Note 17 — Chapter V · That your Majesty possesses in the Filipinas enormous wealth, even with the little effort made to realize it.

Many years ago I learned something of this, but I sided with the others who gave little credit to it, owing to the little knowledge that we had. But as time is a great discloser of secrets, while I was discussing with some religious the difficulties of the future which the kings of España, the successors of your Majesty, must meet in maintaining this country [253] if there were in the country itself no wealth or sources of profit which would oblige them to do so, I succeeded in securing a great deal of information concerning the wealth which is there. Particularly, he who is now archbishop17 told me that a religious of St. Dominic—the vicar of a village named Vinalatonga, who was named Fray Jasinto Palao, and who at that time had come from Luzón to this kingdom [i.e., España]—had shown him some rocks which an Indian had brought him from a mine, and which appeared extraordinarily rich, beyond anything that had been seen. But he enjoined the bishop to secrecy, because he himself had heard it in the same manner. I, who desired the preservation of that country, took occasion to make friends with that religious, in order to inform myself the better under pretence of curiosity. I asked him to tell me what he knew of those mines, whereupon that religious (who was already en route for the return to the islands) told me that what he had said was true; and further he said: “No one knows as much about those mines as I, because some Indians came down from the mountains and I entertained them. They told me that there was a great deal of gold up there, and that of what they took from the mines, half the ore was gold.” And he said that when one of them, who was already somewhat versed in our tongue, saw reals of eight, he said to him: “We have much of this metal there, Father, much in the mines; but Indian wants nothing besides gold.” I conferred with the bishop of Nueva Segovia (as that province falls under his jurisdiction), who was Don Fray Diego de Soria, a Dominican, and with another religious, [254] the provincial of the same order, named Fray Bernardo de Santa Catalina, in regard to this matter; and I gave them so many arguments to incline them to my plan that they were brought to my way of thinking. The most convincing argument which I used was to persuade them that the same reason did not hold there as in Nueva España and Piru, for ill-treating the Indians; for there are so many Chinese who are raising their hands to God to find something to work at—as many as are necessary, as was well known by them. Thereupon they told me all the information that they had for certain from various Indians—not only from the Christians, some of whom had gone up peacefully to trade, but likewise from those from above who came down to the province. The bishop certified that there was the greatest wealth in the world; and that they had brought him from one hill a little red earth, of which the whole hill is composed, which was as much as they could put upon a silver platter. They washed it, in his presence, and took out seven taes of gold, which amount to forty-four castellanos.18 He asserted that in every part of the hill the earth was all of this richness. With all this information I went to Don Juan de Silva and told him what had happened, and how I had pacified the friars. He agreed that we should go and discover it and said that he would go in person when he finished that expedition. He was overtaken by death, as has been said, and accordingly [255] the matter has remained in this condition. And even if there were not in these mountains the wealth of which we are told, it seems that the obligation to pacify these Indians exists, and that the holy gospel ought to be preached to them—in the first place, because your Majesty has undertaken so just and holy an enterprise; and second, because they are in the same island [with our Spaniards]. It is a shame that, being in the neighborhood of Manila, they do not enjoy the blessing that the others do. Beside this, there is the fact that these as well as their neighbors will not allow other people to trade in their territory; by the law of nations, therefore, the Spaniards have a right of action.