The Dutch interest in these regions is so vast—­both in the clove-trade and that of other drugs and spices, and because they think that they will have a gateway there for the subjugation of the whole Orient—­that, overcoming all the toil and dangers of the voyage, they are continually coming to these islands in greater numbers and with larger fleets.  If a very fundamental and timely remedy be not administered in this matter, it will increase to such an extent in a short time that afterward no remedy can be applied.

The English and Flemish usually make this voyage by way of the strait of Magallanes.  Francisco Draque [Drake] was the first to make it, and some years later Tomas Liscander [Candish or Cavendish], who passed by Maluco.

Lately Oliver del Nort, a Fleming, made the voyage.  The Spanish fleet fought with his fleet amid the Filipinas Islands, at the end of the year one thousand six hundred.  In this fight, after the capture of his almiranta (which was commanded by Lamberto Biezman) the flagship, having lost nearly all its crew, and being much disabled, took to flight.  And as it afterward left the Filipinas, and was seen in Sunda and the Java channels, so disabled, it seemed impossible for it to navigate, and that it would surely be lost, as was recounted above when treating of this.

This pirate, although so crippled, had the good fortune to escape from the Spaniards, and, after great troubles and hardships, he returned to Amstradam with his ship “Mauricio,” with only nine men alive, reaching it on the twenty-sixth of August in the year six hundred and one.  He wrote the relation and the events of his voyage, and gave plates of the battle and of the ships.  This was afterward translated into Latin and printed by Teodoro de Bri, a German, at Francfort, in the year six hundred and two.  Both relations are going the rounds, and the voyage is regarded as a most prodigious feat and one of so great hardships and perils. [36]

Bartolome Perez, a pilot, gave the same news from the island of La Palma.  He, having come from England by way of Holanda, conversed with Oliver del Nort, and the latter narrated to him his voyage and sufferings, as mentioned by Licentiate Fernando de la Cueva in a letter from the island of La Palma, [37] on the last of July, of the year six hundred and four, to Marcos de la Cueva, his brother, who was a resident of Manila, and one of the volunteers who embarked on the Spanish flagship which fought with the pirate.  This letter is as follows.

I answer two of your Grace’s letters in this:  one dated July, six hundred and one, and the other July, six hundred and two.  In both of them your Grace relates to me the shipwreck that befell you and how you saved yourself by swimming.  Long before I saw your Grace’s letters, I had learned of your mishap, whereat I was very anxious and even quite grieved; because of what was reported here, I imagined that your Grace had