Part III · Among the Islands
Chapter 9
Looking for Friends
Leyte, Limasawa and Camiguin
Yes. After Samar, Legazpi’s fleet sailed down the coast of Leyte to Cabalian, where it made blood-friendship with the people, and on 9 March 1565 went on to Limasawa, Magellan’s Mazaua, which it found almost empty after a Portuguese raid. From there it went to Camiguin and Bohol.
21 February 1565
On 20 February the fleet sails south, between a large island and a scatter of small ones, and the next day anchors in a wide bay that the Spaniards name San Pedro. There is still a San Pedro Bay, between Samar and Leyte.
A man paddles out who can say a few words of Spanish, probably learned from Villalobos’s men twenty years before. Tandaya, where Villalobos left Spaniards, is a day’s journey away, he says. Goiti goes to look for it.
The Spaniards try to learn how the islands are ruled. As far as they can tell there is no king, only “districts like communal towns, each district having a chief. We could not ascertain whether they had any great chief or lord.”
5 March 1565
Goiti comes back after ten days. He has found the river of Tandaya, been shadowed all along the coast by unfriendly canoes, and passed a big town called Cabalian on the southern tip of Leyte. “The Indians of Cabalian had golden jewels, and had many swine and Castilian hens which were near the shore.”
On 5 March the fleet sails there. Friendship is made, by the people’s own ceremony of blood. But they will not sell food. So Legazpi sends Goiti ashore to take what the fleet needs, with orders not to harm anyone, and the next day sends back beads and other goods to pay for it. From hostages held aboard he learns the names of the islands round about.
9 March 1565
On 9 March, guided by one of the hostages, the fleet sails to Mazaua: the island of Limasawa, where Magellan’s chaplain said the first Easter Mass forty-four years before, and Kolambu and Siaui knelt beside him.
There is no welcome now. The island is almost empty. Legazpi later learned why: a couple of years before, Portuguese raiders from the Moluccas had come through these islands with eight big praus, “saying that they were Castilians,” and had killed or carried off everyone they could catch. “For this reason the island of Macagua was depopulated, and scarcely any inhabitants remained there.”
Legazpi frees all his hostages, gives them back their canoe with food for three days and presents of clothes, and sails on.
11–14 March 1565
On 11 March they reach Camiguin, a thickly wooded volcanic island off the north coast of Mindanao. The people run away. On the 14th Legazpi sets out for Butuan, on Mindanao, which is said to be rich in gold, but the winds are against him, and he gets no farther than the island of Bohol.
He will stay there five weeks.