Chapter 22
Cinnamon for the King
Cebu and Mindanao
The only spice the Spaniards found in the Philippines was cinnamon, from Mindanao. Legazpi sent it to Spain in 1567 and 1568, with letters begging for men and ships, and he reported that Chinese and Japanese traders came every year to Luzon and Mindoro.
5 March 1567
On 5 March 1567 the big frigate is launched and named *Espíritu Santo*. A boat goes looking for pitch to caulk the ships, a resin the islanders burn in torches for night fishing, much like the copal of Mexico, and comes back instead with a boatload of rice from Panay.
28 April 1567
On 28 April, the second anniversary of the finding of the Santo Niño, a boat comes back from the coast of Mindanao with bad news. Mateo del Saz, the master-of-camp, is dead of fever.
He had forbidden his men to buy cinnamon for themselves, and some of them had planned a mutiny over it. Its leader, a Portuguese called Martín Hernández, was hanged. Fifteen or sixteen others died on the voyage, and the physician said it was from “eating too much cinnamon.”
Legazpi makes Martín de Goiti the new master-of-camp, “for he was entirely trustworthy, and had much experience in matters of war.”
July 1567
In July Legazpi sends the patache *San Juan* back to Mexico with letters, begging again for help. Almost nothing has come from Mexico, and without it, he warns, all they have gained may be lost.
He sends the king samples of what the islands have: cinnamon, and a Chinese arquebus. And he passes on what the traders have told him. Not far to the north are large islands called Luzon and Mindoro, “where the Chinese and Japanese come every year to trade.” The people there are Muslims, who buy Chinese goods and sell them on through the islands for gold and wax.
He asks for half a dozen galleys, so that he can explore, and perhaps one day “coast along the shores of China.” As the *San Juan* is about to sail, two small Portuguese galleys arrive from the Moluccas with letters, inviting the Spaniards to come there. Legazpi understands that it is a threat.
June 1568
A year later, in June 1568, he writes again. Help has come at last from Mexico, but not what he asked for, and “this great delay has subjected us to hardship.” He is sending more cinnamon, quintals of it, and there are gold mines in the islands, and pepper could be grown. He needs ships, men, and shipbuilders.
Over these years his son Melchor petitions the king for him. His father, he writes, has spent his whole fortune in the king’s service, and the family is “poverty-stricken and in debt.” He begs that Legazpi “be not abandoned to die in despair at seeing himself forsaken and forgotten by his king.”