onged to him; partly because his captains and other persons
interested in these piratical raids persuaded him to avail himself
of the opportunity furnished by the weakness of our forces. Corralat
determined to renew his former hostile acts, and began by preparing
vessels and supplies; and in order to cover up better his damnable
intention, he sent to the governor of Manila an ambassador to confirm
the peace. This man was called Banua, and was no less fraudulent than
Simon the Greek. On the route he left many tokens of this; for in the
village of Tunganan, among the Subanos, he treated very contemptuously
[92] the father minister, Miguel Pareja of the Society of Jesus--who,
as the pious religious that he was, turned the other cheek, as the
gospel commands. Banua arrived at Manila in the year of 1655, where he
discharged very well his office as ambassador, and even better that
of spy--and well he knew his double trade; for among other things
he demanded that restitution be made to Corralat of some Mindanao
slaves, and of the pieces of artillery which Don Sebastian Hurtado de
Corcuera had taken from him in war; but this and other petitions of
the ambassador had no satisfactory issue. Banua returned [to Mindanao],
and Don Sabiniano Manrique de Lara despatched to accompany him Captain
Don Claudio de Rivera, and Father Alejandro Lopez of the Society
of Jesus, who went with holy zeal for establishing in Mindanao the
preaching of the true faith. They arrived at Zamboanga, where they
had sufficient warnings of the danger to which they were going; but
with fearless courage they continued their journey until they reached
Corralat. He received them without any of the ostentation usual for
an embassy, but rather with frowns and displeasure; and when he read
the letters from the governor of Manila--which were excellent for an
occasion in which our strength might be greater, but the present time
demanded shrewder dissimulation--the Moro king was much disturbed,
and displayed extreme anger. The end of this embassy (of which an
excellent account is given by Father Francisco Combes in his Historia
de Mindanao, book viii, chap. 3) was that Corralat ordered his nephew
Balatamay to slay Father Alejandro Lopez and his associate, Father
Juan de Montiel, and Captain Claudio de Rivera. [93] Corralat sent
the letters of the governor to the kings of Jolo and of Ternate,
to incite them to make common cause in defense of their profession
as Mahometa