Despite the settlement with Portugal, the rich Spice Islands to the south still attracted them, and there were soon revealed the fertile coasts of Siam and Cambodia, the great empire of China, the beautiful island of Formosa, and the Japanese archipelago. These, with their great populations and wealth, were more alluring fields than the poor and sparsely populated coasts of the Philippines. So, for the next quarter of a century, the policy of the Spaniards in the Philippines was not so much to develop these islands themselves, as to make them a center for the commercial and spiritual conquest of the Orient. [31] A Treaty with the Chinese.--The new governor arrived in the Islands in August, 1575. He was Dr. Francisco La-Sande. In October there returned the ambassadors who had been sent to China by Lavezares. The viceroy of Fukien had received them with much ceremony. He had not permitted the friars to remain, but had forwarded the governor's letter to the Chinese emperor. In February following came a Chinese embassy, granting a port of the empire with which the Spaniards could trade. This port, probably, was Amoy, which continued to be the chief port of communication with China to the present day. It was undoubtedly commerce and not the missionaries that the Chinese desired. Two Augustinians attempted to return with this embassy to China, but the Chinese on leaving the harbor of Manila landed on the coast of Zambales, where they whipped the missionaries, killed their servants and interpreter, and left the friars bound to trees, whence they were rescued by a small party of Spaniards who happened to pass that way. Sir Francis Drake's Noted Voyage.--The year 1577 is notable for the appearance in the East of the great English sea-captain, freebooter, and naval hero, Francis Drake. England and Spain, at this moment, while not actually at war, were rapidly approaching the conflict which made them for centuries traditional enemies. Spain was the champion of Roman ecclesiasticism. Her king, Philip the Second, was not only a cruel bigot, but a politician of sweeping ambition. His schemes included the conquest of France and England, the extermination of Protestantism, and the subjection of Europe to his own and the Roman authority. The English people scented the danger from afar, and while the two courts nominally maintained peace, the daring seamen of British Devon were quietly putting to sea in their swift and terrible vessels, for the crippling of the Spanish power. The history of naval warfare records no more reckless adventures than those of the English mariners during this period. Audacity could not rise higher.