farther—it is more plentiful, and could be taken without injuring the Indians. Yet the Spaniards have chosen not to do this, but rather to order that it be taken from La Pampanga. And while the price among the Indians is fifty gantas for one tostón, they require them to give for your Majesty at the rate of two hundred and fifty gantas. At the season when this was collected, I was visiting La Pampanga, and I saw so much weeping and moaning on the part of the wretched Indians from whom they took the rice, that it moved me to great pity—and all the more since I could see so little means to provide a remedy; for although I wrote about it to the master-of-camp, who was at that time lieutenant-governor, it profited me little.
As for the means of collecting this rice, the alcalde-mayor or his deputy divides among the chiefs two, three, four, or more taes of gold (which is a certain weight worth five pesos), and orders that so many gantas of rice be collected for one tostón. Afterward they send, to collect this rice, men without piety; who, with blows, torture, and imprisonment enforce compliance with the rate of three hundred and fifty gantas for a tostón; and, in other years, one hundred of wine, and this year, sixty. It is a fact well established, for I have learned from the very persons who collect it that it often happens, that the Indian, not having so much rice as is demanded, is obliged to go to buy at the rate of fifty gantas for a tostón, and fifteen gantas of wine; and from him, as is said, they take two hundred and fifty of rice and seventy of wine for one tostón. If this occurred only with respect to rice, which is necessary for the expense which your Majesty incurs in this city, it would be but half
