Page:The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 (Volume 06).djvu/59

 the new reckoning was not yet in force there, and does not come into effect until the fifth of October of the present year. It is a memorable event that according to the said new reckoning we arrived here on the twenty-sixth of May, and according to the old on the sixteenth of the same month. The Audiencia was established with all the authority and pomp possible. We found the city burned down, and no habitable houses except those of straw, rushes, and boards, which could easily burn down again any day. Concerning this and other matters, a report will be sent by the president. The officials of the royal exchequer not only refused to lend me money, but did not even pay me more than half of the three months' salary due me from the time when I left Acapulco. The others have drawn their salaries from the time when they left Castilla, the president since he left Mexico, and I only from the day when we set sail. I am not unworthy of favors, most potent sire; for I have spent forty years in continual study, thirty of which have given me much experience in matters of justice and legal pleading, and this is well known in Mexico. If the records of the past be examined in the Council, it will be seen that in the ten or twelve months while I was fiscal of that royal Audiencia I accomplished more than did my predecessors for