any resources with which
to aid them. All this has been caused by the excessive cost of the
galleys, and the great expenses incurred by some expeditions made
with them without anything being thus gained. In the interim, until
your Majesty be pleased to order some provision, we shall take great
pains to do what is most expedient so that these expenses may cease
and the country be defended without them. [_In the margin of this
paragraph is written_: "No answer to be given."]

This year it will be very necessary to appropriate a considerable
loan of money from what comes from Nueva Spana--because the viceroy of
Mexico has not sent the usual aid, and it is impossible to get along
without obtaining it from private persons--that the land may not go
to ruin; for I can assure you that it has come to this extremity.

Last year I advised you of the many offices which the governor had
granted, and in this he has continued--going so far that, observing
the general complaint of all the meritorious persons, I have tried to
restrain him. At this he showed little inclination to favor my efforts,
and offered me some affronts--which I shall not mention, as they were
of such a nature as to affect only me personally and not my office
or its authority. But, because it appears to me expedient to inform
you concerning one such case, I shall do so, as it is a matter which
touches the preeminence of the officers whom your Majesty maintains
here, so that your Majesty, if you please, may order it to be set
right. [_On the margin of this paragraph_: "Concerning the offices
which the governor has filled; join this relation which Don Antonio de
Ribera sends to that which the governor writes concerning the offices,
and have it all brought."]

By the ordinance of this royal Audiencia it is directed that an
Audiencia building be erected in which the president and auditors
shall live; and by a later decree it is ordered that there shall be
a royal building, very imposing, so that these infidels may see the
authority with which your Majesty is served and which the officers
who serve in these offices must possess. I, as the senior auditor,
lived in the royal building, whence, on the occasion when your Majesty
directed the treasury of the royal exchequer to be established in the
royal building, the governor ordered me to move, in order to make room
for the treasury. As this wrong was done to me, I laid it before the
Audiencia, saying that he was exceed