thousand pesos or so, according to the value and appraisal made
of them. All of this sum, together with the amount necessary for the
voyage, I succeeded in obtaining without taking anything whatever
from the royal treasury; for there was nothing there for it. I was
confident that your Majesty would consider this to be for your service,
and would order this sum paid, especially as it seemed fitting and
of great possible importance. Although for such a matter and for one
who owes so much as myself to the service of God and your Majesty, it
seems small and of a mean, vile, and selfish mind, to discuss payment,
yet His Divine Majesty knows that my present great need, obligations,
and debts force me to say this, for I am obliged to pay out more than
thirty-eight thousand pesos. And God knows that all I have and can
call mine outside of the present sum, that which I shall have ready
at the end of this year toward the day when God and your Majesty
will be no longer served by me, and the little coming to me from the
sale of my father's estate--a very small sum indeed--all the rest,
I say, without omitting anything of money value, will amount, in my
opinion, to something like five thousand pesos, and even that sum
may not be reached. For, although, as I wrote and told your Majesty
in former letters, it seemed--and when I wrote I believed--that I
should have something to leave instead of so much to pay, yet matters
have happened and fallen out in this way, and thus I find myself in
my present condition. I am not grieving much over any need that may
come to me, for by the mercy and goodness of God, if I had paid my
debts and had nothing, I should be very rich in the pleasure of this
knowledge. However, I am not without obligations to have some property,
and I have very little and owe much that must be paid; and besides
I have to give account both for myself and my father. My present
declaration is not artifice, subterfuge, or a change of purpose from
what I have previously expressed to your Majesty, as to my king and
sovereign, but the truth and my earnest desire to see myself free from
this burden and obligation of debt; and is intended that your Majesty
might know that this least of your servants has these obligations and
so little to pay them, in a country so distant and remote from his
own. But leaving this in the hands of God and your Majesty, I say,
Sire, that Don Ffernando set sail with the father prior upon the
voyage; but