during the next seven years entitles him to a place among the greatest of colonial pioneers.  In fact he has no rival.  Starting with four ships and four hundred men, accompanied by five Augustinian monks, reinforced in 1567 by two hundred soldiers, and from time to time by similar small contingents of troops and monks, by a combination of tact, resourcefulness, and courage he won over the natives, repelled the Portuguese and laid such foundations that the changes of the next thirty years constitute one of the most surprising revolutions in the annals of colonization.  A most brilliant exploit was that of Legaspi’s grandson, Juan de Salcedo, a youth of twenty-two who with forty-five men explored northern Luzon, covering the present provinces of Zambales, Pangasinan, La Union, Ilocos, and the coast of Cagayan, and secured submission of the people to Spanish rule. [25] Well might his associates hold him “unlucky because fortune had placed him where oblivion must needs bury the most valiant deeds that a knight ever wrought.” [26] Nor less deserving of distinction than Legaspi and his heroic grandson was Friar Andres de Urdaneta the veteran navigator whose natural abilities and extensive knowledge of the eastern seas stood his commander in good stead at every point and most effectively contributed to the success of the expedition.  Nor should the work of the Friars be ignored.  Inspired by apostolic zeal, reinforced by the glowing enthusiasm of the Catholic Reaction, gifted and tireless, they labored in harmony with Legaspi, won converts, and checked the slowly-advancing tide of Mohammedanism.  The ablest of the Brothers, Martin de Rada, was preaching in Visayan within five months.

The work of conversion opened auspiciously in Cebu, where Legaspi began his work, with a niece of Tupas, an influential native, who was baptized with great solemnity.  Next came the conversion of the Moor [Moslem] “who had served as interpreter and who had great influence throughout all that country.”  In 1568 the turning point came with the baptism of Tupas and of his son.  This opened the door to general conversion, for the example of Tupas had great weight. [27]

It is a singular coincidence that within the span of one human life the Spaniard should have finished the secular labor of breaking the power of the Moslem in Spain and have checked his advance in the islands of the antipodes.  The religion of the prophet had penetrated to Malacca in 1276, had reached the Moluccas in 1465, and thence was spreading steadily northward to Borneo and the Philippines.  Iolo (Sulu) and Mindanao succumbed in the sixteenth century and when Legaspi began the conquest of Luzon in 1571 he found many Mohammedans whose settlement or conversion had grown out of the trade relations with Borneo.  As the old Augustinian chronicler Grijalva remarks, and his words are echoed by Morga and by the modern historian Montero y Vidal:  [28] “So well rooted was the cancer that had the arrival of the Spaniards been delayed all the people would have become Moors, as are all the islanders who have not come under the government of the Philippines.” [29]