ld have
found in them allies against the Mohammedan traders, but all of them,
not excepting their greatest statesman, Alphonso d'Albuquerque, pursued
a policy of frightfulness. When Da Gama met an Arab ship, after
sacking it, he blew it up with gunpowder and left it to sink in flames
while the women on board held up their babies with piteous cries to
touch the heart of this knight of Christ and of mammon. Without the
least compunction Albuquerque tells in his commentaries how he burned
the Indian villages, put part of their inhabitants to death and ordered
the noses and ears of the survivors cut off.

[Sidenote: Trade]

Nevertheless, the Portuguese got what they wanted, the wealthy trade of
the East. Albuquerque, failing to storm Calicut, seized Goa farther
north and made it the chief emporium. But they soon felt the need of
stations farther east, for, as long as the Arabs held Malacca, where
spices were cheaper, the intruders did not have the monopoly they
desired. Accordingly Albuquerque seized this city on the Malay
Straits, [Sidenote: 1511] which, though now it has sunk into
insignificance, was then the Singapore or Hong-Kong of the Far East.
Sumatra, Java and the northern coast of Australia were explored, the
Moluccas were bought from Spain for 350,000 ducats, and even Japan and
China were reached by the daring traders. In the meantime posts were
established along the whole western and eastern coasts of Africa and in
Madagascar. But wherever they went the Portuguese sought commercial
advantage not permanent settlement. Aptly compared by a Chinese
observer to fishes who died if taken from the sea, they founded an
empire of vast length out of incredible thinness.

{444} [Sidenote: Brazil]

The one exception to this rule, and an important one, was Brazil. The
least showy of the colonies and the one that brought in the least quick
profit eventually became a second and a greater Portugal, outstripping
the mother country in population and dividing South America almost
equally with the Spanish. In many ways the settlement of this colony
resembled that of North America by the English more than it did the
violent and superficial conquests of Spain. Settlers came to it less
as adventurers than as home-seekers and some of them fled from
religious persecution. The great source of wealth, the sugar-cane, was
introduced from Madeira in 1548 and in the following year the mother
country sent a royal governor and s