galleys, which took position near this your Majesty's camp, after having gone through certain formalities and requisitions, as your Majesty will see by these letters.[1] The said blockade lasted three months, during which they made war on us, not as on Christians, and your Majesty's vassals, but as against infidels and tyrants. They uttered all the insults and inflicted on us all the humiliations that they could, taking away from us the entrances to the harbors, whence came our provisions, and burning the houses and possessions of our neighboring friends—which certainly gave these pagan natives a great notion of cruelty, seeing that with such wicked ways and such cruelty the Portuguese were trying to hurt and annoy us. And in this way, seeing that by fighting they might lose more than they would gain, they did not care to fight, but resolved to take, on the side toward the sea, the harbor entrances (which are two) with their ships, as they were fully aware that we had nothing with which to resist them. Accordingly, they kept us shut up; and in all this time no food or anything else could be brought in for our support, for which reason we ran a great risk of perishing and dying in great misery. The governor, Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, acted with the power delegated to him by your Majesty, doing in everything all that was possible, as was evident by the messages and requests to which I refer, which were made in your Majesty's name.
It has pleased God that through some loss of his
- ↑ Referring to Legazpi's official despatches, evidently sent to Spain by the same vessel which carried these letters by Mirandaola and Lavezaris. This document appears at the end of vol. ii, under the title, "Negotiations between Legazpi and Pereira."
