t you.

It is very necessary and expedient that several expeditions and
conquests should be made in these parts for the service of your
Majesty in view of the advantages that the Castilians would gain if
they held a good post on the mainland--such as the kingdom of Sian,
which is very rich and abounds in many things, and could be conquered
and kept with a thousand men, according to everyone who has been
there; or the kingdom of Canboxa, which is seeking our friendship,
and offers to maintain troops at its own expense, and furnish them to
us on occasions when aid may be necessary; or the kingdom of Chanpa,
which could be conquered and maintained with three hundred men, and
is the pass for this archipelago, and the key to Cochinchina, which
is a very rich and fertile country, and could be conquered with a
thousand or fifteen hundred men. The latter is more to the east than
the said kingdoms between Chanpa and China, close to these islands,
and with everyone ... of them on account of the many wars and enmities,
which exist among them, this ... would be easy to spread the royal
sovereignty of your Majesty with great ... so that all would seek for
our friendship and alliance; for ... said, and with a little shrewdness
and cunning a great deal of it might be gained ... with our protection
and oversight the ministers and preachers ... could spread over all
those parts in safety; to convert those souls and bring such a great
multitude of heathen to the true knowledge of our Lord God. It is no
little shame to consider that among those peoples, by way of Burnei and
other Mahometans the venom and poison of their false doctrine is being
scattered--although this is of so great importance, as your Majesty
must see by the accounts which are sent you, and to which I refer.

But for the present the thing which appears very expedient and
necessary, and should be attended to at once, is to take a port on
the island of Hermosa, which lies distant from the farthest part of
this island (which is the province of Cagaia), thirty-six leagues in a
northwesterly direction. In circumference it measures about two hundred
leagues, and stretches in the same direction from the twenty-second
to the twenty-fifth degree. From there to the mainland of China is not
more than twenty leagues. ... informed by a person who has been there
that it is fertile and inhabited by a people similar to the natives of
these islands, who rob and kill those who go there i