Part VII · Manila
Chapter 24
Mindoro
Mindoro and Batangas
In May 1570 Martín de Goiti and Juan de Salcedo sailed north from Panay with about ninety Spanish soldiers and hundreds of Visayan allies in fifteen praus. At Mindoro they fought two Chinese junks and took gold from the town; on the coast of Batangas Salcedo was wounded by a poisoned arrow. Then they went on to Manila Bay.
May 1570
In May 1570 Legazpi sends his master-of-camp, Martín de Goiti, north from Panay to find out about Luzon and its great town, Maynila. With him go about ninety arquebusiers and twenty sailors, in a small junk called the *San Miguel*, a frigate, and fifteen praus manned by people of Cebu and Panay. Their allies number five or six hundred.
Second in command is Captain Juan de Salcedo, Legazpi’s grandson, the younger brother of Felipe, who sailed the *San Pedro* home. He is about twenty years old. The notary Hernando Riquel goes with them to write everything down.
They sail past the mountainous island of Sibuyan, which has gold mines, and Banton, where the people raise goats and paint their bodies, and reach Mindoro, which is also called “the lesser Luçon.”
May 1570
At the river of Baco, on Mindoro, two Chinese junks are at anchor. Salcedo goes ahead with the praus to make friends with them, but a storm scatters the boats, and the first praus to arrive find the Chinese coming out to meet them in battle array, “beating on drums, playing on fifes, firing rockets and culverins.”
The Spaniards attack anyway, climb the high sides of the junks, and take them. About twenty of the eighty Chinese aboard are killed. In the cabins they find silk, gold thread, musk and fine porcelain.
Salcedo is angry when he arrives, and Goiti angrier. He tells the Chinese he is sorry for what has happened, gives them back their freedom and one of their ships to go home in, and asks only for a few sailors to help take the other junk to Panay. The Chinese, the record says, knelt “with loud utterances of joy.”
May 1570
The town of Mindoro is fortified on a steep hill above its harbour, behind a stone wall fourteen feet thick, with guns all along the slope. Its Muslim defenders stand on the hill with drums, shell trumpets and bells. Goiti walks up to the foot of it with only his interpreter, his notary, a guide and one soldier, and talks.
The people of Mindoro make peace, and pay the Spaniards in gold. They also tell them they are mad. Manila, they say, has great oared boats with three hundred rowers each, many guns, and skilled archers; the Spaniards “were crazy to go to Manilla with so small a force,” and they pity them.
That only makes the Spaniards want to go more.
May 1570
They cross to the coast of Luzon and anchor off the town of Balayan. Salcedo takes the praus up a river that leads to a great inland lake, the lake of Bombon, now called Taal. In a narrow pass, arrows fly out of the trees, and one strikes Salcedo in the leg. It is poisoned. He finds an herb to treat it, and lives.
They pass the coast of Tulay, where the Spaniards see heads set on stakes, left from a feud with the people of Balayan, and sail on towards Manila Bay.