts of those islands which they have captured--and your Majesty's permission that all who desire may take up arms against them, both the natives of the said islands, and the Spaniards, at their own cost. Only with that will the said island be conquered and subdued, and the so many injuries resulting therefrom to all the said islands and to the. Malucas will be checked.
_A report on the measurements of the galleons in the Filipinas Islands in the former year 1617 is as follows_.
The royal flagship, called "Salvador" measures 60 codos along the keel, 12 in floor, 82 from stem to stern [i.e., length over all], depth of hold 19, extreme breadth 26, sternpost transom 12; lower deck 15 codos, upper deck 19, with the space between of 4 codos.
The galleon "Espiritu Santo" (the one in which Don Alonso Fajardo came last year 1618) measures 50 codos along the keel, 10 in floor, 70 length over all, 17 depth of hold, 23 extreme breadth, 10 sternpost transom; lower deck 13 and one-half codos, and upper deck 17.
The galleon "San Felipe," 50 codos along the keel, 10 in floor, 70 length over all, 15 depth of hold, 22 and one-half extreme breadth; lower deck 11 and one-half codos, upper deck 15, and sternpost transom 11 codos.
The galleon "Santiago" has the same measurements of keel, floor, over all, depth of hold, extreme breadth, and sternpost transom, and the same space between decks.
The galleon "San Juan Bautista" has the same measurements as "San Felipe" and "Santiago."
The galleon "San Miguel," 49 codos keel, 10 in floor, 68 over all, 18 depth of hold, 23 extreme breadth, 11 sternpost transom; the lower deck 14 codos, upper deck 18.
"Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe," 46 codos keel, 9 in floor, 64 over all, 13 depth of hold, 21 extreme breadth; lower deck 9 and one-half codos, upper deck 13, sternpost transom 10 codos.
The ship [_nao_] "San Laurencio," which was built in Yndia 23 years ago, measures keel 46 codos, over all 60, 12 codos depth of hold, 19 extreme breadth; and it has three decks, quarter-deck, and forecastle [_castillo_].
[_Endorsed_: "Captain Sebastian de Pineda. To Don Alonso Fajardo, a duplicate, of the same remaining here. The council, May 26, 619."]
ROYAL DECREE REGARDING RELIGIOUS EXPELLED FROM THEIR ORDERS
[_Note at beginning of document_: "Church of Manila. Your Majesty confirms the statute made by the dean and cabildo of the metropolitan church of Manila, in the Philipinas, in regard to the expelled professed religious, of the orders not being admitted to _dignidades_, [56] canonries, or curacies of Indians or Spaniards in those islands."]
The King: Report has been made to me in the name of the dean and cabildo of the metropolitan church of the city of Manila of the Philipinas Islands, that in respect to my having ordered that ministers of instruction be men of good life and morals, as such is necessary for the good of Christianity, several religious who had been expelled from the orders were admitted as ministers of instruction because of the need in those islands for such ministers; and that as experience has since demonstrated the unsuitability of those men for the said ministry, they have refrained from employing such; and that, in order that the remedy may be efficacious and obviate the negotiations and methods of such persons to procure the benefices, they made a statute whose tenor is as follows: "In the city of Manila, on the eighteenth of August, one thousand six hundred and seventeen, while assembled and congregated in meeting, to wit, Bishop Don Fray Pedro Arce, bishop of the city of Santissimo Nombre de Jesus and its bishopric, and governor of this archbishopric, and the dean and cabildo Don Francisco Gomez Arellano, dean, and Commissary-subdelegate Gabriel de la Santa Cruçada, Archdeacon Don Juan de Aguilar, Precentor Santiago de Castro, School-master Don Rodrigo Diaz Giralthe, and Keeper of Relics Don Luis de Herrera Sandoval; Canons Tomas de Gimarano, Don Miguel Garçetas, Juan de la Cruz, and Alonso Garcia de Leon: Racionero Don Francisco de Baldes, and Medios Racioneros [57] Tomas de Vega and Pedro Flores Benegas--the said bishop proposed with conclusive and sufficient arguments the great hindrances that, as the proved experience of all has shown, follow to all this kingdom from admitting to dignidades, canonries, and benefices professed religious who have been expelled from the holy religious orders as a penalty and punishment for their offenses, inasmuch as the abovesaid was prohibited by law and sacred canons established in a most Christianlike manner by the provincial Mexican Council. That council enacted a special decree expressly forbidding such appointments, and mentioning the many just reasons for their action, and the state of affairs in the Yndias demanding it, inasmuch as the prelates and venerable fathers who attended the council were very well acquainted with the Yndias. It is not the least consideration that the said expelled religious cannot reap a harvest in a century. Nor can they derive any advantages which will result in a real adjustment of their difficulties, so that thus with greater ease they, returning to their senses, may aspire to regain their habit and order which they before professed. [Such proceeding by the ecclesiastical authorities] will restrain the diligence and effort that other religious might employ in deserting their orders if they saw the said expelled religious given posts as dignidades. As they saw, and considered as assured, the great service they would be doing to God our Lord and to his Catholic Majesty who is incurring so heavy expenses to his royal patrimony in bringing each of the said religious to the Yndias--and these are the greatest consolations that he sends to these so remote islands, a plant which, because of its tenderness and newness in the faith, is shocked at the change that is seen in the habits [i.e., robes] of the expelled religious. This furnished a reason to his Majesty, Carlos Fifth, our sovereign of glorious memory, for the same prohibition; and he ordered that, as soon as the said religious were expelled from their holy orders, they be put aboard ship and sent to the kingdoms of Castilla, and not be allowed to remain or live in the Yndias. Therefore, having thoroughly examined, conferred over, and considered, they all unanimously and fully in accord resolved to enact a statute in this archbishopric in the following form and manner: 'We ordain that, now and henceforth, no one of the professed religious expelled from the religious orders now, or hereafter to be, established--whether from the religious orders now established in the Church of God, or from those which shall be established later--or the professed members of the fourth vow [58] of the Society of Jesus, shall be admitted or appointed to dignidades, canonries, or curacies, of Spaniards or of Indians, throughout this archbishopric. Those expelled from the said Society of Jesus, and who shall not have taken the fourth vow, may, three years after their expulsion and dismissal from the said order, if they have given therein a good example in their lives and morals, and if they are of such stamp that they may be of advantage for the edification and welfare of souls, be admitted by the prelate, now or hereafter, to the benefices which are curacies of the Indians--but only outside of this city; and not to the said canonries, dignidades, or curacies of Spaniards or Indians within this city. And inasmuch as this holy Church recognizes that it is under obligations for many reasons to his royal and Catholic Majesty, the king our sovereign, as being his foundation, and that it will not be proper to enact or make any statute without his pleasure and order, they determined to go before his royal person and entreat him humbly to confirm the present, and consider it fitting, as a matter of so great importance to the service of God our Lord, and to that of his royal Majesty, and to the increase of this holy Church.
_Fray Pedro_, bishop of Santissimo Nombre de Jesus. _Dean Arellano_ The archdeacon of Manila. The schoolmaster of Manila. _Precentor Sanctiago de Castro_ The treasurer of Manila. _Canon Tomas Gimarano_ _Canon Garçetas_ _Canon Juan de la Cruz_ _Canon Alonso Garcia de Leon_ _Racionero Don Francisco de Caldes_ _Racionero Tomas de Bega_ _Racionero Pedro Flores Benegas_
Before me:
_Alonso Ramirez_, secretary of cabildo."