Also, the reason why the enemies have become emboldened beyond their wont is for the lack in those regions of ships fit for that warfare. For that, it must be known that those people use certain light craft called caracoas. Those craft are short and undecked. They have one palmo, more or less, of freeboard; and they carry eighty or one hundred Indians who act as rowers, who use certain oars one vara in length. Each of these vessels carries ten or twelve fighting Indians, no more. They cannot take the open sea, except when it is very calm weather, nor do they carry provisions for even one fortnight. When we Spaniards used those craft, and others called vireys, which resemble them, they greatly feared us; for, since those craft were as light as their own, we made great havoc among those people. And finally--although at great cost to the natives who were drafted as rowers--those ships made the country safe; for they fought after the manner of those people. Those vessels are not used so much now, for in truth they cause great injuries to the natives. I do not know whether I can say that they even care any longer for the damage inflicted by the enemies, one reason being that they are badly paid and badly treated, while their wives and children are left to starve to death, and their crops go to ruin. The governors of the Filipinas, in their effort to avoid that trouble [_i.e._, of hostile raids] have built galleys there since the time of Doctor Francisco de Sande until now. As I have seen personally, and as all the inhabitants of that country know, the galleys of the Filipinas are their destruction. The reason is that the rowers are a weak people, and their food is not very nourishing. Accordingly, it has happened, even lately--during Don Pedro de Acuna's term, when the galleys were best supplied--that the crew have continued to row a galley for six hours, and that two convicts fell dead, while the others stretched themselves on the deck exhausted; and even if the overseers killed them, they could not make them move. For that reason, and because the seas have strong currents between those islands, and continual winds, the galleys are of little use.