small vessel to see if there was on an islet any water, of which they were in great need. The men lost their way, without finding any water; and when they returned where they had left their ship they could not find it. They met with some of those Indians who were in the galley with Juan Pablos, from whom it was learned that Juan Pablo had ascended the river two leagues and had fortified himself in a bay; and that with him was the galley, which had begun to leak everywhere, in the engagement with the Japanese. The Indian crew was discharged on account of not having the supplies which were lost on the galley. Most of these men went aboard the "Sant Jusepe." They said that the Japanese were attacking them with eighteen champans,[1] which are like skiffs. They were defending themselves well although there were but sixty soldiers with the seamen, and there were a thousand of the enemy, of a race at once valorous and skilful. The six soldiers came with this news, and on the way they met a sailor who had escaped from a Sangley ship which had sailed from here, with supplies of rice for Juan Pablo. He says that the Sangleys mutinied at midnight and killed ten soldiers who were going with it as an escort, who had no sentinel. This one escaped by swimming, with the aid of a lance that was hurled at him from the ship.
Moreover, I have just detained some passengers
- ↑ Champan (or sampan): a Chinese vessel; described by Retana (Zúñiga's Estadismo, ii, p. 513*) as being "about as large as a Spanish patache, but inferior to the junks of the Chinese; used by that people for trading in the Filipinas islands." The term is now applied to a boat 12 or 15 feet long, in which a family often makes its home, on the Canton River; also to a vessel of 70 or 80 tons' burden, used in the rivers of Colombia, S.A.
