From Cochin we went to Goa on April three of this year, one thousand six hundred and fifteen, in a galley of the fleet.  We coasted along the shore and visited the fortresses of Malabar.  We spent Holy Week in Mangalor.  We lodged in the convent of St. Francis, and helped confess the soldiers.  We spent forty days in the voyage, until we reached Goa, where Father Francisco Vergara, rector of the college, and all the others received us with great charity.  Four of them took me to visit the viceroy, who showed us great courtesy.  After I had been talking with him for almost an hour, the chief chancellor entered, who is at the same time auditor for the reports in causes, and is a knight of the habit.  Having given him a seat of honor, such as we were occupying, the viceroy said to him:  “I am surprised, sir, that all the fathers of the Society are all so much alike; for the father rector of Manila, whom we have here, is just like the fathers here, even in speech.”  He determined immediately what could be done in accordance with the present state of India, in respect to the aid that I was come to request—­namely, to give four well-equipped galleons, with as many as four hundred soldiers and ninety pieces of artillery among them all.  As commander of this fleet, he assigned Francisco de Miranda Enriquez, a gentleman who has had good fortune in war; and, as admiral, Alfonso Vaez Coutino.

We left Goa on the twelfth of May.  We were one hundred and two days on the voyage for the lack of good weather, and on account of the poor route chosen by the pilot, who took us to the land of Achan; and as its inhabitants are hostile to the Portuguese, the latter did not dare land there.  The men were dying with thirst, and had it not been for some showers, and the final resolution to get water on a desert island, we would have suffered even death.  We had many samatras, or hurricanes, on the coast of that great land, which broke topmasts, tore sails, and broke moorings, causing us to lose anchors and other necessary articles.

On July thirty, on the eve of our Father St. Ignatius, in the district of Pulu Parcelar, our capitana galleon fought two Dutch vessels, without the other galleons being able to render aid, as they were to leeward.  Our galleon made two vain attempts to grapple—­one because of too much wind, and the other for lack of wind—­for the one was a samatra or hurricane, and the other so great a calm, that neither we nor the Dutch could manage our ships.  But inasmuch as we remained within cannon-shot of one another, we fought until night deepened, and they fled battered to pieces; for our balls had gone clear through them, while theirs made scarcely any impression on us.  Accordingly we only lost two men in the fight.

On the eve of the Assumption [87] we ran upon a shoal three brazas under water, where the galleon remained all night, tossing up and down frightfully.  In the morning a boat came from one of our other ships in response to the numerous pieces that we discharged, and helped us get off the shoal; but we were in so bad condition that from then on the boat made thirty palmos of water every twenty-four hours.