# Legends of the City of Mexico/Living Spectre (Notes)

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NOTE VIII
LEGEND OF THE LIVING SPECTRE
The theme of this legend—the transportation by supernatural means of a living person from one part of the world to another—is among the most widely distributed of folk-story motives. In The Arabian Nights—to name an easily accessible work of reference—it is found repeatedly in varying forms. In Irving's Alhambra a version of it is given—"Governor Manco and the Old Soldier"—that has a suggestive resemblance to the version of my text. Distinction is given to the Mexican story, however, by its presentment by serious historians in association with, and as an incident of, an otherwise well-authenticated historical tragedy.
That Don Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas, Governor of the Filipinas, did have his head badly split open, and died of it, in the Molucca Islands, on the 25th of October in the year 1593, and that on that same day announcement of his so-painful ending was made in the City of Mexico, are statements of natural and of supernatural fact which equally rest upon authority the most respectable: as appears from Señor Obregón's documentation of the legend, that I here present in a condensed form.
Guarded testimony in support of the essential marvel of the story is found in a grave historical work of the period, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, written by the learned Dr. Antonio de Morga, a Judge of the ​Criminal Court of the Royal Audiencia and sometime legal adviser (consultor) to the Holy Office in New Spain. This eminent personage notes as a curious fact that the news of the murder of Don Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas was known on the Plaza Mayor of the City of Mexico on the very day that the murder occurred; but adds—his legal caution seemingly disposing him to hedge a little—that he is ignorant of the means by which the news was brought.
Without any hedging whatever, Fray Gaspar de San Agustin, in his Conquista de las Islas Philipinas (Madrid, 1698), tells the whole story in a whole-hearted way. According to Fray Gaspar, there arrived in Manila about the year 1593, Don Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas being at that time Governor, ambassadors sent by the King of Cambodia—one of them a Portuguese named Diego Belloso, and the other a Spaniard named Antonio Barrientes—whose mission was to ask the assistance of the Spaniards in repelling an invasion of Cambodia, then threatened by the King of Siam. As a present from the King to the Governor, the embassy brought "two beautiful elephants (dos hermosos elefantes), which were the first ever seen in Manila."
Don Gómez Pérez promised readily the assistance asked for; but with the intention of using a pretended expedition to Cambodia as a cloak for a real expedition to seize the Moluccas. To this end he assembled an armada, made up of four galleys and of attendant smaller vessels, on which he embarked a considerable military force; and, along with the soldiers, certain "notable persons and venerable religious." His preparations being completed, he sailed from Manila on October 17, 1593. A week later, the capitana galley, ​having on board the Governor, was separated from the fleet by a storm and was driven to take shelter in the harbor of Punta de Azufre: to make which haven the two hundred and fifty Chinese rowers were kept at their work with so cruel a rigor, the climax of other cruelties, that they determined to mutiny. Accordingly, on the night of their arrival, October 25th, "putting on white tunics that they might know each other in the darkness," they rose against the Spaniards and murdered every one of them—the Governor, as he came forth from his cabin, having "his head half split open"—and tossed their dead bodies overboard into the sea.
Fray Gaspar points out that Don Gómez Pérez came to that bad end as a just reward from heaven, because on various occasions he arrogantly had "contended and disputed" with the Bishop of the Filipinas; and in support of this view of the matter he declares that the Governor's deserved murder "was announced in Manila and in Mexico by supernatural signs." In Manila the announcement was symbolical: "On the very day of his killing there opened in the wall [of the Convent of San Agustin] on which his portrait was painted a crack that corresponded precisely with the splitting of his skull." Of the other announcement, that described in the legend, he writes in these assured terms: "It is worthy of deep ponderation that on the very same day on which took place the tragedy of Gómez Pérez that tragedy was known in Mexico by the art of Satan: who, making use of some women inclined to such agilities (algunas mujeres inclinadas á semejantes agilidades), caused them to transplant to the Plaza Mayor of the City of Mexico a soldier standing ​guard on the walls of Manila; and this was accomplished so unfelt by the soldier that in the morning—when he was found walking sentry, musket in hand, in that city—he asked of those who addressed him in what city he was. By the Holy Office it was ordered that he should be sent back to these islands: where many who knew him have assured me of the truth of this event."
Señor Obregón's comment, at once non-committal and impartial, on Fray Caspar's narrative admits of no improvement. I give it in his own words: "In the face of the asseveration of so brainy a chronicler (un cronista tan sesudo) we neither trump nor discard (no ponemos ni quitamos rey)" to which he adds a jingle advising the critical that he gives the story as it was given to him:
"Y si lector, dijeres, ser comento,
Como me lo contaron te lo cuento."