supplies for Maluco, passed Borney. It is said that one hundred were Portuguese and Spaniards, and the rest mestizos[1] and people from Yndia. According to a Cafre [heathen], their hulks were in very poor condition. He says they were going to Maluco to collect the tribute which was lost three years ago. I am sending the investigations and accounts of this and of everything to your Majesty's royal Council, and am writing more in detail. I beg your Majesty to be so good as to favor this other world by examining this letter. Because of your Majesty's stringent orders not to go to Maluco, we have not gone thither. However, the compact, as I have advised your Majesty is not well considered; and Maluco is not comprehended in it, and is in your Majesty's demarcation.[2] Thirty vessels leaving and returning to Sevilla could load cargoes of spices—pepper, camphor, and other drugs and spices. In these vessels, people could be brought from España, and a few fleets would populate this land, and clearly we could take
- ↑ Mestizo: the offspring of a white man and an Indian woman, or of an Indian man and a white woman—of course, almost entirely the former. See interesting notes on this subject by Retana, in his Zúñiga, ii, pp. 525*, 526*.
- ↑ Herrera says (Descripción de las Indias, cap. 26), that: "The West Indies [Indias del Poniente] comprise all the islands and mainland [Tierra firme] beyond the line of demarcation of Castilla and Leon, as far as the western bounds of that said demarcation, the line whereof passes around the other side of the world, through the city of Malacca." This is conformable with the law of February 22, 1632 (Recop. leyes Indias, lib. i, tit. xiv, ley xxxiii), which locates Japan and the Philippine Islands in the West Indies; it also corresponds with the Constitution (Onerosa) of Clement VIII, issued December 12, 1600, to be found in section 4, wherein the Philippines are located, it seems, in the West Indies, or what are considered as such. However, what really is the dividing line has not yet been decided.—Rev. T. C. Middleton, O.S.A.
