While nothing could exceed the courtesy and good will expressed in this letter, it utterly failed to reassure the governor of the Philippines, who could but bear in mind several recent disastrous losses of Spanish galleons, laden with the much coveted riches from the Spanish possessions in Asia. But fifteen years had elapsed since Francis Drake had lain in wait at Cape St. Lucas for the galleon expected from the Philippines, and after robbing it of its treasures, abandoned its crew on the arid shores of the Peninsula of California. This disaster had produced a profound commotion throughout the Spanish colonies, and brought infinite trouble upon the viceroy of Mexico, who was obliged to send out a maritime expedition with orders to pursue and punish the English corsairs. The seizure of another galleon by a Japanese potentate had taken place but six years previously, and now, at the very time that Iyeyasu was offering hospitality to Spanish merchantmen, came the news of the real or imaginary danger incurred by the vessel which had taken refuge in a Japanese port. Considering that besides all this the memory of the persecution and martyrdom of Roman Catholic missionaries in 1597 was still fresh, it is not surprising that the Spanish governor took no notice of Iyeyasu’s overtures, and broke off negotiations. In the native history of Japanese Commerce (Nihon Shogyoshi) and Kottenhamp’s “History of the Colonization of America,” this rupture and the subsequent failures to establish the desired commercial relations are attributed, no doubt justly, chiefly to the powerful merchant princes of Seville, who violently opposed any encroachment on their monopoly of Asiatic trade. Six years later, however, in 1608, the situation suddenly changed. A new governor, Don Rodrigo de Vivero, came to the Philippines, where, at that period, there existed a colony of about fifteen thousand Japanese. The principal Japanese merchants residing in Manila petitioned him to resume the interrupted negotiations, and an ambassador sent by Iyeyasu insisted, at the same time, upon the advantages that would accrue to Spanish interests by a friendly treaty with Japan.