he
seized it and made it the capital of a land empire, and built fortresses
in every important point through the East. Since his death a succession
of remarkable victories had made the flag of Portugal predominant, but
the enervating climate, the pleasures and the plunder of Asia, began to
tell on the conquerors. Corruption was rife from the governor downwards,
because the ruling ambition was to get rich and return home, and the
hero of one day was a pirate the next. After all, it was only human
nature, for a governorship lasted but three years and Portugal was far
away, so the saying went round--"They are installed the first year, they
rob the second, and then pack up in the third to sail away." Camoens was
well received at first, owing to his talents and bravery, and he found
the life cheap and merry, but having left his country with high ideals,
the injustice and demoralization of manners he found in India soon
disgusted him. He compared Goa to Babylon, and called it "the mother of
villains and the stepmother of honest men."

His first military service in the East took place in November 1553, when
he went with a force led by the viceroy to chastise a petty king on the
Malabar coast. The expedition only lasted two or three months, and after
some trivial combats it returned to Goa. In February of the following
year Camoens accompanied the viceroy's son, D. Fernando de Menezes, who
led an armada to the mouth of the Red Sea and thence up the Arabian
coast to snap up hostile merchantmen and suppress piracy. Next the fleet
went on to Ormuz, as was the custom with these annual cruises, and then
to Bassora, where the poet helped to make some valuable prizes, and
wrote a sonnet--it was ever, with him, "in one hand the sword, in the
other the pen"! Returning to Goa in November he learnt of the deaths of
Prince John, and of his friend and pupil the young D. Antonio de
Noronha, and paid his tribute in a feeling sonnet and eclogue. In
February 1555 he sailed on another pirate hunt and spent six weary
months off Cape Guardafui, varied by a visit to Mombasa and by further
work on his epic, and only got back to Goa in the following September.
His experiences are recorded in the profound and sad 10th Canzon.

Meanwhile Francisco Barreto, an honourable and generous man, had become
governor-general of India in the June of 1555, and, his appointment
being popular, a reign of festivities began in Golden Goa to welcome his
succession, i