from Europe: he charged Mansilla, in particular, to come. His design was
to establish in one of those isles a house of the company, which should
send out continual supplies of labourers, for the publication of the
gospel, through all that Archipelago.

While Xavier laboured in this manner at Amboyna, two naval armies arrived
there; one of Portugal with three ships, the other of Spaniards with six
men of war. The Spaniards were come from Nueva Espagna, or Mexico, for
the conquest of the Moluccas, in the name of the emperor Charles the
Fifth, as they pretended; but their enterprise succeeded not. After two
years cruising, and long stay with the king of Tidore, who received them,
to give jealousy to the Portuguese, who were allied to the king of
Ternate, his enemy, they took their way by Amboyna, to pass into the
Indies, and from thence to Europe. They were engaged in an unjust
expedition against the rights of Portugal, and without order from Charles
the Fifth; for that emperor, to whom King John the Third addressed his
complaints thereupon, disavowed the proceedings of his subjects, and gave
permission, that they should be used like pirates.

Yet the Portuguese proceeded not against them with that severity. But it
seems that God revenged their quarrel, in afflicting the Spaniards with a
contagious fever, which destroyed the greatest part of their fleet. It
was a sad spectacle to behold the mariners and soldiers, lying here and
there in their ships, or on the shore, in cabins, covered only with
leaves. The disease which consumed them, kept all men at a distance from
them; and the more necessity they had of succour, the less they found
from the people of the island.

At the first report which came to Xavier of this pestilence, he left all
things to relieve them; and it is scarce to be imagined, to what actions