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le risk of life. Moreover, after both privations and shipwreck had happened to them in a land where they had neither refuge nor refreshment, they had to deal with the most brutish and least civilized tribe of people ever seen hitherto. Our men experienced great difficulty with those people, because of their utter barbarism and their savage manner of fighting. God, who brought them to this port, protected them, showing them his divine clemency and pity. May He give us grace to serve Him, and may He keep us in your Majesty's service. There arrived at this island, where we had settled in your Majesty's name, Gonzalo Pereira with the fleet (of which we sent your Majesty news by the _patache_ "San Juan"). He arrived on the second of October of the year five hundred and sixty-eight; and he came thus, with four galleons and six small galleys, which took position near this your Majesty's camp, after having gone through certain formalities and requisitions, as your Majesty will see by these letters. [4] The said blockade lasted three months, during which they made war on us, not as on Christians, and your Majesty's vassals, but as against infidels and tyrants. They uttered all the insults and inflicted on us all the humiliations that they could, taking away from us the entrances to the harbors, whence came our provisions, and burning the houses and possessions of our neighboring friends--which certainly gave these pagan natives a great notion of cruelty, seeing that with such wicked ways and such cruelty the Portuguese were trying to hurt and annoy us. And in this way, seeing that by fighting they might lose more than they would gain, they did not care to fight, but resolved to take, on the side toward the sea, the harbor entrances (which are two) with their ships, as they were fully aware that we had nothing with which to resist them. Accordingly, they kept us shut up; and in all this time no food or anything else could be brought in for our support, for which reason we ran a great risk of perishing and dying in great misery. The governor, Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, acted with the power delegated to him by your Majesty, doing in everything all that was possible, as was evident by the messages and requests to which I refer, which were made in your Majesty's name. It has pleased God that through some loss of his men, who died from diseases, the Portuguese should raise the blockade on New Year's Day of this year five hundred
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