The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55, 1690-1691: Explorations by Early Navigators, Descriptions of the Islands and Their Peoples, Their History and Records of the Catholic Missions, as Related in Contemporaneous Books and Manuscripts, Showing the Political, Economic, Commercial and Religious Conditions of Those Islands from Their Earliest Relations with European Nations to the Close of the Nineteenth Century
History
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55, 1690-1691: Explorations by Early Navigators, Descriptions of the Islands and Their Peoples, Their History and Records of the Catholic Missions, as Related in Contemporaneous Books and Manuscripts, Showing the Political, Economic, Commercial and Religious Conditions of Those Islands from Their Earliest Relations with European Nations to the Close of the Nineteenth Century
Demarcation line of Alexander VI; Missions -- Philippines; Philippines -- Discovery and exploration; Philippines -- History -- Sources
War exiled the Dapitans from their country, a proof of their valor
and the unforeseen accidents of their misfortunes; for they were the
only people of all the archipelago who were renowned among foreign
princes for their exploits, and to them alone were embassies made. It
happened then that in an embassy sent by the king of Terrenate,
the most warlike and powerful king known, his ambassador lost [due]
respect for the house of the Dapitan princes--then represented by
Dailisan and Pagbuaya, who were brothers--by making advances to
a concubine. They punished the crime more by the laws of offended
and irritated fury than by those of reason, with hideous and indeed
cruel demonstrations of contempt, by cutting off the noses and ears
of the ambassador and his men. When they had returned to Terrenate,
the horrid aspect of his subjects aroused the wrath of the king. He
armed all his power in twenty joangas to oppose the Dapitans. His
general, doubtful of the outcome, as he knew the valor of those
with whom he had to do, made use of a trick by which he assured a
deceitful victory. He sent his joangas in, one by one, giving out that
they were traders, and under the security of friendship--excusing the
above occurrence, in order to divert the attention [of the Dapitans],
with the laws of punishment, deserved because of the boldness of their
men. The Dapitans, seeing that the Ternatans were attending only to
the sale of their goods, lost their caution, and came up with the same
confidence as ever. When the Ternatans had all their fleet together,
and saw that of the Dapitans, they closed with them. Although the
latter placed themselves in a position of defense, they retreated
before that multitude, and the terror of arms to which they were
unaccustomed; for the Ternatans already had muskets and arquebuses,
the use of which they had before other nations, because of their
trade with the Portuguese. [39] The frightful effects of these,
as terrible by their ruin as by their novelty, worked on the minds
of the Dapitans. Dailisan was killed in that fray, and his brother
Pagbuaya was left the reigning prince. He, seeing how he was involved
with the Ternatans, and how much at the mercy of their new [arms]
[40] was the place occupied by the Dapitans--where the Ternatan
ships could succeed in anchoring under the houses of the Dapitans,
and using their arms, fight them in safety--resolved to seek another
place, better defended. He also thus resolved because these nations
regard as unlucky the place where fortune has once shown itself
hostile to them, and immediately abandon it as accursed. Even today,
in these islands, it is a fact that the house where a chief dies is
abandoned by his people and it remains alone, waiting its ruin. [41]
He sought then a place where, their valor and its ruggedness joining
hands, they could make up, aided by the strength of the site, for
the small number of their nation. As there were no hills on their
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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