Note 5 — Part First

Chapter V treats of events during the term of Francisco Tello, the main part of the chapter being devoted to Louis Perez Dasmariñas’s ill-fated expedition to Camboja. Tello “began to govern with forbearance, although one thing that he did before reaching the city seems to have presaged the evils of the future.” This was in his detention of the ship bound for Nueva España, until he could reach Manila and make a report to the king. As a consequence the vessel, sailing late, experienced so great storms that it was compelled to put in at a Japanese port, “and King Taycosama took their goods away from them, and it was the cause of the martyrdom of twenty-six Franciscan religious, and of the ruin of Manila ... Don Francisco began his government, in amusing himself with his authority and abundance, and in neglecting to despatch the ships on time; of which he should have taken warning [197] by the loss of which he had been the cause, in the wreck of the galleon ‘San Felipe’ as above stated. But he did not amend his ways, and for that same reason other vessels were wrecked later—one called ‘Santa Margarita,’ which was wrecked among the Ladrones Islands; and another called ‘San Geronimo’ which was wrecked at the island of Catanduanes,... and another which sailed from Cibu, called ‘Jesus Maria,’ which was seen no more. And the worst of all was that such neglect became so firmly established, that it would not have been remedied later, and the same troubles would have occurred, unless we had made use of two royal decrees that his Majesty, King Don Felipe Third, conceded to me in the year of 68;5 and on account of that neglect great need has come upon that kingdom.” The expedition of Oliver van Noordt is very lightly touched. Luis Perez Dasmariñas fits out an expedition of three ships for the relief of Camboja at his own cost, and Los Rios sails in the flagship. Misfortune follows them, and the flagship is lost on the Chinese coast. Such is the hatred of the Portuguese at Macao to the Spaniards “that as soon as they heard of our disaster, they issued an edict that no one should aid us under penalty of confiscation of his property, and three years in the galleys.” Los Rios with eight men lands in order to seek a pilot, and after various adventures is granted audience by the Chinese, who offer asylum to the Spaniards and rebuke [198] the Portuguese. Continuing, a short description is given of Macao, which has about five hundred Portuguese inhabitants; its duties and other gains, however, belong to the Chinese monarch. The principal occupation of the inhabitants is the raw-silk trade with Japan. For the benefit of trade and religion, Los Rios thinks it advisable to depopulate Macao and suppress it. Indeed the hate of the Portuguese goes so far that they attack the remnants of Luis Perez’s expedition as it is about to return home. All their hostility they clinch with “a royal decree given more than thirty years ago, in which your Majesty6 orders Castilians not to go to that port to trade. It is very important for your Majesty to order the Portuguese not to use that decree for the evil that they do us—not only those of us who go there to trade (which was the reason of its being granted), but also to those of us who make port and arrive there wrecked.”