The bookkeeping system at the royal treasury was both thorough and cumbersome. Perhaps because a copyist was paid by the number of folios, no value was placed upon brevity. Each number was written twice, in words and in numerals. At the beginning, accounts were kept in a variant of Roman numerals in which an “e” might stand for a ten, and the numbers from two to four began with one to three undotted “i’s” and ended with a dotted “j” whose elongated tail curved under the adjoining letters. [Note 1: Bartolome de Arguelles and Juan Menendez Marquez 1/23/1602] In that age before commas, a bookkeeper inserted other symbols for clarity. The number 1,000 was represented by a “U,” as in Accountant Arguelles’ statement that the English armada coming upon Cartagena had 20 ships and VIU men, meaning 6,000, or Auditor Redondo Villegas’ reference to the year 1600 as 1U600. The symbol for a million was “Q” or “qos,” standing for quentos. The number 17,913,725, for example, could be written 17qos913U725. A quento escaso was 100,000. [Note 2: Bartolome de Arguelles 1/22/1596 and 4/20/1600; Pedro Redondo Villegas 4/20/1601; Alonso de Caceres report, Havana, after 12/12/1574] Roman numerals began going out of use in 1580, but for another 50 years or more a numeral could be written either way. [Note 3: Francisco Ramirez, Juan de Cueva, and Francisco Menendez Marquez, enclosed with Gov. Rojas y Borja 5/30/1627]