uese who had been left to
establish a permanent post, had been killed. With unusual deliberation,
he investigated the matter and demanded reparation, submission, and a
treaty acknowledging the sovereignty of Portugal over India. This being
refused, he bombarded the city, burned the ships in the harbor, and
compelled the Zamorin himself and all the native princes of the region
to submit and acknowledge themselves feudatories of Portugal. So rapid
were his movements, and so accurate his calculations, that before the
close of 1503 he had reached Lisbon again with thirteen vessels laden to
the gunwale with the plunder of the Orient--by all odds the richest
argosy that had come to any European port since the days of the Romans.

Da Gama was now forty-three years old, and must have been in the very
prime of manhood. Why so skilled a navigator, so intrepid a commander,
so shrewd a negotiator, and so successful an administrator, who had
established the power of Portugal from Delagoa Bay to Calcutta, should,
at that period of his life, have been laid upon the shelf for twenty
years, is a conundrum hard to answer. Knowing the character of Dom
Manoel, it is not difficult to guess that his sordidness lay somewhere
at the bottom of the trouble; but it is said to Gama's credit, that he
neither whined nor remonstrated.

It must be admitted, however, that he was succeeded by one who was
greatly his superior both as a general, a statesman, and an
administrator. If Vasco da Gama laid the foundations of Portuguese
empire in the East, Alfonso d'Albuquerque, "the Great," broadened and
built upon them as he could never have done. From Aden to Cochin blood
flowed beneath his blows, but peace followed; and though he was termed
"the Portuguese Mars," his justice became traditional, and his sagacity
was shown in the permanence of the settlements he made, even under the
incompetent viceroys who followed him.

It was twenty years since Vasco da Gama had commanded a ship.
Albuquerque was dead, and his successors had brought shame and defeat
upon the Portuguese power in the East. Dom Manoel was dead also, and
whatever grievance he had against "the Discoverer of India," seems to
have died with him. His successor, Dom Joao III., casting about for
someone to bring order out of confusion, success out of failure, and
honor out of shame, called again into his service the courtly and
sagacious mariner, now over sixty years of age; and conferring upon him