Note 2 — LETTER FROM GOMEZ PEREZ DASMARIÑAS

The following royal decree taken from a MS. book of decrees entitled “Cedulas reales dirigidas à estas Yslas Filipinas, Copiadas fielmente de las originales ò authenticas que se guardan en el archivo de la real Audiencia de Manila” (a copy of the seventeenth or eighteenth century) and kindly loaned by Mr. E. E. Ayer of Chicago, is interesting. “The King. Leonardo Furriano, my engineer. Inasmuch as it is desirable for my service that you go to the Philipinas Islands with Gomez Perez Dasmariñas, knight of the Order of Santiago, whom I have appointed as my governor and captain-general of them, so that forts may be built according to your advice and design, which, in accordance with the contents of the instructions of the said Gomez Perez are to be built in the said islands: I order you to go with him, and that you embark very speedily in order not to tarry an instant for the sake of our cause. For that purpose, Don Luis de la Cueva, my governor and captain-general of those islands of Canaria shall aid you. Thus have I ordered him; and the officials of my royal treasury of the said Philipinas Islands shall give and pay you at the rate of one thousand ducados per year from the date when you shall show by signed notarial testimony that you have set sail from any port of the said islands of Canaria, and for so long as you are busied and engaged in the construction of the said forts. When the forts are completed, you shall return to these kingdoms with the design and plan of said forts. Given at San Lorenzo, September twelve, one thousand five hundred and eighty-nine.

I the King “By order of the king our sovereign: Juan de Ybarra” ↑