of its soil.  While at anchor, in 15 deg.  N. waiting for the ships said to be coming from Japan, Van Noort took one of them on the 1st December, being a vessel of fifty tons, which had been twenty-five days on her voyage.  Her form was very strange, her forepart being like a chimney, and her furniture corresponding to her shape; as her sails were made of reeds, her anchors of wood, and her cables of straw.  Her Japanese mariners had their heads all close shaven, except one tuft left long behind, which is the general custom of that country.  The 9th, they took two barks, one laden with cocoa wine and arrack, and the other with hens and rice.

[Footnote 79:  Luzon is certainly a large island, but by no means such as represented in the text.—­E.]

The 14th of December they met the two Spanish ships returning from Manilla to New Spain, on which a very sharp engagement took place.  Overpowered by numbers, the Dutch in the ship of Van Noort were reduced to the utmost extremity, being at one time boarded by the Spaniards, and almost utterly conquered; when Van Noort, seeing all was lost without a most resolute exertion, threatened to blow up his ship, unless his men fought better and beat off the Spaniards.  On this, the Dutch crew fought with such desperate resolution, that they cleared their own ship, and boarded the Spanish admiral, which at last they sunk outright.  In this action the Dutch admiral had five men slain, and twenty-six wounded, the whole company being now reduced to thirty-five men.  But several hundreds of the Spaniards perished, partly slain in the fight, and partly drowned or knocked in the head after the battle was over.  But the Dutch lost their pinnace, which was taken by the Spanish vice-admiral; and this was not wonderful, considering that she had only twenty-five men to fight against five hundred Spaniards and Indians.

After this action, Van Noort made sail for the island of Borneo, the chief town of which island is in lat. 5 deg.  N. while Manilla, the capital of Lucon, is in lat. 15 deg.  N. On the way to Borneo, they passed the island of Bolutam, [Palawan or Paragua,] which is 180 miles in length from N.E. to S.W.  They came to Borneo on the 26th December, putting into a great bay, three miles in compass, where there was good anchorage, and abundance of fish in a neighbouring river, and the fishermen always ready to barter their fish for linen.  Van Noort sent a message to the king, desiring leave to trade; but suspecting them to be Spaniards, he would come to no terms till his officers had examined them with the utmost attention, after which they had trade for pepper with a people called Pattannees, of Chinese origin.  Both these and the native Borneans were fond of Chinese cotton cloth, but the linen from Holland was a mere drug, and quite unsaleable.  In the mean time, the Borneans laid a plot to surprise the ship; for which purpose, on the 1st January, 1601, they came with at least an hundred praws full of men, pretending to have brought presents from the king, and would have come on board the ship; but the Dutch, suspecting their treachery, commanded them to keep at a distance from the ship, or they would be obliged to make them do so with their shot, on which the Borneans desisted.