guard your houses.”  The Indians answered boldly:  “Be it so!  Come on!  We await you here.”  And thereupon they broke out into loud cries, covering themselves with their shields and brandishing their lances.  Then they returned to the place whence they had set out, hurling their lances by divisions of threes at the boat, and returning again to their station, going and coming as in a game of canas. [102] Our men got ready and left the ships in boats; and as the boats left the ships for the shore, in accordance with the order given them, some shots were fired from the ships upon the multitude of praus anchored near a promontory, as well as at the landsmen upon shore, and upon the town.  But, although they had showed so great a desire for war, when they heard the artillery and saw its effects, they abandoned their village without waiting for battle, and fled through the large, beautiful, and fertile open fields that are to be seen in this region.  Accordingly we remained in the village, which had been left totally without provisions by the natives.  We pursued the enemy, but they are the lightest and swiftest runners whom I have ever seen.  When we entered the village, all the food had been already taken away.  However, I believe that there will be no lack of food.  In exchange for our hardships this is a good prospect, although there is no hope of food except through our swords.  The land is thickly populated, and so fertile that four days after we took the village the Castilian seeds had already sprouted.  We have seen some little gold here, on the garments worn by the natives.  We are at the gate and in the vicinity of the most fortunate countries of the world, and the most remote; it is three hundred leagues or thereabouts farther than great China, Burnei, Java, Lauzon, Samatra, Maluco, Malaca, Patan, Sian, Lequios, Japan, and other rich and large provinces.  I hope that, through God’s protection, there will be in these lands no slight result for his service and the increase of the royal crown, if this land is settled by Spaniards, as I believe it will be.  From this village of Cubu, I have despatched the ship with the father prior [Urdaneta] and my grandson, Phelipe de Zauzedo, with a long relation of the things which I boldly write here to your excellency.  They will inform his majesty at length, as persons who have been eyewitnesses of all especially of what has taken place here, the state of the new settlement, and the arrangements made for everything.  It remains to be said that, since this fleet was despatched by the most illustrious viceroy, my master, of blessed memory, and further, chiefly because of being an enterprise that every gentleman should all the more favor, inasmuch as it pertains naturally to your excellency, as the heir of the glory resulting from this expedition—­your excellency should favor it in such a manner that we may feel here the touch of your most illustrious hand, and so that aid should be sent as promptly as the