Nueva (or New) Granada; a name applied in the nineteenth century to the country now known as United States of Colombia. This region was conquered by Gonzalo Jiminez Quesada in 1537, its capital (established August 6, 1538) being Santa Fé de Bogota.
4
In the original there is a brief summary at the head of each paragraph, for the convenience of the council in considering the document.
5
The botanical name of the clove is Caryophyllus aromaticus. See Crawfurd’s excellent account, both descriptive and historical, of this valued product, in his Dict. of Indian Islands, pp. 101–105. Cf. the account by Duarte Barbosa, in East Africa and Malabar (Hakluyt Soc. publications No. 35, London, 1866), pp. 201, 219, 227; he says, among other things: “And the trees from which they do not gather it for three years after that become wild, so that their cloves are worth nothing.” Crawfurd says: “It is only in its native localities, the five small islets [Moluccas] on the western coast of the large island of Gilolo, that it is easily grown, and attains the highest perfection. There, it bears in its seventh or eighth year, and lives to the age of 130 or 150.” He also states that the Dutch, in their attempt to secure the monopoly of the clove trade, exterminated the clove trees from the Moluccas, and endeavored to limit their growth to the five Amboyna islands, in which they had introduced the clove.
6
Referring to the military order of St. John of Jerusalem, to which Acuña belonged.
7
The Spanish form of the name of Mechlin, an important city of Belgium, between Antwerp and Brussels. The reference in the text is probably to some law enacted by the emperor Charles V while holding his court at Mechlin, during his long stay in the Netherlands.
8
Diego Aduarte was born at Zaragoza, about 1570, and at the age of sixteen entered a Dominican convent at Alcalá de Henares. In 1594 he joined the mission to the Philippines, arriving at Manila June 12, 1595. In the following January Aduarte accompanied the expedition sent by Luis Dasmariñas to Cambodia (see Vol. IX, pp. 161–180, 265, 277); the result of this was disastrous, and after many dangers and hardships, and a long illness, he returned to Manila on June 24, 1597. Two years later he went to China, to rescue Dasmariñas (stranded there after another unsuccessful expedition to Cambodia), and remained until February, 1600. Soon afterward he went to Spain on business of his order, arriving there in September, 1603. There he obtained a reënforcement of missionaries for the Philippines, arriving at the islands in August, 1606. He was again despatched to Spain (July, 1607), where he remained until 1628; he then returned to the Philippines with another missionary band. He was seen afterward elected prior of the convent at Manila, and later became bishop of Nueva Segovia; but exercised the latter office only a year and a half, dying in the summer of 1636. Aduarte’s Historia de la provincia del Sancto Rosario (Manila, 1640) is his chief work; we shall present it in later volumes of this series. See biography of Aduarte in Reseña biografica de los religiosos de la provincia del Santísimo Rosario de Filipinas (Manila, 1891), pp. 148–172.
