The first, if it be possible for your Majesty, is to manage to have an armed fleet sent. If, when Don Alonso Faxardo was already your governor, he had taken the one which had been made ready, the time was opportune so that he could have driven out the enemy from their posts, together with the fleet which was in the Filipinas, which was weakened in men and artillery by its loss at Manila. On account of this, the natives of the island of Maluco, fearful of the power of your Majesty, entered our service. This fleet, which I say your Majesty should have despatched, should have been sent with a previous warning to the governor of the Filipinas so that he could collect there as great a force as possible, and provisions with which to resupply the fleet which would go thither from here, the money for this purpose to be sent him from Piru or from Nueva Espana. Yet besides this, on account of the straitened circumstances of your Majesty, and the need of attending to other pressing matters, it is indeed true, in view of the great importance to your Majesty of not allowing the enemy to get possession of that archipelago (for he would infallibly become master of the whole of India, and become more powerful than can be understood here), that there appears to be another measure less costly in the meantime; although it will not result in dislodging them, at least it will give them such diversion and do so much damage that the profit which they will secure will be dearly bought. This is, that your Majesty should command the governor of the Filipinas to build eight galleys, and keep them in Terrenate; I will explain what their cost would be, shortly. These would be of great importance, as can be readily seen here, if one considers these reasons and the letter which Don Geronimo de Silva writes to his cousin, and another from Master-of-camp Lucas de Vergara to the dean of Manila, and to myself--the originals of which I possess, and which, as they explain the situation of those islands, I place at the end of this relation. In the first place, the enemy has no ports in those islands in which to take refuge; and ordinarily his fleet goes about, one way and another, among the coasts there. Second, every day in the year (or almost every day) there are six or eight hours of dead calm, at which time galleys never meet a galleon under these circumstances without taking it or sending it to the bottom; for it has been seen by experience with a galleon and a galliot which the Spaniards possess there, what excellent results they have produced. Third, on account of this expedient of the galleys the enemy will not dare to divide their forces among the factories to carry on their negotiations; and, as they will have to go together, the cost will be so great that they cannot support it.