urbing your Majesty's most holy designs--would be
forced from those seas and even from these. For it is very certain
that if that [trade] be taken away, the enemy would have no resources
with which they could preserve themselves; while if your Majesty has
all that profit--as beyond doubt, God helping (for whose honor it is
being done), you will have it, by encouraging your royal forces and
by enforcing your holy purposes--all the heads of that many-headed
serpent of the enemy will be destroyed.

Inasmuch as it is proper for us who, like myself, are zealous for
your royal service, let us hasten on that service, by as many roads
as God makes known to us. I declare, Sire, that in order to encourage
those most loyal though most afflicted vassals whom your Majesty
has now in Manila, it is advisable for the present reenforcement to
be sent; and that its route be by the shortest path and the one of
least risk--namely, by way of the Cape of Buena Esperanca; not only
is the weather more favorable in that route, but it passes through
less longitude.

I mention the weather, for from this time on the weather is favorable,
as was determined in a general council of experienced pilots of all
nations that was held at Manila by Governor Don Juan de Silva. [I
mention] also the longitude, because the time taken to go by the
above route is known--namely (to one who follows his course without
making fruitless stops) seven months; which, counted from the first
of December, places the arrival there at the end of June.

Some one may object to all this by saying that the intention is to
import this relief into Manila, so that all that region may not be
lost; and that, if it shall go by that route [_i.e._, of the Cape], it
runs the risk of meeting the enemy and of being lost, and incidentally
that all that region [of Filipinas] will remain in its present danger,
and even greater, because of your Majesty's resources being wasted,
and the necessity of getting together a new relief expedition--but
[such objector would say], if this relief be sent by another route
all those troubles will be obviated and the purpose attained. I answer
that objection by saying: First, that eight vessels are not so weak a
force that they should fear those of the enemy who, on their homeward
trip--inasmuch as they do not fear along that route any encounter that
will harm them--come laden with their goods, in great security, and
carelessly; and they have at best only