Count of Monterey, 1596 
379 
order with rigorous penalties. Don Lope de Ulloa received them where 
he had turned back some leagues to attend to certain affairs, and turning 
back on the road again, they notified the said Don Juan on September 6 48 
at the Rio de Las Nazas, where they caught up with him, twenty leagues 
or more from Santa Bárbara, a very noted village and the best known 
among the last settlements. He showed much feeling, and replied in a 
certain manner, as your Majesty will perceive by this copy of the order 
which I sent and of the notification of it, and by the copy which he sent 
of his letter. Awaiting the decision of your Majesty by the fleet, and in 
order that Don Juan should delay until then as your Majesty orders that 
he should do, I ordered that the said notification should be made, as it was 
in fact made, secretly, and that your Majesty’s orders to me in the said 
decree should be carried out here so that the people whom Don Juan had 
assembled should not desert him. On the contrary, by vague statements 
in public I endeavored to counteract the rumor that was going about the 
city, through letters from individuals in Madrid, about the coming of Don 
Pedro Ponce. Don Lope did the same there, when the rumor reached 
him, and with great skill and dissimulation he managed it in such a way 
that if the fleet or despatches should arrive at the accustomed time, or any 
time in October, what had been gathered together there would be found 
still in existence and intact. 
Seeing that the fleet did not come and that the despatches of your 
Majesty were delayed, and that the delay in this might cause Don Juan 
some confusion and doubt as to what he ought to do, and being myself 
perplexed at the thought of the difficulties that would follow if his people 
should stray away, or, taking advantage of this delay, should break out 
and commit some evil act, entering without order, and realizing that it 
was an affair worthy of considering whether some expedient might be 
found so that this entrance which had been so greatly desired should not 
fall through, I determined to communicate the decree and order of your 
Majesty, with the notifications and replies, to the regular session of this 
royal Audiencia, so that the members might give me their opinion upon it. 
This was that they would wait for your Majesty, contriving that while 
Don Juan should not let go what he had prepared for the expediton, he 
should not act contrary to your Majesty’s orders and commands, especially 
since it was possible that ships would soon come bringing some other 
person with despatches and decrees in confirmation of this one. I issued 
a new auto in confirmation of the one by which Don Juan was notified, in 
which he was ordered that under the penalties imposed upon him in the 
first one he should carry out the orders that had been given him. This 
despatch is already there, and I am awaiting his reply. I expect and am 
almost certain that he will not go or permit any one to go contrary to the 
order, although it has seemed to me and the Audiencia that in a man of 
less integrity, fewer ties in this land, and more rashness, such an event 
might be feared, since the decree of your Majesty gives me neither order 
nor authority to release him from the contract which he holds nor to 
order him to undo what he had arranged and prepared, but rather that he 
should wait as he was for another order. 
In the first days of this [month] certain information came from Seville 
that some ships, which are mentioned by name, had been cleared and 
