[11] The "piece of eight" was a coin having the weight and value of eight reals of silver; the "piece of four," one of half that value.
[12] Reference is apparently made here to the preceding document, "Principal points in regard to the trade of the Filipinas."
[13] See La Concepcion's account of the result of this expedition (Hist. de Philipinas, iv, pp. 16-18). The Spanish troops joined the Portuguese at Tidore, and together they besieged the Malay fort at Terrenate; but after ten days the Portuguese refused to continue the siege, and retreated; this compelled Gallinato, the Spanish commander, to return with his troops to Manila.
[14] Daifu-sama: the official title of Iyeyasu, then the chief secular ruler (Shôgun) in Japan, which power he gained by his victory at the great battle of Sekigahara (October, 1600). With him began the Shôgunate of the Tokugawa family, which lasted for two hundred and fifty years. Iyeyasu labored to secure the peace of the empire, both internal and external, and to this end undertook to eradicate the Christian religion in Japan; and formed a code of laws for his people. He was a man of high character and ability, and was deified after his death. This event occurred in 1616, when he was seventy-four years old. See Rein's Japan, pp. 293-303.
[15] La Concepcion describes this fire (Hist. de Philipinas, iv, pp. 30-32); he states that the loss therein was estimated at a million of pesos, "a loss which indicates how opulent was then the city of Manila."
[16] The emperor of China at this time was Wanleh (see Vol. III, p. 228); he died in 1620. See account of his reign (begun in 1572) in Boulger's Hist. China, ii, pp. 153-204.
[17] Garbanzo: the chick-pea, a sort of pulse commonly used in Spain.
[18] The name of the Moro pirates who inhabit the little islands of the Sulu group east of Tawi-tawi, and the islands between these and Borneo.
[19] These names are corrupt Spanish renderings of the Chinese names Nanking and Peking. For accounts of the "Middle Kingdom," or China proper, and its provinces, and the origin and meaning of their various appellations, see W. Winterbotham's Chinese Empire (London, 1796), i, pp. 40 et seq.; and S. Wells Williams's Middle Kingdom (New York, 1871), i, pp. 3 et seq.
[20] In the official transcript of this document furnished us from the Sevilla archives, this word is written teatinos ("Theatins")—apparently the copyist's conjecture for an illegible or badly-written word in the original MS. But the Theatins had no establishments in the Philippines; and the mention of Chirino in the second of these letters (next following this one) of Benavides proves that he referred to the Jesuits (Spanish iesuitas), not to the Theatins.