ABSTRACT
Upon the first of July in the afternoon, Don Carlos de Ybarra, Admiral of the Galleons that then lay in the Bay of Cadiz, gave order that a warning piece should be shot off to warn all passengers, soldiers, and mariners to betake themselves the next morning to their ships. O, what was it to see some of our apostolical company who had enjoyed much liberty for a month in Cadiz: nowhang down their heads, and act with sad and demure looks, loath to depart, and cry out, Bonum est nos hic esse, It is good for us to be here; and amongst them one Friar John de Pacheco made the warning piece to be a warning to him to hide himself (who could no more be found amongst his fellow missioners), thinking it a part of hard cruelty to forsake a young Franciscan nun to whom he had engaged and wholly devoted his heart. The second of July in the morning early, notice was given unto us that one Friar Pablo de Londres, an old crab-faced English friar living in St Lucar, had got the Duke of Medina his letter and sent it to the Governor of Cadiz charging him to search for me and to stay me, signifying the King of Spain’s will and pleasure that no English should pass to the Indies, having a country of their own to convert; this did that old friar to stop my passage, having before wrote unto me many letters to the same purpose, and got a letter from that father master that was in England before, with the Count of Gondomar, alias Friar Diego de la Fluente, then Provincial of Castile, and sent it unto me, wherein that Superior offered me many kind offers of preferment if I would desist from my journey, and return to him to Castile; but none of these letters could prevail with me, nor the Governor’s searching stop me; for immediately I was conveyed alone to our ship, and there closely hid in a barrel that was emptied of biscuit to that purpose; so that when the Governor came a shipboard to enquire for an Englishman, Friar Calvo, having the father of liars in my stead about him, resolutely denied me, who would not be found, because not sought for in a barrel’s belly. Thus found our Apostles sport and talk that first day. Then went out the ships one by one crying A dios, A dios, and the town replying Buen viaje, buen viaje; when all were out and no hopes of enjoying more Cadiz’ pleasures and liberty, then began my young friars to wish themselves again aland: some began presently to feed the fishes with their nuns’ sweet dainties; others to wonder at the number of stately ships, which with eight galleons that went to convey us beyond the Canary Islands were forty-one in all, some for one port of the Indies, and some for another. To Porto Rico went that year two ships; to Santo Domingo three, to Jamaica two, to Margarita one, to Havana two, to Cartagena three, to Campeche two, to Honduras and Trujillo two, and to St John de Ulhua, or Vera Cruz, sixteen; all laden with wines, figs, raisins, olives, oil, cloth, kerseys [carsies], linen, iron, and quicksilver for the mines, to fetch out the pure silver of Zacatecas from the earthen dross from whence it is digged.
