Page:The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 (Volume 11).djvu/240

curred here, these states must remain without relief on your Majesty's part, and with the said danger of our ruin. Owing to the general obligation which rests upon us as vassals of your Majesty, and that which in conscience especially obliges us as regidors of this city, which is the capital of all these islands, the following account has been written.

In the first place, a matter whence many other losses have resulted is this. Your Majesty having ordered the conquest of the kingdom of Mindanao to be entrusted to Captain Estevan Rodriguez de Figueroa, conformably to the edict or ordinance which treats of the conquest of newly-discovered countries and settlements in the Yndias, and this order having been despatched to the said Captain Estevan Rodriguez de Figueroa, Governor Don Louis Das Marinas arrived here in the year 96. When the former reached Mindanao with his expedition, he (and he alone) was killed by the natives of that island on the unfortunate day of St. Mark of the same year. When Don Francisco Tello arrived in the following June of the said year and took this government, he immediately undertook to send a person to conduct the said conquest of Mindanao. As all the troops were there which had been taken by the said Captain Estevan Rodriguez, and as Don Joan Ronquillo (your Majesty's commander of the galleys and of naval affairs in these islands) had gone there with another detachment of troops, and had remained in the said islands until March of the year 98—where, during all this time, he won many victories over the enemy, and latterly one against the king of Terrenate (who was sending his fleet to aid the said island), wherein he routed and captured the vessels and killed their