nterest in these regions is so vast--both in the clove-trade
and that of other drugs and spices, and because they think that
they will have a gateway there for the subjugation of the whole
Orient--that, overcoming all the toil and dangers of the voyage,
they are continually coming to these islands in greater numbers and
with larger fleets. If a very fundamental and timely remedy be not
administered in this matter, it will increase to such an extent in
a short time that afterward no remedy can be applied.

The English and Flemish usually make this voyage by way of the strait
of Magallanes. Francisco Draque [Drake] was the first to make it,
and some years later Tomas Liscander [Candish or Cavendish], who
passed by Maluco.

Lately Oliver del Nort, a Fleming, made the voyage. The Spanish fleet
fought with his fleet amid the Filipinas Islands, at the end of the
year one thousand six hundred. In this fight, after the capture of
his almiranta (which was commanded by Lamberto Biezman) the flagship,
having lost nearly all its crew, and being much disabled, took to
flight. And as it afterward left the Filipinas, and was seen in Sunda
and the Java channels, so disabled, it seemed impossible for it to
navigate, and that it would surely be lost, as was recounted above
when treating of this.

This pirate, although so crippled, had the good fortune to escape from
the Spaniards, and, after great troubles and hardships, he returned
to Amstradam with his ship "Mauricio," with only nine men alive,
reaching it on the twenty-sixth of August in the year six hundred
and one. He wrote the relation and the events of his voyage, and gave
plates of the battle and of the ships. This was afterward translated
into Latin and printed by Teodoro de Bri, a German, at Francfort, in
the year six hundred and two. Both relations are going the rounds,
and the voyage is regarded as a most prodigious feat and one of so
great hardships and perils. [36]

Bartolome Perez, a pilot, gave the same news from the island of La
Palma. He, having come from England by way of Holanda, conversed
with Oliver del Nort, and the latter narrated to him his voyage
and sufferings, as mentioned by Licentiate Fernando de la Cueva in
a letter from the island of La Palma, [37] on the last of July, of
the year six hundred and four, to Marcos de la Cueva, his brother,
who was a resident of Manila, and one of the volunteers who embarked
on the Spanish flagship which fought with the