The same enterprise was attempted at other times, and was carried
out by Juan Sebastian del Cano, Comendador Loaisa, the Saoneses,
and the bishop of Plasencia. [11] But these did not bear the fruits
expected, on account of the hardships and perils of so long a voyage,
and the opposition received by those who reached Maluco, from the
Portuguese there.

After all these events, as it was thought that this discovery might
be made quicker and better by way of Nueva Espana, in the year one
thousand five hundred and forty-five, [12] a fleet, under command of
Rui Lopez de Villalobos, was sent by that route. They reached Maluco
by way of Sebu, where they quarreled with the Portuguese, and suffered
misfortunes and hardships, so that they were unable to effect the
desired end; nor could the fleet return to Nueva Espana whence it
had sailed, but was destroyed. Some of the surviving Castilians left
Maluco by way of Portuguese India and returned to Castilla. There they
related the occurrences of their voyage, and the quality and nature
of the islands of Maluco and of the other islands that they had seen.

Afterward as King Don Felipe II, our sovereign, considered it
inadvisable for him to desist from that same enterprise, and being
informed by Don Luys de Velasco, viceroy of Nueva Espana, and by Fray
Andres de Urdaneta of the Augustinian order--who had been in Maluco
with the fleet of Comendador Loaisa, while a layman--that this voyage
might be made better and quicker by way of Nueva Espania, he entrusted
the expedition to the viceroy. Fray Andres de Urdaneta left the court
for Nueva Espania, [13] for, as he was so experienced and excellent
a cosmographer, he offered to go with the fleet and to discover the
return voyage. The viceroy equipped a fleet and its crew with the
most necessary things in Puerto de la Navidad, in the southern sea,