Page:The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 (Volume 09).pdf/303

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1593–1597]
PACIFICATION OF MINDANAO
297

Mindanao. On the seventeenth, Captain Torivio de Miranda entered the river, where he found that the enemy had drawn a blockade about our friends of Tanpacon, and had killed more than seventy of them; but at his arrival they raised the blockade, and retired to their fort in flight.

On the eighth of January, Captain Chaves arrived with his fragatas at the river, and on the twelfth planned and founded the fort of Tanpacan near this settlement of our friends. On the twenty-fifth, the sargento-mayor sailed for the river of Simay to capture certain vessels belonging to the enemy, in which they were going to seek aid from Terrenate. During a certain battle which they had there with the enemy, he had a leg cut off, well toward the thigh, and recived a shot in the helmet above the ear. One of his comrades, who was fighting at his side, had his right leg cut off. On the tenth of March, the master-of-camp arrived; and, on the twenty-first, General Don Juan Ronquillo.

On the tenth of April the enemy's fleet came up, and on the seventeenth they landed, sweeping along the allies in front of them, together with forty arquebusiers, who were escorting them in their line, and on their right wing. A few days ago the enemy made an attack from ambuscade, with more than two thousand men. They came on, closing in until they reached the squadron, where they encountered the resistance of arms to their advance, and retired fleeing. They left some of their bravest dead, together with a few Terrenatans, without doing any damage to us, except killing five Visayans. Accordingly our squadron, which consisted of a hundred and sixty-nine men, on the fourth day intrenched themselves as best