When, they brought him down to the camp, I was with the sick on the fleet; they told me (but not till evening, when I returned) that his Lordship had performed acts of kindness for the father, in keeping with his devotion—helping to bring him in and place him in the bed, giving him food with his own hands, washing the blood from his wounds, and comforting him with tender and loving words, especially when the surgeon commenced to treat him. Inasmuch as his clothing adhered to his wounds by reason of his having passed a day and a half without attention, the pain of pulling the garments away was very great; and, when he winced a little, his Lordship was at once at hand with the story of the passion of our Lord, and found it so efficacious that, as he afterward declared to me, the father did not utter another word, nor offer any other resistance, but exhibited the patience of a glorious martyr. I confess that I washed his wounds after his death more with tears from my eyes than with water from the river, in holy envy of the glorious way in which he had ended his pilgrimage. Before he died, I begged him to beseech God for a like death for me, or even a more painful one, in defense of His holy law. The holy man promised it, and I hope by his intercession to obtain it—although not because I deserve it, unless in return for the relief I gave his glorious wounds in the last four absolutions which I gave him with my special consolation. Surely those are fortunate fathers who have been able to show to the world, by their blood, the zeal and divine love which they bear in their bosoms.
After burying the father the next morning, Friday, March twentieth, two days after the victory, we went up the hill with his Lordship; but so great was the stench from the dead Moros in the ravines (although many still lived, judging by the cries and groans of many persons which were heard) that, almost as soon as we had reached the top and had looked at the king’s house, we returned to the camp. His Lordship then commanded that with the exception of the church ornaments, and the arms kept for his Majesty, everything should be divided among the soldiers. His Lordship did not reserve for himself or his friends even one blanca’s worth—surely an action very justly applauded, certainly, and admired because it is not now practiced among the captains-general, and because it was, I believe, the first [of its kind] in these Filipinas Islands; and it confirmed the opinion that all held of the governor, as a wholly disinterested gentleman. An enormous amount was found and divided; they say that there were many cabinets full, and very heavy; what is certain is, that the whole of Corralat’s treasure was here, and whatever he had plundered during so many years. Your Reverence does not need to be told that the soldiers came back well satisfied, and many very rich. The campaign brought them great profit; and truly they deserved it all, for they all fought most valiantly. A great chest was filled with the ornaments of the churches—sacred vessels, such as chalices, patens, monstrances, censers, chrismatories, etc.—which we have now most carefully returned to their owners; so that your Reverence was enabled to fill four floats with these ornaments, in the solemn procession which his Lordship held in Manila on Trinity Sunday, in thanksgiving to God for the victory. It troubled me, however, on the day when we climbed the hill, that I had not time to search for my beads, which I had lost on the day of the assault—when, to placate the wrath of God, I tore my cassock hastily down the middle. But the next day God chose to console me; for, on my return from visiting the sick at the camp, his Lordship gave me my beads. He had recognized them in the hand of a soldier who had found them on his way down the hill, and had given the man I know not how many pesos for them. They certainly were worth it, because they were made from the stake at which the martyrs in Japan were burned; and because they had touched the whole body of my most glorious patron saint Francis Xavier, at Goa; these are the reasons why I prize them so highly.
Six whole days were spent in distributing, or burning and destroying, everything in Mindanao; and thus on the twenty-fifth of March, the day of the blessed Annunciation, we started on the return trip to Samboanga. But the governor would not set sail before returning thanks at that very place to His Divine Majesty for so great a victory. He therefore arranged a solemn procession with the blessed sacrament, from the mosque to the fort—himself at the head, carrying the image of the holy Christ and of St. Francis Xavier, patron of the expedition, and wearing the white robe of his order, in which he had received communion. The soldiers with their muskets, and the artillery at the fort, gave eight royal salutes with ball—which aside from doing honor to the procession, served to clear the two little hills of the ambuscade, which, without our knowledge, the Moros had laid to prevent our embarkation. We found this out by means of the large number of dead bodies which Captain Juan Nicolas discovered a little while after, when, returning from the Bugayen River, he wished to see the place where we had attacked Corralat. When the procession was over, we set fire to the mosque and the fort; and the troops commenced to embark in good order, in the small champans of the fleet. Then Sargento-mayor Palomino was sent with five caracoas and a hundred Spaniards, with Father Melchor de Vera, who knew the language very well, to search for Moncay, king of Bagaien [i.e., Buhayen][19] and the real lord of the island of Mindanao; this Corralat, though his relative, was but the tyrant. Bagaien is twelve leguas from the fort of Mindanao. [Palomino went] to make a treaty of peace with him whereby he should become a tributary and vassal to his Majesty. While we were setting sail, one of our Indian captives appeared on the shore. The falua brought him off to our champan, and he told us how he had fled from the enemy’s grain-fields where they had kept him during those days; and that, passing through one of the ravines of the hill, he had found a vast number of dead Moros.[20]
Two or three hours after leaving Mindanao, we met Captain Juan Nicolas and Father Gutierrez,[21] father rector of Dapitan, who with forty ships and order for Sargento-mayor Palomino, in which he commanded that officer that, notwithstanding his previous instructions, he should make use of all the troops sent him to capture Moncay, or at least disarm him. After this we continued our course, and on Passion Sunday we reached Samboanga. The fleet and the army received their captain-general, returning victorious, with a royal salute; and Father Gregorio Belin, in his cope, with the Te Deum laudamus. I, after accompanying them as far as the official buildings, went to arrange the hospital for the sick; for although I had attended them at Mindanao and on the journey, and assisted them with all that his Lordship provided, yet, on account of the discomforts of the ships in which they had had to be shut up, and because of the lack of fowls, they arrived in a very weak condition. I set out at once in search of beds—even taking those in the [Jesuit] house. I collected in one room as many dainties as I could find, for the refreshment of the sick; and I shut up in our corral all the fowls which had come to Samboanga from Othon, which private persons had given his Lordship, and he had turned over to me for the use of the wounded. With these provisions I remained in the hospital, to minister by night and by day to the bodies and souls of the sick, encouraged by his Lordship’s visits. By means of all this care, and by the confession and general communion in which all took part on Palm Sunday, the majority of the men, thanks to God, were quite well by Saturday in Holy Week, at which time we left Samboanga.
Truly anyone who saw the number and grievous nature of the wounds could not deny that it was a miraculous thing that out of eighty wounded only two died, aside from the three who succumbed on the night of the attack; for all the wounds contained poison, and many of them, moreover, were very deep and serious. Thus we saw the effects upon our sick of the sompites, bacacayes, and bullets—which, although they were all deadly weapons, we found on the hill [that we attacked], placed in a jar filled with poison. It is true that I availed myself of some very effective antidotes which they gave me at Manila; but the true remedy was to mix with them a little of a relic of St. Francis Xavier—which, in conjunction with the faith of those who were ill, worked wonders. Captain Maroto tested their virtues well, for he was already black in the face, and in his death-agony, when he called me to confess him and to administer the sacraments. Better still was Alférez Amesquita, who ejected through his mouth three sompites which had pierced his throat three days before, during the attack. But best of all was the case of a sargento in the same company, to whom I gave extreme unction in great haste, because he had a bullet-wound in his stomach and most of his food passed out through the wound. There are many others too, who, grievously injured at Mindanao, are now going about Manila. Only Alférez Romero and Menchaca died at Samboanga, and that was because they would not let themselves be cured.
During this time, the governor was awaiting the return of Sargento-mayor Palomino and of Captain Juan Nicolas from Bugayen. In place of resting on those days, he went in person among the soldiers, working in a ditch which he had ordered to be dug to bring to the fort a stream of fresh water, which it lacked; and now they send word from Samboanga that, by the grace of God, the water has reached them. Before putting his hand to any other work he desired, like the devout gentleman that he is, to thank God a second time for the victory, with a fiesta in honor of the blessed sacrament. And because he lacked neither the valor nor the piety of that great captain, Judas Macabeus, he ordered that the next day the funeral honors should be solemnized for his dead soldiers—although, unfortunately for these festivals, it devolved upon me to preach at both. He also published a long bulletin of gifts, offices, and rewards for those who were wounded in the campaign; and in this way so attached all the soldiery to himself that now they talk of and concern themselves with nothing else but their captain-general—even the very seamen declaring that they do not wish to avail themselves of the privilege of crossing to Nueva España, because they would miss next year’s campaign.
In this way several days were spent, until our fleet from Bugayen arrived—on Wednesday in Holy Week; and the next day, with three caracoas came the brother of the king as ambassador, to treat with his Lordship and confirm the peace negotiated by Sargento-mayor Palomino. The latter had done so because he was not able to execute the second order, which Juan Nicolas carried, who had come too late, bringing it when Moncay had agreed to as many conditions as we could desire—even to stating publicly to his followers that he wished to be the friend and vassal of the king of España, and that whoever did not desire the same must quit his villages. In accordance with this, the ambassadors offered five things to the governor in the name of the king his brother: to surrender all Christian captives; to pay tribute to his Majesty; to receive the Jesuit fathers, so that they might publicly teach his subjects the law of Jesus Christ; that if the governor wished to maintain a fort with a garrison of Spaniards in Moncay’s country, he would treat them as brothers; and that he would be the friend of their friends, the enemy of their enemies. Consequently, he would do all in his power to put a stop to Corralat’s doings, dead or alive, and to deliver him into the governor’s hands. His Lordship received the envoy in great state, seated in a chair, surrounded by the most brilliant of the army, in elegant and splendid array. The ambassador sat on one end of the same carpet, astonished at the magnificence of our captain-general and his soldiers. The captain-general commanded the governor of the fort to entertain the envoy at his own house, and sent later, for his delectation, some cocoanuts and chickens. He gave him some very beautiful pieces of silk; but for a captured sargento whom the ambassador gave back in the name of the king his brother, he said that he would give nothing, because that soldier was a vassal of the king of España. The ambassador was importunate that he should send Moncay something, at least some of his own weapons. His Lordship replied that up to this time Moncay had been an enemy, and that, as such, nothing was due him; but that he must begin to give proofs of his friendship, by immediately sending us his captives, etc.; and then he would very soon experience the governor’s liberality. He offered him two thousand pesos if he delivered up Corralat dead, and four thousand if alive. This news was received by the Moro with great pleasure, on account of the greed for money which possesses those people; so that I am sure, considering this, that Corralat’s days are few. On Saturday in Holy Week, his Lordship being ready to embark, he came to dismiss the ambassador, and to receive the documents and articles of peace, signing them in the envoy’s presence. At the end, while his Lordship, to do honor to him at the final farewell, was embracing him, the Moro told him most gratefully that at the end of four moons (they designate months thus) he would come to see him at Manila—news which consoled me greatly, because of the facility that it will afford your Reverence to send workers to so abundant a harvest.
Then all the artillery was discharged, the fleet responding; and, when his Excellency the governor had embarked, we set sail for Manila, and the ambassador for Bugayen. At the same time Captain Juan Nicolas and Captain Juan de León departed with a company of a hundred Spaniards and a thousand Indians, with the command that, after having accompanied the ambassador of Bugaien to his own land, they should go on and make the circuit of the island of Mindanao, as far as Dapitan, destroying and burning all the villages that would not submit to our arms. The father rector of Dapitan, and the Augustinian friar who had come as confessor for the Pampangos, were chaplains for this fleet.
On the same day Father Gregory Belin with Captain Sisneros departed from Samboanga for the island of Basilan, for a reason which I will explain to your Reverence. This island—lying in front of our fort, and two leguas away from it—has three or four thousand tributarios who pay to the king of Jolo, although they have always desired to be tributary to his Majesty. The chiefs of the islands came lately to render their obedience to the governor; he thereupon commanded that the governor of the fort should protect the aforesaid tributarios, and defend them from Jolo, until the next year, when he would subject Jolo also by force of arms to the same tribute. When this was proclaimed, two hundred Joloan chiefs, with all their households, came to a near-by island, intending to cross over and live in Samboanga and be our vassals. But they wished to know his Lordship’s pleasure; so the aforesaid captain with Father Belin went to assure them of their safety and take them to the fort, where, he trusted in God, they would now be well instructed and become favorably inclined to holy baptism. Because his Lordship had no fathers to send to Basilan, he wrote to Father Francisco Angel that, by virtue of the very far-reaching grant which he has from your Reverence, he should at once cross from the island of Negros to Samboanga. Here the governor of the fort would give him soldiers for his body-guard, and all else necessary for the promulgation of the holy gospel in the aforesaid island—where, as I have said, he had already gone most joyfully, as the father rector of Othon informed me; for the principal motive of his coming from España to these Filipinas Islands was the mission to Mindanao. But that father could not minister alone to the whole island; besides, at Samboanga there are but two fathers—Father Melchor de Vera, who on account of his frequent attacks of illness can scarcely take care of everything at the fort which his Lordship entrusted to him, as a person well skilled in such matters; and Father Gregory Belin, [who is busy] in caring for the whole garrison, of which he is chaplain. So the many villages of Moros that are in the vicinity of the fort, such as La Caldera, etc., have no one to instruct them. The king also of Sibuguey (a river [whose valley is] much more fertile and abundant than La Panpanga) himself came, while we were in Mindanao, to the governor to ask for terms of peace and for priests. His son has come now, with the [Spanish] galleons from Terrenate, to be educated in Manila; and in like manner the other chiefs are coming every day, since the miserable downfall of the principal king of these islands, Corralat, who held almost all in tyrannical subjection, and as tributarios. Even the king of Jolo sent Dato Achen (his especial favorite, and the most gallant and valorous captain that we have seen among the Moros) with letters to his Lordship, to confirm the terms of peace which his wife herself had come with our captain, to negotiate the year before—excusing himself for not having come in person by saying that he was expecting a fleet with which the king of Burney was coming to make war on him, being an ally of his enemies the Camucones.
May your Reverence’s charity recognize what an abundant harvest offers in Mindanao, and how destitute that field is in laborers; for where, in my opinion, forty would be few, there are only two of them. Certainly this is to be regretted, for it is one of the most glorious missions that could be desired, lacking neither the evidence of great fruitfulness nor promise of most noble martyrdom. And finally, it is enough that St. Francis Xavier is its apostle, since it was he who first preached in it the holy gospel,[22] as is stated in the bull for his canonization. I trust that, through the divine compassion, the news of this glorious and longed-for victory and conquest of the great island of Mindanao will move the hearts of those in his Majesty’s court and his royal Council of the Indias, to send many workers this year to this glorious harvest field.