The Maharlikan Navy

That city [Brunei] has 25,000 families and is entirely built in salt water, except the houses of the king and certain chiefs.

The houses are all made of wood and built up from the ground on tall pillars.

• When the tide is high, the women go in boats through the settlement [tera] selling the articles necessary to maintain life.
• There is a large brick wall in front of the king’s house with towers like a fort, in which were mounted 56 bronze [metalo] pieces, and six of iron.

During our two days of stay, many cannons were fired.

The Moro king’s name is Raja Siripada.

• He was 40 years old and corpulent.
• No one serves him except women who are the daughters of chiefs.
• He never goes outside of his palace, unless when he goes hunting.
• No one is allowed to talk with him except through the speaking tube.
• He has scribes, called Xiritoles, who write down his deeds on very thin tree bark.

On Monday morning, July 29, we saw more than 100 praus divided into 3 squadrons and a like number of tunguli (which are their small boats) coming toward us.

We imagined that there was some trickery afoot, so we hoisted our sails as quickly as possible.

• We expected to be captured in between the junks anchored behind us on the preceding day.

We immediately turned on the junks, capturing 4 of them and killing many persons.

• Four of the junks fled by beaching.

In one of the junks we captured was the son of the king of Luzon.

• He was the captain-general of the king of Borneo, and came with those junks from a large city named Laoe [Tawau], located at the end of Borneo toward Java Major.

The port of Laoe has another city inhabited by heathens which is larger than that of the Moros. It is also built in salt water.

• The two peoples have daily combats in that same harbor.

The heathen king is as powerful as Raja Siripada, but is not so haughty.

• He could be converted easily to the Christian faith.

The captain-general had destroyed and sacked Laoe because it refused to obey the king or Borneo, but the king of Java Major instead.

Giovan Carvaio, our pilot, allowed the junks* to leave for a certain sum of gold.

• Had Carvaio not given up that captain to Raja Siripada, Raja Siripada would have given us whatever we wanted.
• This is because that captain was exceedingly feared throughout those regions especially by the heathens who are very hostile to Raja Siripada.

When Raja Siripada heard how we had treated the junks, he sent us a message by one of our men who was ashore that the praus did not mean to harm us, but that they were going to attack the heathens.*

As proof, the Moros showed him some heads of heathens who had been killed.

We asked Raja Siripada to allow:

• two of our men who were in Brunei to trade, and
• the son of Johan Carvaio, who had been born in the country of Verzin, to come to us

But Raja Siripada refused because Johan Carvaio let the captain go.

We kept:

• 16 of the chiefest men of the captured junks to take them to Spagnia
• 3 women in the queen’s name, but Johan Carvaio usurped the latter for himself.

The Karakoa Ships of the Maharlikan Navy

Junks are made with the bottom part being built about two palmos above the water and is of planks fastened with wooden pegs, which are very well made.

Above that they are entirely made of very large bamboos.

• They have a bamboo as a counterweight.*
• One of those junks carries as much cargo as a ship.
• Their masts are of bamboo, and the sails of the bark of trees.

Their porcelain is a sort of exceedingly white earth which is left for 50 years under the earth before it is worked, for otherwise it would not be fine.

The father buries it for the son. If [poison] is placed in a dish made of fine porcelain, the dish immediately breaks.

The money made by the Moros in those regions is of bronze [metalo] pierced in the middle in order that it may be strung.

On only one side of it are 4 characters, which are letters of the great king of China.

• We call that money picis.

They gave us:

• six porcelain dishes for one cathil (which is equivalent to two of our libras) of quicksilver
• 100 picis for one book of writing paper;
• 1 small porcelain vase for 160 cathils of bronze [metalo]
• 1 porcelain vase for 3 knives;
• 1 bahar (which is equivalent to 203 cathils), of wax for 160 cathils of bronze [metalo]
• 1 bahar of salt for 80 cathils of bronze [metalo]
• 1 bahar of anime to calk the ships (for no pitch is found in those regions) for 40 cathils of bronze [metalo].

20 tahils make one cathil.

At that place the people highly esteem bronze [metalo], quicksilver, glass, cinnabar, wool cloth, linens, and all our other merchandise, although iron and spectacles more than all the rest.

Those Moros also go naked.

They drink quicksilver—the sick man drinks it to cleanse himself, and the well man to preserve his health.

Cotabato

We sailed northeast to a large city called Maguindanao in the island of Butuan and Calaghan to gather information on Moluccas.

• We captured by force a bigniday, a vessel resembling a prau, and killed 7 men.
• It contained only 18 men.
• They were as well built as any whom we had seen in those regions.
• All were chiefs of Maguindanao.
• One of then told us that he was a brother of the king of Maguindanao, and that he knew the location of Moluccas.
• Through his directions we went southeast.

At a cape of [Mindanao] and near a river, are found shaggy men who are exceedingly great fighters and archers.

• They use swords one palmo in length, and eat only raw human hearts with the juice of oranges or lemons.
• Those shaggy people are called Benaian.
• When we took our course toward the southeast, we lay in a latitude of six degrees and seven minutes toward the Arctic Pole, and 30 leguas from Cavit.