for the
furtherance of maritime commercial undertakings until the premiums,
which for a voyage to Acapulco amounted to 50, to China 25, and to
India 35 per cent., had increased the original capital to a certain
amount. The interest of the whole was then to be devoted to masses
for the founders, or to other pious and benevolent purposes. A third
was generally kept as a reserve fund to cover possible losses. The
government long since appropriated these reserve funds as compulsory
loans, "but they are still considered as existing."

When the trade with Acapulco came to an end, the principals could no
longer be laid out according to the intentions of the founders, and
they were lent out at interest in other ways. By a royal ordinance of
November 3, 1854, a junta was appointed to administer the property of
the . The total capital of the five endowments (in reality only four,
for one of them no longer possessed anything) amounted to nearly
a million of dollars. The profits from the loans were distributed
according to the amounts of the original capital, which, however,
no longer existed in cash, as the government had disposed of them.

[31] Vide Thevenot.

[32] According to Morga, between the fourteenth and fifteenth.

[33] Vide De Guignes, Pinkerton XI, and Anson X.

[34] Vide Anson.

[35] Randolph's History of California.

[36] In Morga's time, the galleons took seventy days to the Ladrone
Islands, from ten to twelve from thence to Cape Espiritu Santo,
and eight more to Manila.

[37] A very good description of these voyages may be found in the
10th chapter of Anson's work, which also contains a copy of a sea map,
captured in the Cavadonga, displaying the proper track of the galleons
to and from Acapulco.

[38] De Guignes.

[39] The officer in command of the expedition, to whom the title of
general was given, had always a captain under his orders, and his
share in the gain of each trip amounted to $40,000. The pilot was
content with $20,000. The first lieutenant (master) was entitled to 9
per cent on the sale of the cargo, and pocketed from this and from the
profits of his own private ventures upwards of $350,000. (Vide Arenas.)

[40] The value of the cargoes Anson captured amounted to $1,313,000,
besides 35,682 ounces of fine silver and cochineal. While England
and Spain were at peace, Drake plundered the latter to the extent of
at least one and a half million of dollars. Thomas Candish burnt the
rich cargo