n the passage of Macan, awaiting
them with four ships in order to capture them, and that they should
change their direction and course. Thereupon, Governor Don Juan Nino
de Tabora, seeing that our fleet was ready, and that it would be
a fine thing to effect some stroke with the Dutch, as well as for
other ends which will be told later, resolved to send two galleons,
to act as escort to the Macan galliots. The Portuguese gave twenty
thousand pesos to help the soldiers. On October 13 the said galliots,
five in number, left with the flagship "San Yldefonse," in which Don
Juan de Alcarazo went as commander; in the other galleon, the "Pena
de Francia," Don Pedro de Mendiola went as commander. Each galleon
carried about six hundred persons. They were so well equipped that they
could fight with any Dutch ships whatever. Father Ygnacio de Muxica
of our Society, and a brother, were in the flagship, and a father of
St. Francis in the other galleon. Both galleons suffered great troubles
from whirlwinds, seas, and storms all the way to Macan. One day our
flagship snapped the topmast of its mainmast and it fell down. Another
day the mast sprang, and knocked the rudder out of place, and it had
to be repaired. Another day they were all but wrecked on the reefs
of La Plata. On another occasion they lost their rudder completely,
and they had to steer the ship with the sheets of the mizzenmast;
on another, they lost their anchors while quite near Macan. They
grounded in two and one-half brazas of water, and had not the bottom
been sandy they would have been smashed into a thousand pieces. They
cut down the mainmast and lightened the ship, and got it out of the
sand after the greatest of toil, for it was almost buried. The other
galleon had its troubles too, but it was fortunate in making port at
Sanchuan on the Chinese coast, where our father St. Francis Javier
died, about thirty leguas from Macan. The galliots entered the latter
place safely, for the Dutch ships were no longer in the strait, as I
shall recount later in order not to interrupt at present the thread
of our history of our galleons and their adventures. The latter were
very ill received by the Portuguese because of the twenty thousand
pesos which they cost, and because it was seen that the Dutch had
deserted the strait. They judged the matter by the effect and not
by what might have happened had the enemy captured their galliots
with so great a sum of silver. Our galleons sta