Volume 38 — CHAPTER VII

Of the departure from Manila, and the voyage to Macasar

1. Don Sabiniano Manrique was governing to the satisfaction of the community. No governor in the world has ever kept all the people satisfied, or ever will. However, some restless fellows were not wanting, a thing that no human prudence can avoid. But it is a very strong argument for his good government that the commander Don Francisco Enriquez de Losada wrote in the year sixty-six (and I have his letter in my possession) that all the people, and especially the religious, were calling for Don Sabiniano. I never heard that they cried out for others. This is most sufficient testimony for the praise and credit of that illustrious gentleman. Although his Lordship had given me his word to provide me with quarters in the ship which was going to Acapulco that year, the terror that reigned in my soul at the thought of passing those seas, and other things, induced me to take passage with my old friend, the commander Christoval Romero. All my viaticum and supplies resolved themselves into sixty reals of eight, four tunics, and two habits, that I might travel more lightly and unimpeded. I left my cloak with a friend, and went without that and other things No voyage by water can be assured, even if only for a few leguas; and it is folly to appoint it for fixed days.

4. Captain Navarro and the commander agreed between themselves to winter there. Our anger at that was great. Two other passengers and I tried to buy a boat from the king and to go away in it. Having made the agreement and paid the money, the king went back on his bargain, and kept more than one-half of the sum paid. He was a great rogue, although he treated me with much honor, and always seated me near himself. Some very ridiculous things happened to me with him. His palace was a little hut of bamboos and straw; but he bore himself there with an incredible majesty, and all who spoke to him prostrated themselves on the ground. He gave us a banquet, in which he offered us some sago cakes, and some very small fish cooked without a particle of salt. The prince died there, and I confess that I was astonished at the burial. The king and queen went to his funeral, the king with wooden shoes and the queen barefoot. When they returned, as the queen was going up to her house, a female servant washed her feet on the ladder. For twenty-four hours, some swivel-guns which stood at the palace door were fired every half hour. The king went into retreat, and would not grant audience for many days. He made an auction of all his possessions, in order to express his grief; but no one dared buy anything. We noted a very extraordinary thing there, namely, that the majority of those people did not care for silver. If we showed them an eight-real piece and a single real, they preferred the single real to the eight-real piece. As long as the single reals lasted we lived cheaply, but when we ran out of them, they refused to give us as much for an eight-real piece as they had given us for a single real. We suffered great hunger. One day I went to the beach, and encountered a negro cook of the commander, who was cooking some fish. I asked him to give me one or two of them, but he replied: “Father, they have been counted.” “Then for the love of God, will you give me at least a little of that hot water?” “Yes,” he said, “I will give you that.” I went up along the beach, where I found a dirty half of a cocoanut-shell, deeply encrusted with sand; I washed it with my hands and got my hot water in it. I put into it a half-crust of dry sago (even though it remain a whole day in water, the water will not penetrate it), and I managed to eat some mouthfuls of it, although it was very hard on my teeth, and drank my hot water. With that, I was content to take a bit of exercise, and to finish with prayer what was lacking to me [for my meal].

7. The men are always busy in making cocoanut oil, of which they sell considerable, and pay much in tribute to the king of Macasar. While we were there, he sent for ninety thousand celemins of oil. The palm-groves in those fields are astonishing. The bananas which that land produces are the best in the world, and innumerable. The natives live on them and sow no rice nor any other kind of seed. We remained in those villages for one week, without eating anything else than bananas or drinking anything else than [the juice of] cocoanuts. They raise buffaloes, goats, and horses, which they sell. When they hold their general assemblies, they eat one or two buffaloes, half raw and half roasted. The villages are excellently arranged, and the council-houses are admirable. The climate is fine, and the people would pay homage to the Spaniards very willingly, as we were told there, merely to be freed from the tyrannical dominion of the king of Macasar.