Page:The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 (Volume 01).djvu/35

This page has been validated.
1493–1529]
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION
31

had made some progress in introducing Christianity.[1]

Villalobos left no permanent mark upon the islands beyond giving the name "Felipinas" to some of them, in honor of "our fortunate Prince."[2]

Nearly twenty years elapsed before another expedition was undertaken, but this was more carefully organized than any of its predecessors, and four or five years were absorbed in the preparations. King Philip II, while respecting the contract with Portugal in regard to the Moluccas, proposed to ignore its provisions in regard to other islands included within the Demarcation Line of 1529. In his first despatch relative to this expedition in 1559 he enjoins that it shall not enter the Moluccas but go "to other islands that are in the same region as are the Philippines and others that were outside the said contract, but within our demarcation, that are said to produce spices."[3]

Friar Andrés de Urdaneta, who had gone to the Moluccas with Loaisa in 1525, while a layman and a sailor, explained to the king that as la isla Filipina was farther west than the Moluccas the treaty of Zaragoza was just as binding in the case of these

  1. See the correspondence in Col. de Doc. Inéditos de Ultramar, vol. ii (vol. i of subdivision de las Islas Filipinas), p. 66.
  2. Relacion del Viaje que hizo desde la Nueva-España à las Islas del Poniente Ruy Gomez de Villalobos, written by Garcia Descalante Alvarado. Coleccion de Docs. Inéd. del Archivo de Indias v, p. 127. The name was first given in July or August 1543 to some of the smaller islands in the group. On page 122, Alvarado writes "chinos que vienen a Mindanao y à las Philipinas." Montero y Vidal says that the island first to receive the name was Leyte. Hist. Gen. de Filipinas, i, p. 27. In 1561, Urdaneta uses "las islas Filipinas" in the ordinary way; see his "Derrotero" prepared for the expedition. Col. Docs. Inéd. vol. i, p. 130 ff.
  3. Col. de Docs. Inéd. de Ultramar, vol. ii, pp. 95–96.