But they found the natives to be “peaceful Christians who brought fowls and pigs at two or three reals a piece together with palm wine, by drinking which some of us talked various languages; also many cocoa nuts, plantains, sweet canes, papayas, roots, water in bamboo joints, and fuel. They took in exchange reals, knives, and glass beads, which they value more than silver. During these days and nights the galley fire was never put out, nor was there any cessation of kneading and cooking, or of eating the boiled of one and the roast of another, so that they were eating day and night.... The sick, being so little accustomed to abundance of food, and eating without moderation, did themselves serious harm; three or four even died of it.”[134] In fact, fifty died on the voyage from Santa Cruz to Manila, where the vessel arrived on the 11th of February, 1596. [Illustration: Antonio de Mendoza, 2nd Viceroy of Peru 1551-1552] Quiros was by birth a Portuguese and was born in Evora in 1565. He was brought up in Lisbon, and at the age of twenty-four, in 1589, he married Ana Chacón, of Madrid. Six years later he accepted the post of chief pilot in the ship destined by Alvaro de Mendaña to take a colony to the Solomon Islands. The prospects for a peaceful voyage were not favourable. Mendaña’s wife and her two brothers and a quarrelsome old soldier as camp master offered adequate material for misunderstandings and hostility. The death of Mendaña and his brother-in-law Lorenzo Barreto, seemed to diminish somewhat the elements of conflict, but the arbitrary and unreasonable conduct of the widow in command, and the lack of discipline kept the ship’s company in turmoil and sometimes carried it to the verge of mutiny. [Sidenote: Quiros and his great vision] [Sidenote: Quiros furnished ships by the king]