CAN I transport you, my reader, to India without the ceremony of a voyage? Well, then, suppose the voyage over, and landing either at Calcutta, Madras, or Bombay, walk with me into this long whitewashed flat-roofed building. This is the custom-house. You see that row of busy penmen in robes of white muslin : these are native Indian clerks. I have no more to say of them just now, but want your particular attention to another group. Observe well those lanky scribes in white jackets and washed-out nankin trowsers-and excepting a fringe of black hair, and a heavy pair of black and yellow eyes, of a generally washed-out nankin hue. One is De Souza, another Rosario, a third De Sylva, and so on---descendants all of Vasco de Gama and his illustrious Portuguese, earning two shillings a day as copyists at the desk. Go where you will in India, you will find these quiet, sleepy, half-caste Portuguese, hanging about the European cantonments, cheapening their rice and vegetables in the bazaar, trudging, umbrella in hand, to their daily clerk's work, vegetating rather than living, with the vices of the European added to the superstitions of the heathen. This degradation is due to three centuries of inter

mixture of European and Indian blood; so that little. remains to the modern Indo-Portuguese to connect him with Europe, save his name and his nankin trowsers.

Let us return to the nobler spirits who sailed with Vasco de Gama to Calicut.

Their progress at the court of the Zamorin was checked at once by the intrigues of the Moorish and Arab traders, who dreaded and hated their European rivals. After an absence of little more than two years, Vasco de Gama returned to Lisbon, where Emanuel received him with due honour, and declared him. 'Admiral of the Indian, Persian, and Arabian seas.'

The king despatched a second fleet under Pedra Alvares de Cabral, who sailed to Calicut, and founded there the first European settlement in India. Soon after Cabral's departure, this humble factory was destroyed by the natives. The Portuguese were cruelly murdered. For this treacherous act a fearful revenge was taken. The court at Lisbon hastened to send out Vasco de Gama to India. Instead of the olive branch, this time the Portuguese admiral stretched out the sword of the avenger. A cannonade of the town of Calicut, a blockade of the port, a general execution of the unfortunate native sailors who fell into the hands of the Portuguese, proved that the blood of Europeans could not be spilled without enquiry and retribution. Much of the violence of these early adventurers is due to this miserable beginning; and it is only just to remark that the Asiatics set the bad example of treacherous cruelty, which the strangers were ready enough to follow.

Some thirty miles to the south of Calicut, on the Malabar coast, is the Port of Cochin. The boundaries of this Cochin territory were adjacent to Calicut; and

the native chiefs lived, as often happens under such circumstances, in a state of chronic hostility. The Portuguese took up the cause of Cochin; and in return for their services got, in 1502, leave to build a factory, under the auspices of Gama. The following year Alfonso Albuquerque built a fortress, and began his career of victory and aggression. In 1510 the port of Goa was taken, and the Portuguese authority firmly established on the Malabar coast, from Goa to Cape Comorin. O Marte Portuguez'-the Portuguese Mars, as Albuquerque was called-became the hero of the day, and planted the flag of Portugal on the Spice Islands, Malacca, Ceylon, and Ormuz. Under his successors, the Portuguese extended their conquests to Macao and Japan. The Isle of Diu, at the entrance of the Gulf of Cambay, also fell into their hands, as well as the important isle and harbour of Bombay.*

At last, from Indus to Ceylon, these bold Lusitanians reigned masters of the sea coast. The riches of India were poured into the lap of Portugal. Indian ambassadors were seen in the streets of Lisbon; whilst the growth of European civilisation, churches,† castles, and palaces, sprung up along the coast of India.

As the sailors and soldiers of Portugal were thus seizing a noble prey, her priests and poets followed close behind. Camoens wedded the exploits of Vasco de Gama to 'immortal verse' in his 'Luciad,' and with his own sword helped to achieve that Eastern Lusitanian empire which his pen so gloriously described. Xavier,

*Ceded by the Mogul to the Portuguese, A. D. 1530.

The churches of the province of Goa numbered more than two hundred, and the priests two thousand, at the time of Buchanan's visit. Many of these churches were magnificent: the chapel of the palace is built on the model of St. Peter's at Rome.

the first-fruits of Loyola's mission, and the noblest as well as the first-born missionary of the 'Societas Jesu,' agonised for the souls of the heathen, and hurried impetuously from Goa to Comorin, to Ceylon, to Malacca, and even to Japan, converting, after his fashion, thousands of souls, and dying in his struggle to add China to his visionary conquests. I say visionary, becausethough I heartily respect the zeal of this ardent Jesuit -I more than doubt his wisdom.

Having often witnessed the anxious care bestowed by the missionaries of the Church of England on each single enquiring soul, the days of teaching, the nights of prayer-knowing also, as I know, how much the adult heathen has to unlearn as well as to learn before baptism, I look upon the hasty admission of thousands of bewildered ignorant men to the Church of Rome as a merely visionary and enthusiastic proceeding.

One trait, however, in Xavier's character deserves unmixed admiration-his heart and soul entire devotion to what he thought the path of duty. But in spite of his efforts and example, the Portuguese in India grew every year more arrogant and cruel. Luxury and pride begat a spirit of relentless bigotry; and as time passed on, whilst Jesuits and Dominicans swarmed in the streets of Goa, hundreds of innocent men rotted in the dungeons of the Inquisition, or perished at the stake.

To turn to the early struggles of our own countrymen to reach India by the long sea route.

The letters, journals, even the songs, of the early English sailors, teach us that the Portuguese were more feared than respected by the British mariner* of the sixteenth century.

* As a specimen of this feeling, take Robert Baker's poetical description of his voyage to Guinea, A.D. 1563. Comparing the tender mercies of

However, the first Englishman that found his way to India round the Cape of Good Hope, sailed in a Portuguese ship, and belonged to the Jesuit mission at Goa. Thomas Stevens, a native of Wiltshire, educated at New College, Oxford, has given us the earliest, and perhaps the best, account of the long sea voyage from Europe to India. As the incidents of such a voyage are much the same now as then, I shall make some extracts from the letter which Stevens wrote to his father from Goa, on November 10, 1579. He begins thus :

'After most humble commendations: these shall be to crave your dayly blessing, with like commendations mother.'

unto my

His motive for an enterprise, in those days so rare, is thus quietly explained:

'The cause of my departing in one word I may conclude, if I do but name obedience.'

Five ships sailed from Lisbon on April 4 for Goa, 'Wherein, besides shipmen and souldiers, there were a great number of children, which in the seas beare out better than men: and no marvell, when that many women also passe very well.

'The setting foorth from the port I need not to tell how solemne: it is with trumpets and shooting of ordi

the Moors in a certain locality to the Christians, he says, or rather sings