his passage. In September
1567, however, Pedro Barreto was named captain of Mozambique, and
insisted on the poet accompanying him to Sofala, at the same time
lending him two hundred cruzades. It was part of the way home, so
Camoens accepted, but after they reached Mozambique Barreto called in
this money, and his debtor, being unable to pay, was detained there for
two whole years. Here Diogo do Couto found him "so poor that he ate at
the cost of friends, and in order that he might embark for the Kingdom
we friends collected for him the clothes he needed and some gave him to
eat, and that winter he finished perfecting the _Lusiads_ for the press
and wrote much in a book he was making, which he called _Parnaso of Luiz
de Camoes_, a book of much learning, doctrine and philosophy, which was
stolen from him." Thanks to Couto and others, Camoens was able to
liquidate his debt and set sail in November 1569 in the "Santa Clara,"
and he reached Portugal on the 7th of April 1570, after an absence of
seventeen years.

The only wealth he brought with him from India was the MS. of his great
poem, a _"Tesoro del Luso"_ in the words of Cervantes. Moreover, he
returned at an unfortunate moment--one of pest and famine. The great
plague which had killed a quarter, or, as some say, half of the
population of the capital, was declining, but a rigid quarantine
prevailed, and the ship had to lie off Cascaes until the sanitary
authorities allowed her to enter the Tagus. Camoens was welcomed by his
mother, whom he found "very old and very poor"--his father had died at
Goa about 1555--and after a visit to Catherina's tomb, which inspired
the poignant sonnet 337, he set about obtaining the royal licence to
print the _Lusiads_. This was dated the 24th of September 1571 and gave
him a ten years' copyright, and as soon as the book appeared some
friendly and influential hand, perhaps D. Manoel de Portugal, perhaps D.
Francisca de Aragao for whom he had rhymed in the happy days of his
youth, presented the national epic to King Sebastian. Shortly
afterwards, on the 28th of July 1572, the king gave the poet a pension
of fifteen milreis for the term of three years, as a reward for his
services in India and for his poem. It was relatively a considerable
sum, seeing that he had no great military record, and it seems even
generous when we remember that Magellan had only received twelve, and
had left Portugal because King Manoel would not give him a slight