We set sail from the port of Acapulco on the ninth of March, according to the new computation of time which your Majesty, by order of the supreme pontiff, commanded us to observe.

I mention this point because we who came enjoyed an experience never known before--namely, that while at sea we kept Ascension day, Whitsunday, Trinity Sunday, and Corpus Christi day; when we landed we kept and celebrated the same feast-days in Manila, because 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.

[5] 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.