orld subservient to civilisation. They were
Crusaders, coming the other way, and robbing the Moslem of their
resources. The shipbuilding of the Moors depended on the teak forests
of Calicut; the Eastern trade enriched both Turk and Mameluke, and the
Sultan of Egypt levied duty amounting to L290,000 a year. Therefore
he combined with the Venetians to expel the common enemy from Indian
waters. In 1509 their fleet was defeated by the Viceroy Almeida near
Diu, off the coast of Kattywar, where the Arabian seaman comes in
sight of India. It was his last action before he surrendered power to
his rival, the great Albuquerque. Almeida sought the greatness of his
country not in conquest but in commerce. He discouraged expeditions
to Africa and to the Moluccas; for he believed that the control of
Indian traffic could be maintained by sea power, and that land
settlements would drain the resources of the nation. Once the Moslem
traders excluded, Portugal would possess all it wanted, on land and
sea.

Almeida's successor, who had the eye of Alexander the Great for
strategic points and commercial centres, was convinced that sea-power,
at six months from home, rests on the occupation of seaports, and he
carried the forward policy so far that Portugal possessed fifty-two
establishments, commanding 15,000 miles of coast, and held them,
nominally, with 20,000 men. Almeida's victory had broken the power of
the Moors. Albuquerque resolved to prevent their reappearance by
closing the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. With Aden, Ormuz, and
Malacca, he said, the Portuguese are masters of the world. He failed
in the Red Sea. When Socotra proved insufficient, he attacked Aden,
and was repulsed. There was a disconcerting rumour that no Christian
vessel could live in the Red Sea, as there was a loadstone that
extracted the nails. Albuquerque succeeded in the Persian Gulf, and
erected a fortress at Ormuz, and at the other end of the Indian world
he seized Malacca, and became master of the narrow seas, and of all
the produce from the vast islands under the equator. He made Goa the
impregnable capital of his prodigious empire, and the work that he did
was solid. He never perceived the value of Bombay, which is the best
harbour in Asia, and did not see that the key of India is the Cape of
Good Hope. His language was sometimes visionary. He beheld a cross
shining in the heavens, over the kingdom of Prester John, and was
eager for an all