Note 15 — Relation of 1609–1610

The vessel from Macao, laden with wealth of amber, musk, pearls, and precious stones, and more than three hundred slaves, would have fallen into Page 130the hands of the Dutch, who were awaiting it, had not a shoal stopped it, and knocked it to pieces, and caused the death of some hundred persons of the five hundred aboard it. Among the drowned were two ecclesiastics who were returning from Macao, but recently ordained priests; and Captain Tijon, who not a few times had escaped from similar shipwrecks. The rest of the people went to an uninhabited island, where the Lord had prepared for their support a great number of turtles, and of the birds called boobies [bobos, i.e., “stupid”],15 to which this name is applied because they allow themselves to be caught with the hand. After the wreck of that ship, Garci Perez de Baltasar, appointed sargento-mayor of this camp, embarked in a small boat which they fitted up, with as many people as it could carry, to beg that some one be sent from this city to get the people on the island. After several days’ voyage, they were seen and perceived by the Dutch, which obliged them to ground their boat on the beach and take to the woods inland. They all escaped overland, and arrived safely at Manila; their boat was burned by the Dutch. When the expedition against the latter was ended, they sent for the people who had been left on the island; but as yet they have not arrived.