LETTER FROM GOVERNOR DON FRANCISCO TELLO
1. This recounts that on all occasions the state of affairs of these islands has been reported, and was not enlarged upon because no instruction had been sent nor has been up to the year 1598, on which account many things pertaining to the service of his Majesty, and of importance for this country, have failed to receive attention.[1]
As I have at various times written to your Majesty, you ordered me to come here and serve in this country, without giving me the royal instructions or despatches to that end. Accordingly many things of importance which your Majesty commanded me to attend to were left undone at the time I came. When I arrived in these islands I wrote to your Majesty at length of those things which could be managed in spite of the short time I had spent here. These despatches were lost in the ship "San Phelipe" which Don Luis Perez Dasmarinas despatched in the year 1596, and which was lost in Xapon. The next year, 1597, I awaited the royal instruction of your Majesty in order to govern my action by it; but neither did that come, until the past year, 1598. I govern
- ↑ The paragraphs in italics which accompany the sections of Tello's letter are apparently brief summaries thereof, made by some clerk for the use of the Council of the Indias.
