ABSTRACT
[A stage in the history of the Aguila’s expeditions had now been reached when the parts played in their promotion by Don Manuel de Amat and the Bailio Fray Don Julian de Arriaga were drawing to a close. The former—still a bachelor at seventy-one—was beginning to feel the burden of years, and the prolonged strain of his official responsibilities during fourteen years’ troublous times as Viceroy. He had more than once intimated his wish for retirement, to which the king now somewhat tardily acceded in terms of Arriaga’s despatch which next follows (p. 351), wherein the Viceroy was notified of the appointment of a successor. Before that successor reached Peru, however, Arriaga himself died. So that three important occurrences bearing upon this history ensued within the same year 1776; besides the final return of the Aguila to El Callao. They were (1) the appointment of Don José Gálvez as Minister for the Indies in succession to Arriaga (whose death took place at El Pardo, near Madrid, on February the 26th), (2) the arrival and installation at Lima of the new Viceroy of Peru, Don Manuel de Guirior, on July the 17th, and (3) Amat’s final departure for Old Spain on the 4th of December. As a consequence of the first and second of these events Amat’s despatch (no. 1189) announcing the Aguila’s last return from Tahiti and the collapse of her mission there, under cover of which he enclosed Commander de Lángara’s Report, was received by Gálvez instead of Arriaga, and was acknowledged by him to Guirior instead of to Amat.
