[2] He had died toward the end of the year 1683, aged more than seventy years.
[3] Nicolas Cani was born in 1611, a Sardinian by nation; and became a Jesuit novice March 27, 1628. In 1653 he entered the Philippine missions, and labored in the Visayan Islands. Murillo Velarde states (fol. 367 b) that he was unable to learn further particulars as to Cani’s life and ministries, except vague statements as to his admirable character and some few incidents in which he figured. The date of his death is not recorded, but signatures by him existed that were made in 1671.
[4] The letter following this says that the visitor and Audiencia reached Manila in 1687; Montero y Vidal says 1688; and Diaz’s editor, 1689. It seems more probable that 1688 is the correct date, from various allusions made in these letters and by Diaz.
[5] Referring to the dispute between the two universities of San José and Santo Tomás; and the placing, by the latter, of the royal arms over its entrance.
[6] That is, October 19. This saint was Pedro Garavito, born at Alcántara in 1499; at the age of fifteen he entered the Franciscan order, and was ordained in 1524. In 1554 he instituted a reform, exceedingly austere and rigorous, in his order, and erected the first convent for these discalced Franciscans at Pedroso. Other houses adopted this rule, and in 1562 these reformed convents were freed by papal orders from the jurisdiction of the general of the Franciscan order. Garavito died on October 18 of that same year; he was canonized in 1669 as St. Peter of Alcántara. (Baring-Gould’s Lives of the Saints, xii, pp. 487–494.)
[7] Spanish buen; but obviously used with satirical meaning.
[8] When Bolivar was arrested, he was sent to “a small fortified post in the province of Cagayán, called Tuao, where he remained until the investigating judge who came to Manila in 1688 ordered him to return [to that city], but he died on the way” (Diaz, p. 788).
[9] Andaye, a fortified town at the mouth of the Bidassoa River, which forms part of the boundary between Spain and France and empties into the Bay of Biscay. Andaye is directly opposite Fontarabia in Spain.
[10] These jars are still highly valued by the Malays; see Furness’s mention of this, with photographic illustration, in his Borneo Head-Hunters, pp. 125, 126.