In the same year 1521, Antonio de Brito sailed for the Molucca islands.  These islands are in the middle of a great number of others under the equator, about 300 leagues east from Malacca.  There are five principal islands to which the general name of Moluccas is applied, about 25 leagues distant from each other, the largest not exceeding six leagues in circumference.  The particular names of these are Ternate, Tidore, Mousell, Macquein and Bacham[154].  They are covered with woods and subject to fogs, and are consequently unhealthy.  These five islands produce cloves, but no kind of food; and the large island of Batochina, which is 60 leagues long, produces food but no cloves.  In some of these islands, particularly Ternate, there are burning mountains.  Their chief subsistence is of a kind of meal made from the bark of certain trees resembling the palm[155].  There are certain canes that have a liquor in their hollows between the joints, which is delightful to drink.  Though the country abounds in animals, the natives eat very little flesh, but live chiefly on fish which their seas produce inexhaustibly.  They are very warlike and by no means affable, and are most expert both in running and swimming.  Their religion is idolatrous, but we have no account whatever respecting their original.  The Moors had possessed themselves of this country not long before the coming of the Portuguese, as a Mahometan priest who had come along with the first of the Moorish invaders was still alive at the arrival of Brito.

[Footnote 154:  The principal island of the Molucca group is Gilolo; those in the text being small islands to the west of Gilolo.  The large island mentioned in the text under the name of Batochina, can be no other than Gilolo.—­E.]

[Footnote 155:  This is obviously an erroneous account of Sago, an alimentary substance procured from the pith of a tree of the palm tribe, not from the bark.—­E.]

Antonio de Brito was sent on this occasion to build a fort in the island of Ternate, which had been long desired by its king Boylefe.  His force consisted of six ships and 300 soldiers, and was increased at the island of Agacim by four sail under the command of Garcia Enriquez.  On arriving at Ternate, the old king Boylefe was dead, and the king of Tidore had admitted the Spaniards to settle on his island; yet seeing that the queen who governed Ternate during the minority of her son gave a friendly reception to Brito, the king of Tidore visited him and offered to deliver up the Spaniards to him if he would build the fort on Tidore instead of Ternate.  But Ternate was preferred as the most convenient, Brito laying the first stone on the festival of St John the Baptist, the 28th of December 1521.