Note 10 — Trade of the Philippines
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The consulate is trying also to strengthen its proposition with the improvements that it pretends to find in the voyage, if it were to be made by the cape of Buena-Esperanza. But, discussing that point by what I have been able to learn of it, I find that the emperor and king our sovereign, of glorious memory, your Majesty’s grandfather, having been persuaded that the discovery and conquest of the Spice Islands—the name then given to those islands today included in the name of Philipinas or Malucas—pertained to the crown of Castilla, inasmuch as they were within the line drawn by his Holiness, Alexander VI, for the division of the world, ardently desired, and made extraordinary efforts, so that his vassals might make that voyage without touching at the ports and lands of the kingdom of Portugal. For that purpose he made an agreement with Fernando de Magallanes to Page 225discover [such a route]. The latter discovered and gave name to the strait in this region at the south. Although by the result [of Magallanes’s expedition] one could recognize the great difficulty and danger of the voyage, his Majesty would not desist from the undertaking. On the contrary, he immediately sent, in the year 25, two other fleets by that way while, at the same time, he sent a ship under command of an intelligent man to find a new entrance by the coast of Labrador and the Bacallaos.10 Following up the attempt, he ordered Don Fernando Cortés, conqueror of Nueva-España, to attempt this expedition from Nueva-España. He would not have ceased like means until attaining it, had not he made that contract or agreement concerning those islands with the king of Portugal in the year 29.11 That put an end to the enterprise until afterward, when Don Antonio de Mendoza, viceroy of Nueva-España, took up again the same search in the year 42, and continued to persevere in it, so that it was realized during the latter years of the governorship and life of Don Luis de Velasco, who succeeded the said Don Antonio in that office.