Conquest of the Malucas Islands Book Eighth

[Molucca affairs are given considerable attention in the administration of Governor Pedro de Acuna.  The petitions for aid, sent to the Philippines from those islands, continue.  Tello is removed from the governorship, and Acuna sent to take his place.  The latter is received in Manila (May, 1602) with great rejoicing, as his merits and reputation are well known.  Tello’s death occurs in Manila while waiting to give his residencia.  Acuna enters into affairs with great energy.  The narrative continues (p. 270):]

...  The new governor was pained at beholding the poverty of the royal chest and treasury, and himself under the obligation of preserving the king’s and his own credit.  The Malucas formed part of this consideration, for their reduction was a considerable part of his duty.  But he reassured himself, believing that he might supply the lack of money by energy.  He attended to matters personally, as was his custom, both those in Manila and those in its vicinity.  He built galleys and other boats, which were greatly needed for the defense of the sea, which was then infested by pirates and near-by enemies, especially the Mindanaos.  He visited then the provinces of Pintados, and attended to the needs of those regions.  In one of these visits, besides the storms suffered by his little vessel (which carried only three soldiers), another signal danger overtook him.  Twenty-two English vessels, enriched with the booty that they had seized from the islands of that government, tried to attack and capture him.  But for lack of a tide they remained stranded, and could not row.  Don Pedro saw that they threw overboard more than two thousand of their many Spanish and islander captives in order to lighten themselves.  They also threw overboard a beautiful Spanish girl seventeen years old.  Later, the Manila fleet went in pursuit of them, and it was able to capture some of the pirates, and they were punished.  But that punishment was much less than their cruelty. [292] Don Pedro tried to remove the hindrances to the enterprise that he was meditating; but had to delay for some months what he most wished to hasten, in order to despatch Joloan and Japanese matters.

Chiquiro, the Japanese ambassador, had recently arrived in Manila, bearing a present of the products and industries of those kingdoms, and letters; he also had orders to negotiate for friendship with the governor, and commerce between the Japanese emperor (by name Daifusama) and the Filipinas and Nueva Espana.  The proximity of those provinces, the power of the Japanese kings, their natural dispositions, and other circumstances which experience showed to be worthy of serious consideration, demanded that that commerce be not refused—­although, for the same reasons, the opinion was expressed that it was not advisable.  But since that barbarian had once espoused that desire, it was not easy to