pertains to it and what can be done.

Among other offices provided in the above manner was that of secretary
of the registers, which is an office of importance. I entreat that
your Majesty will be pleased not to confirm its concession, nor that
of others of the same date, until you can be informed of the pros
and cons regarding it; for it will either be advisable to sell those
offices for the relief of necessities here (although I do not think
that such sale would go far toward that), or else let the matter
take its course as hitherto, so that there be certain offices with
which men who have served may be, with these employments, rewarded
and gratified. Well can your Majesty believe that I shall lose no
occasion to do what I understand to be advisable for your service,
both in this and in whatever else falls to me, and is in my power.

I shall now give Captain Luis de Contreras, whom I found filling
the office of treasurer of the royal revenues here, one thousand two
hundred Indians in encomienda (or a few more or less), and a pension
of two hundred pesos as a gratification to another deserving man. With
that the former will have received a goodly part of the income that
your Majesty orders me, by a royal decree that he presented to me, to
give him in unassigned Indians or in those of an encomienda which may
become vacant. I could well wish that there were more Indians vacant
than there are, in order to fulfil all that your Majesty orders me,
and which the said Luis de Contreras merits by his character and
good qualities.

Having seen the exactness with which I fulfilled the above, I am told
that many are going about looking for decrees and trying to procure
them now from your Majesty, in order to obtain like encomiendas and