Before me: _Juan de Cuellar_


[_Testimony_]

In [6] the city of Manila, on the twenty-fourth day of the month of
May, one thousand five hundred and ninety-three, the said governor
and captain-general, Gomez Perez Das Marinas, summoned Captain
Joan de Solis to his presence, in order to make the above-mentioned
investigation. He took the oath before God and on the sign of the
cross, in due form, and promised to answer truthfully the questions
asked him. The tenor of the questions having been read to him, he said
that, as one who had just come from the kingdoms of Xapon, and reached
this port and bay but yesterday, and who was in Xapon when father Fray
Joan Cobos arrived there--where this witness was building a ship (the
one in which he came hither), and work on which he left and abandoned,
in order to go to see, protect, and serve the said father Fray Joan
Cobo, and to instruct him in the customs and usages of the country,
as the father came in behalf of his Majesty--he will relate here what
he knows. While this witness was in the kingdoms of Xapon last year,
the emperor resolved to send an embassy here. This he entrusted
to Faranda Queymon, but as the latter fell sick at the time of his
intended departure from that country, he sent in his stead a Christian
Xaponese, named Gaspar, otherwise called Faranda. This witness says
that what he heard and was told regarding that matter--not only by
the emperor himself, with whom he conversed several times, but by
other personages and nobles of the emperor's court--was always that
the intention of the king of Xapon was only to ascertain, by means
of this embassy, whether these Philippines Islands were friendly or
hostile to him; for if they were friendly, then he wished friendship