hat I shall do all
in my power, as I ought and as I am obliged to do in fulfilment of
its commands, and in all that concerns your Majesty's service. May
God preserve the Catholic and royal person of your Majesty, as is
needed by Christendom. Manila, August 10, 1619.

_Don Alonso Faxardo de Tenca_

[Appended to this letter is the following, to which the clause of the
letter speaking of the fleet to be sent from Spain evidently refers.]

On August third, one thousand six hundred and nineteen, Secretary Juan
Ruiz de Contreras ordered that Licentiate Antonio Moreno, cosmographer,
and Captain Juan Media, be summoned to confer with Pedro Miguel, alias
Dubal, a pilot, sent by his Highness, the most serene Archduke Alberto,
[89] to make a voyage to the Filipinas Islands in his Majesty's
service by way of the cape of Buena Esperanza or by the new strait
of Mayre. [90] In the presence of Don Lorenzo de Cracola, commander
of the fleet, he was asked which of the two routes seemed the most
suitable for the voyage of which they were conferring. He answered
that that by the cape of Buena Esperanza was most suitable, if the
voyage were to be made at the end of this year, because it could not
be made by the new strait, as it was now very late in the year. He
said that the season most suitable for that was any time in May; and
that although, in accordance with the voyages that he has made, the
Dutch sail from their country during any time of the year, he thought
that this fleet should sail during the month of March, notwithstanding
that he offered to make the voyage by sailing the last of November or
the first of December, as above stated. He supposes that by making a
way-station in the regions, and in the manner that the Dutch do, they
would spend thirteen or fourteen months; and they would not make the
time at all shorter by not having made the voyage by the open sea. He
asserts that the voyage by way of the new strait is much longer,
by at least one thousand leguas. He knows this as one who has made
the voyage by both routes, and the last time by that of Magallanes,
although not by that newly-discovered way called the strait of Mayre;
and because he has gone to Filipinas and Terrenate twice by way of
the cape of Buena Esperanza. He affixed his signature in presence
of the above-mentioned persons and of Cornelio Smout (who came
to Espana with the said pilot, having been sent by his Highness),
and by Henrrique Serbaer, an inhabitant