beholding the purity of my intentions, Your Highness will not allow me to live poor.
The arrival of this judge of inquiry seemed to me to furnish a good occasion and sufficient cause for the accomplishment of my said wish; and I even began to put it into execution, but was hindered by two things; one of which was that I was without money, for my house in this city had been pillaged and robbed of all its contents, as Your Majesty is already apprised; and the other was the fear that, during my absence in this country, the natives might rebel, and dissensions might break out amongst the Spaniards; for the experience of the past may well serve to forecast the future.
While I, Most Catholic Lord, was engaged in preparing this despatch for Your Sacred Majesty, a messenger arrived from the South Sea, bringing me a Expedition letter that a ship had arrived on that coast, of Loaysa near a place called Tecoantepeque, which, as it appeared from another letter addressed to me by the captain of the said ship, and which I send to Your Majesty, belongs to the armada sent under command of the Captain Loaysa to the Malucco Islands.[1] Your Majesty will learn from this captain's letter the incidents of his voyage, so I will not repeat them to Your Highness but limit myself to explaining what I did. I immediately sent a competent person to the place
- ↑ This fleet of some six vessels under command of Garcia Jofre de Loaysa sailed in August, 1525, for the Molucca Islands, a convention having been previously established with Portugal to avoid a conflict of claims. It encountered many misfortunes, and its commander, the navigator Sebastian del Cano, and other officers, died during the voyage. The vessel, of which Cortes writes, reached the Mexican coast under command of Fortunio de Alango, her captain, Santiago de Guevara, having succumbed to the privations of the voyage when in sight of port. Only one of Loaysa's ships reached its proposed destination, and founded a small struggling settlement on the Isla de los Reyes, which was later abandoned when the Spanish crown lost interest in the Spice Islands' ventures (Bancroft, Hist. Mex., vol. ii., cap. xiii).
