On all these occasions soldiers and captains worked so gallantly that I have never before so much regretted being poor, since I cannot provide them with some little part of all that they deserve.  The sargento-mayor and Captain Juan de Valencia arrived on the twenty-eighth of the last month in a fragata, in which they had been despatched from that city to Butuan.  They brought a thousand sestos of rice and some fish, wine, and some clothing which Captain Guenca gave them in Zebu, together with other articles.  Very luckily they were retarded, as I had also been, so that they did not arrive earlier; for if they had been twenty days earlier the enemy would have taken them without fail.

The friendly natives were so alarmed at this that even those from the village of Tanpaca, who are near to this fort, withdrew their goods to the tingues, and did not feel safe.  They thought that we were dead, and told us to eat, for we must soon kill the Terrenatans.  It is strange what fear they felt of the latter, incomparably more than of us; although immediately after this victory they said that we were more valiant than the others, and that there was no people like us.  When the fight was over we had no place to store the tribute in acknowledgment of sovereignty which the friendly chiefs offered us in token of friendship, paying it in rice, for at the time of the invasion from Terrenate, Silonga had not threatened them, or made them abandon their good purpose.  Immediately upon my arrival I sent to get it, and to prepare them, and to tell them that they might be certain that they would always be under his Majesty’s dominion, and likewise to collect the acknowledgment.  On this mission the captains, Juan Pacho, Guerrero, and Grabiel Gonzalez were sent with eighty soldiers; and six days ago they informed me that the natives were very firm in their friendship, and that they were busy harvesting the rice which they were to pay.  Lumaguan and his people were doing the same thing, being obliged to pay seven hundred sestos of clean rice.  In order to collect this, all the men had to pass on to the great lake [i.e., Lanao] for which this island is famous; and as the fame of our works had spread throughout the whole island, two chiefs had already come down from the lake to say that they did not wish to fight with the Spaniards, but to be their friends and pay them tribute.  Thus I hope, through God, that inside of twenty days the whole country will be settled; and while sending down the people already mentioned, I myself shall go out in person and go along the coast of the lake and of the cape of San Agustin.  Four days ago there came to me word from another chief who wished to be friendly, that the Terrenatans are leaving this road and passing on; for there was not one of them who did not drop his arms and flee.  I shall go as far as La Canela, subduing all the country up to that point.  This will not detain me long, as I shall follow down the coast and on the way meet the