celebrated by the public acclamations of the inhabitants of Malaca,
who called Governor Don Juan de Silva their redeemer. They received
him in their city under the pall, with demonstrations of joy and
honors as if he were a viceroy, for as such did they regard him;
and they assured themselves that with his valor and powerful fleet,
they were to deliver India from the inopportune war and the continuous
pillaging of the Dutch. But (O human misery!) fortune changed within a
few days, and all those hopes were frustrated; it brought the governor
to his bed with a mortal burning fever, which killed him in eleven
days. During the course of those eleven days the city made a public
procession from the cathedral church to the Misericordia, praying
God for his health. On the day of his death--namely, April nineteen,
1616--there were general mourning and tears from men, women, and even
children, as if each one of them had lost a father.

Recognizing the approach of death, he received the holy sacraments,
and performed many acts of faith and penitence, protesting that he was
dying in the service of his king, and, as he hoped, in that of God,
for his intent had been none but the conservation and increase of the
Catholic faith and the destruction of heresy in those districts. And
he said that if the natives had been harassed any, those molestations
had not been intended and were unavoidable, for war brings them. He
ordered his body to be embalmed and carried to this city of Manila
in the flagship galley. From here he ordered his body to be carried
to Xerez de los Cavalleros, where he ordered a convent of discalced
Carmelites to be founded; and that his remains should be deposited
in the residences of the Society. Thus was it done in Malaca, and
afterward here in Manila, where all that fleet arrived in the first
part of June, on the eve of Corpus Christi, in the year of 1616. The
mission and ministry of Ours and of the other religious who took
part in the campaign had lasted for four months, in which they had a
very abundant harvest of souls, discomforts and hardships; for they
had been two months below the equator itself, where they suffered
incomparable heat and drank poor water, which was the cause of the
men catching the plague. And hence there was considerable to do,
and in which to employ their fervor, particularly during Lent and
Holy Week, which they spent at sea. [92]

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