rvice of your Majesty. I begged General Marcos de
Aramburu to give him permission for this, as he did. Accordingly he
has been setting things to rights, which without his aid could not
have been done, for there are no boatswains, or officers, or persons
who understand the management or working of galleys; and accordingly
they are being built anew, with labor enough on his part and mine,
of which I have wished to give your Majesty an account.

I likewise wrote to your Majesty in the said letter of the third of
July of this year, that as I had had word in the month of April past
that they were taking up arms in Mindanao to go and harry the Pintados
(as they are accustomed to do each year), I had the old galeota
armed. I ordered General Don Juan Ronquillo to go with a company
of infantry to Oton, which is opposite Mindanao; so that with these
troops, and others which are there and in Cebu, he might oppose the
enemy, and do them what damage he could. Having met several caracoas on
the way, they fled from him, and he could not overtake them. He went
on to Oton, where he remained with a few armed caracoas, in readiness
for what might occur. For the time being, the enemy did not make any
attempt to come to the islands, and as I was informed that they were
arming for the monsoons of September (as that time and May are the only
seasons of the year in which they make their raids), I notified the
said Don Juan Ronquillo to be waiting attentively, and ready to help
wherever the enemy might attack. That he might the better do this,
I sent him the new galeota of nineteen benches with more infantry
troops, and with them went the said captain Romanico. Having received
news that the enemy were on the point of setting out from Mindanao,
or had already gone, Don Joan left Oton in search of them; and while
on the way he was informed of the uprising of the Sangleys, and my
order that he should not embark, as the Mindanao enemy were already
in the Pintados. He did not stop to look for them or to oppose them,
but with all the troops on the expedition he came back here, leaving
in Cebu thirty paid men and as many more in Oton, so that with them
the citizens and residents of those places might defend themselves,
which was decided upon in a council of war. Considering that the troops
which Don Juan Ronquillo had in his fleet amounted to two hundred men
and more, and that those named in the relation died on the way, it
appeared that the former mi