Note 1 — Letter from Gaspar de Ayala to Felipe II

Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas 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.