ailed from Manila in command of Don Pedro Duran de Monforte;
they went to Luban, Mindoro, Panay, and Gigantes without discovering
the pirates, and returned to the capital. The Moros were able to
return to Jolo with many spoils and eighty captives; but the sultan
of that island sent back the said captives, in order to prove that he
desired peace with the Spaniards. (Montero y Vidal. Hist. pirateria,
i, pp. 236-244. Cf. Combes, Hist. Mindanao, col. 533-549, 570-587.)

Great were the calamities suffered by the Filipinas Islands in these
years of 1657 and 58, which might have occasioned their entire ruin,
if divine Providence had not manifestly preserved them, at the
expense of miracles and prodigies. Even the arrogance of the Dutch
recognized this, when they saw their proud forces humiliated by the
unequal strength of ours; and it was acknowledged by the inhabitants
of these islands, recognizing the divine clemency. In the former of
those years the scourge of divine justice was the great armada of
Mindanao corsairs, which, commanded by Salicala, a Moro of much valor,
infested the Pintados Islands; and their insolence went so far that
they came in sight of the great bay of Manila. The poor natives who
groaned under the yoke of captivity to these pirates amounted to more
than a thousand; and as it was impossible for most of them to furnish
ransom for their persons, they usually died as slaves of the Moros. I
have not been able to learn the reason why no assistance was given
to deliver them by going out to find those pirates--although I do
not believe that it was the absence of compassion in Governor Don
Sabiniano Manrique de Lara, but rather his lack of means, and his
being engrossed with more pressing affairs. This was followed by the
plagues of innumerable locusts, which, laying waste the fields, made
general havoc, occasioning the famine which was the worst enemy of
the poor; this was followed by its inseparable companion, pestilence,
which made great ravages with a general epidemic of smallpox. (Diaz,
Conquistas, p. 556.)

General Don Agustin de Cepeda went to Zamboanga as governor (June
16, 1659), without any events worthy of mention occurring during the
time while he exercised that office; afterward he went to assume the
government of Molucas. He who took his place [96] experienced great
annoyances with the Jesuits, who in their histories relate in great
detail how much he tried to injure their interests; but Don