fruit and grain, flocks, and animals. Some of the islands yield all
kinds of spices which are carried away and distributed throughout
the world. These islands are commonly designated in their books,
descriptions, and sea-charts, as the great archipelago of San Lazaro,
and are located in the eastern ocean. Among the most famous of them
are the islands of Maluco, Celeves, Tendaya, Luzon, Mindanao, and
Borneo, which are now called the Filipinas.

When Pope Alexander the Sixth divided the conquests of the new world
between the kings of Castilla and of Portugal, the kings agreed to
make the division by means of a line drawn across the world by the
cosmographers, so that they might continue their discoveries and
conquests, one toward the west and the other toward the east, and
pacify whatever regions each might gain within his own demarcation.

After the crown of Portugal had conquered the city of Malaca, on
the mainland of Asia, in the kingdom of Jor [Johore]--called by
the ancients Aurea Chersonesus--a Portuguese fleet, in the year one
thousand five hundred and eleven, on hearing of neighboring islands
and especially of those of Maluco and Banda, where cloves and nutmegs
are gathered, went to discover them. After touching at Banda, they
went to Terrenate, one of the islands of Maluco, at the invitation
of its king, to defend him against his neighbor, the king of Tidore,
with whom he was at war. This was the beginning of the Portuguese
settlement in Maluco.

Francisco Serrano, who after this discovery returned to Malaca, and
thence went to India with the purpose of going to Portugal to give
an account of the discovery, died before he had accomplished this
voyage, but not, however, without having communicated in letters to