Page:The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 (Volume 03).djvu/33



Sacred Royal Catholic Majesty:

This letter will serve to advise your Majesty that by the capitana "San Pablo," which left this port on the first of July in the past year 1568, I wrote at length to your Majesty regarding events which had happened up to that time; and I refer you to the letters which will go on this despatch-boat in the general budget, which is thus accidentally increased. Now I shall relate the history of this ship, and what happened to us after it left, with as much brevity as possible, both to avoid prolixity and because the governor Miguel Lopez will give your Majesty a longer and fuller relation. This ship was despatched with more than four hundred quintals of cinnamon for your Majesty, besides small wares and other articles as specimens, which would give no little satisfaction in that land. There arrived at this port of Cubu on the eighteenth of September of that year a small vessel of Portuguese, whose captain was Antonio Rrumbo de Acosta, a person who had already come, the year before, to this port with letters from the Captain-general Gonzalo Pereyra. He said that the captain-general was coming with all his fleet to see the governor [of the Philippines]