them.  It is a large port with deep water, and the entrance is closed by an island on the northeast part, inhabited by about three hundred Indians.  I have sent a carefully traced sketch of this to your Majesty with this letter.  The reason why it is very necessary to occupy this port is for the safety of these islands; for it is known to a certainty that ... that if a fort is built at ... which is very ... will be able to send it from there without great difficulty, and being installed there, would make us anxious at all times, and harry the land, without there being any help for it, For they are a warlike and numerous people.  The other reason is because all the trading ships which sail for this city from China make land there, and will not dare sail from their own country.  They are very much afraid of those people, and will cease their trade with this city, and thus that will be lost—­even more than the great wealth which the ship “San Felipe” [43] carried, which arrived in their country in the past year, ninety-six.  That wealth made them covetous of it; and perhaps their principal intention is to come here and attack these islands.  It is not worthy of the Spanish reputation to allow this barbarian to use us thus, without experiencing our power through some injury.  It would be a great loss to him to take that passage from him; and, for any purpose that your Majesty may desire, it will be a very important station; since, if your Majesty sends a large number of troops by way of Nueva Espana or of India, that is so difficult an undertaking, and entails so much expense and the death of so many.

It is of no less importance to give an account to your Majesty of two routes which can be explored at little expense and are short and easy.  The first is by the strait which is called Danian [i.e., Anian], which lies between the farthest land of China and the regions of Nueva Espana ... a relation which I [received] there, which was left in manuscript by Fray Martin de Rada, of the order of St. Augustine, a great mathematician, of whom your Majesty had information in this ... of the letter.

A worthy Vizcayan, named Juanes de Ribas, a native of San Sebastian, told me that while he was going after whales to Terranova [i.e., Newfoundland] he received information that in the year forty-five some Bretons were carried [by storms] from the cape of Breton, which lies about eighty leguas west of the cape of Bacallaos, which lies in forty-nine or fifty degrees of latitude.  He said that in latitude fifty-two degrees, after sailing to the northwest a hundred leguas, they encountered a strait.  And, according to this relation, some Portuguese came to India and China; they say that in forty-five days they arrived from Ucheo at Lisboa; and, believing that the king would show them favor, they gave him an account of it.  But he threw them into prison, and they died there.  One of the Portuguese who went in that ship afterward came to Nueva Espana and accompanied