Note 4 — Part First

The expedition to Camboja by Gallinato, and events there, and the arrival of Mendaña’s ship at Manila are told in Chapter IV. Blaz Ruyz, Diego Veloso, and Pantaleon Carnero, having seized the vessel on which they were being carried as prisoners to Siam from Camboja, arrive at Manila, and induce the sending of the three vessels under Gallinato.4 The latter, however, is blown out of his course as far as the strait of Sincapura. The other two vessels under Blas Ruyz and Diego Veloso reach Camboja, but the ship of the latter is wrecked on the coast. “A relative of the legitimate king was then ruling, one Nancaparan Prabantul,” whom their arrival does not please. The trouble with the Chinese follows, of the three thousand of whom, the Spaniards kill five hundred, and the consequent embassy of Blas Ruyz with forty men to Sistor. The king’s refusal to treat with them unless they make reparation to the Chinese, and his evident preparations to seize their small body of men, lead to the attack on the palace, the killing of the king and one of his sons, and the flight to the Spanish ship, leaving three killed—one Indian, one Japanese, and one Spaniard—but with many wounded. Gallinato’s arrival at this juncture puts an end to affairs there, and all depart for Cochinchina, where Blas Ruyz and Diego Veloso go to find the legitimate king of Camboja at Laos, “crossing those kingdoms for more than two hundred leguas, through territory where [196] a Spaniard had never been seen ... I have related this event because of the many fictions that were told here about Captain Gallinato, who, although a good soldier, did nothing else in the kingdom of Camboxa. Of it Fray Diego Duarte, a Dominican, now residing at Alcala de Henares, procurator of his order in the Filipinas Islands, who was one of those who were present at the death of the king of Camboxa—and not the least important one there—and Captain Don Miguel de Xaque de los Rios, now at this court, are witnesses.” The arrival at Manila of “Doña Isabel Varreto,” wife of “Alvaro de Amendaña,” is chronicled. The discovery that they attempted to make from Peru can be made better from the Philippines, and at less cost, because of its proximity to those regions.