Note 1 — Recommendations as to Reforms Needed in the Islands

This is as indispensable and needful as the matter of the pay and means of profit, and even more so; for if this be not done, it will be and serve for nothing else than to waste your Majesty's royal estate, without any results for the expense—namely, the colonization, increase, and defense of this country. Rather the very opposite in a certain way results; and to say so is no exaggeration, but truth. For they arrive at Cavite after a three months' voyage, and without a blanca1 Page 115in a new land, which is much less comfortable than Mexico, which they have left. Then in the space of nineteen months they receive not one real of pay or remuneration, until after they have served out the one hundred and fifteen pesos. This causes them to suffer such want and wretchedness that I can not tell it. So many evils and wrongs are caused that is a pity and shame to recount them. The result is that their need abases and lowers (or rather forces) many of them to commit thefts and other misdemeanors as bad, and worse, which I shall not name out of the respect due your Majesty. They also marry the Indian women, so that the latter may supply their necessities; but the Indian women themselves do not possess those things. And most usually there is great danger and risk of offenses against God, and of the discrediting of the Spanish name and nation.