is expedient to ask in order to disperse and clear away the prevalent uncertainties, and know whether we are to have safety and peace with that king: I hereby order that the following investigation be made, the proceedings of which shall be attached to the original letters sent by father Fray Juan Cobo and to the memorial submitted by Faranda; and I sign it with my name.
Gomez Perez Dasmariñas
Before me: Juan de Cuellar
[Testimony]
In[1] the city of Manila, on the twenty-fourth day of the month of May, one thousand five hundred and ninety-three, the said governor and captain-general, Gomez Perez Das Marinas, summoned Captain Joan de Solis to his presence, in order to make the above-mentioned investigation. He took the oath before God and on the sign of the cross, in due form, and promised to answer truthfully the questions asked him. The tenor of the questions having been read to him, he said that, as one who had just come from the kingdoms of Xapon, and reached this port and bay but yesterday, and who was in Xapon when father Fray Joan Cobos arrived there—where this witness was building a ship (the one in which he came hither), and work on which he left and abandoned, in order to go to see, protect, and serve the said father Fray Joan Cobo, and to instruct him in
- ↑ From this point we follow the second and fuller account given in the other MS. (see Bibliographical Data at end of volume). The two agree nearly to the end of Solis's deposition; then follows, in the first, a brief statement by Antonio Lopez, and a letter from Dasmariñas to the Japanese emperor (which we shall give at the close of the second report).
