narrow the bounds of his monarchy, the cause of the faith would not permit it.  Our kings are ministers of the faith, and sons of the Catholic church, and any war waged for the introduction of the gospel is most important, and of the greatest profit, even though it be to acquire or to gain desert provinces.  Besides the Filipinas have shown how docile are their natives, and how thoroughly they benefit by the example and company of the Spaniards—­the tokens of the affection with which they have received the faith and aid the religious who are extending the faith and carrying it to China, Japon, Camboxa, Mindanao, the Malucas, and the other places where endures idolatry or friendship with the demons (which the former owners of the country left to them when they excluded those places from their dominion), or the fictions of Mahomet, which those places afterward admitted.  This is the chief reason for conserving those provinces. (Book iv, pp. 161, 162.)

Conquest of the Malucas Islands Book Fifth

After the Luzones or Manilas Islands—­both these being ancient names—­had been discovered by Magallanes, Sebastian Cano returned to Espana, after the former’s death and the successive deaths of his companions, in that venerable ship which—­as if significant of its voyage, which contains more of truth than of probability—­they called “Vitoria.”  Sebastian Cano was a mountaineer, from the hamlet of Guetaria in the Pyrenees Mountains, according to Mapheo, [277] in his Latin history.  In his history he devotes much space to the great courage of Cano, and his skill in the arts of navigation.  He recounts the universal respect and admiration bestowed upon Cano, since he was the first in the age of mortals to circumnavigate this globe.  And in truth, what estimation can remain to the fabulous Argonauts, Tiphys and Jason, and the other navigators whom the elegance or the daring of Grecia extols, when compared to our Cano?  He was the first witness of the commerce of the seas, and nature opened to his eyes what had been reserved until then for them; and he was allowed to explore it all, and to furnish a beginning in so arduous endeavors for the law that saves and renders eternal.  After the death of Magallanes, the Lusones Islands—­which ought to have inherited his name, as being his sepulcher, as the strait did because of his passage through it—­changed that name for that of Filipinas, [278] in the year one thousand five hundred and sixty-five; although those islands of that eastern archipeago are also called by that name.  Adelantado Miguel de Legaspe, who was sent from Nueva Espana by Viceroy Don Luys de Velasco with a Spanish fleet, made port in those islands.  He conquered first the island of Zebu and those in its vicinity, where he remained six years.  That region is called by another name, Pintados, still preserved by different portions of that coast, because the Indians at that time went about naked, and with their bodies