nce their Christianity to buy their peace.

Returning therefore by the western coasts, which were in the possession
of the Portuguese, he travelled by land, and on foot, according to his
custom, towards the coast of Travancore, which beginning from the point
of Comorin, lies extended thirty leagues along by the sea, and is full of
villages.

Being come thither, and having, by the good offices of the Portuguese,
obtained permission from the king of Travancore to publish the law of the
true God, he followed the same method which he had used at the Fishery;
and that practice was so successful, that all that coast was converted to
Christianity in a little space of time, insomuch, that forty-five
churches were immediately built. He writes himself, "That in one month
he baptized, with his own hand, ten thousand idolaters; and that,
frequently, in one day, he baptized a well peopled village." He says
also, "that it was to him a most pleasing object, to behold, that so
soon as those infidels had received baptism, they ran, vying with each
other to demolish the temples of the idols."

It was at that time, properly speaking, when God first communicated to
Xavier the gift of tongues in the Indies; according to the relation of a
young Portuguese of Coimbra, whose name was Vaz, who attended him in many
of his travels, and who being returned into Europe, related those
passages, of which himself had been an eye witness. The holy man spoke
very well the language of those barbarians, without having learnt it, and
had no need of an interpreter when he instructed. There being no church
which was capable of containing those who came to hear him, he led them
into a spacious plain, to the number of five or six thousand persons, and
there getting up into a tree, that he might the farther extend his voice,
he preached to them the words of eternal truth. There it was also, that
to the end the compass of the plain might serve in the nature of a
church, he sometimes celebrated the divine mysteries under the sails of
ships, which were spread above the altar, to be seen on every side.

The Brachmans could not suffer the worship of the pagods to be abandoned
in this manner; but were resolved to be revenged on the author of so
strange an alteration. In order to execute their design, they secretly
engaged some idolaters to lie in wait for him, and dispatch him
privately. The murderers lay in ambush more than once, and in the silence
of the night en