By the late 1560s, Miguel López de Legazpi who had left Mexico with a retinue of Spanish and Mexican soldiers, was already searching for a more suitable place to establish the Spanish colonial capital, having found first Cebu and then Iloilo undesirable because of insufficient food supplies and attacks by Portuguese pirates. He was in Cebu when he first heard about a well-supplied, fortified settlement to the north, and sent messages of friendship to its ruler, Rajah Matanda, whom he addressed as "King of Luzon."[1] In 1570, Legazpi put Martin de Goiti in command of an expedition north to Manila and tasked him with negotiating the establishment of a Spanish fort there.[2]