tuguese and the Zamorin's fleet off Cannanore, and was subsequently employed for a year and a half as factor at Cochin. He also describes the siege of the Portuguese fort at Cannanore by the justly-incensed population, which occurred during his tenure of office, and the opportune relief of the beleaguered garrison by the fleet under Tristan de Cunna. He also took part in the attack on Ponani, and in the destruction of the Zamorin's ships which were anchored there, and after the battle was, with several others, dubbed a knight by the Viceroy Don Francisco de Almeyda, the gallant Captain Tristan de Cunna acting as his sponsor on the occasion. His account of these different operations is replete with interesting details, and its general authenticity is fully corroborated by numerous undesigned coincidences between his narrative and the records of later Portuguese historians. Unfortunately, one is unable to deduce any reflection, from Varthema's independent testimony, palliative of the unwarrantable proceedings of the Portuguese towards the native states on the western coast of India at this period. Those proceedings, the offspring of national ambition and selfishness, were carried out in a spirit of barbarity mingled with fanaticism which outraged the first principles of justice, and disgraced the religion which it was one design of such conduct to promote. Would that the history of our own first transactions in India were unstained by any such blemishes! Let us hope that some, at least, of those early faults have been atoned for, and that the remainder will be forgotten in the future prosperity

of an empire which has been justly called the brightest jewel in the diadem of Britain's glorious Queen.

6:

On the 6th of December 1507, our traveller finally left Cannanore with the homeward-bound ships, on board the San Vicenzo, a vessel belonging to one Bartolomeo Marchioni, a Florentine resident at Lisbon. While on the voyage, he takes a brief retrospect of the recent conquests of the Portuguese in the East, and predicts a glorious future for that monarchy owing to the simultaneous efforts which were made, under its immediate auspices, to promote Christianity among the natives of India. Ten, and even twelve, Pagans and Moors were baptized every fête day" at Cochin alone, and the work of conversion, which was being zealously prosecuted, was everywhere crowned with signal success. The prognostication, as regards territorial aggrandizement, was speedily realized; for, fifteen years later, the Portuguese had made themselves masters of the principal ports on the Malabar and Coromandel coasts, of parts of Ceylon and the Malayan peninsula, and also of the Moluccas. Their possession of Malacca in the east, and their settlements at Diu and Goa on the west, enabled them to engross the entire trade, including that of the Persian Gulf on the one side, where they held the important island of Hormuz, and that of China, Japan, and the Indian Archipelago on the other. Their ships frequented every port, and their merchandize was to be found from the Cape of Good Hope to the river of Canton; while along this immense line of coast they had established a chain of forts and fac

tories, where their traffic was carried on and protected, unrivalled and uncontrolled. The commercial empire of the Portuguese in the East, whether considered in the dimensions which it attained, the brief space in which it was consolidated, its opulence, the splendour with which its government was conducted, or the very slender powers with which it was formed, is unique in the history of nations.

But the dominion thus acquired was as short-lived as the sincere piety, the generous courage, and the indefatigable energy which had created it. No longer animated by the spirit of the original conquerors, their successors, heedless of the common cause, became indolent, debauched, and effeminate, and strove solely for their own individual profit. Officers and soldiers were without subordination, discipline, or patriotism, and the governors, corrupt themselves, found it their interest to foment divisions among their countrymen. These intestine cabals alone, combined with the oppression which was exercised towards the natives, would have sufficed in time to disintegrate the newly-formed empire; but its downfall was precipitated by the appearance of a formidable enemy from without. The revolted Dutch, interdicted by a decree of Philip II., of Spain and Portugal, from all commercial relations with those kingdoms, seized every opportunity of harassing and humiliating their former masters, and, taking advantage of the anarchy which pervaded the Portuguese colonies in the East, boldly prosecuted their trade in that quarter, and determined at length to expel their rivals. In the

course of a few years they deprived them of the Moluccas, the Spice Islands, Amboyna, Tidor, Ceylon, and Malacca. The English, also, who had now begun to claim a share of the spoils, wrested from them Surat and other parts of Guzerat, and in conjunction with the Shâh of Persia drove them from the island of Hormuz,while the Imâm of Maskat expelled them from ’Ammân, and from many of their settlements in East Africa. And now, Macao in China, with Diu, Goa, and Damân on the Guzerat and Canarese coasts, are the only fragments which remain to them of an empire which Alexander coveted but could not win.

The religious conquests of the Portuguese, however, have survived their temporal sovereignty, and the descendants of the first converts, with large additions won over to the Church of Rome by the zeal of subsequent missionaries, are still to be found scattered over the continent of India, and more especially in the Madras Presidency, the scene of their earliest efforts at evangelization, where their numbers are very considerable. Political influence, emanating from every department of the Government, was undoubtedly used at the outset to promote Christianity among the natives; for that, indeed, was one of the avowed objects of the invaders, who pro fessed to be as anxious to destroy the strongholds of heathendom, as to secure territorial dominion. But the withdrawal of State cöoperation, consequent on the extinction of Portuguese supremacy, was not followed, as might have been expected, by any general apostacy of the proselytes; on the contrary,

though arrested for a time, the work of conversion progressed, and fresh native churches were formed, whose members at the present day far outnumber the converts to Protestantism made by the combined efforts of Dutch, American, and English missionaries, of all denominations.

How are we to account for this remarkable phenomenon in the history of Christianity in India? Whence comes it that Roman Catholic missions there have ever been more successful than missions from the Reformed Churches? Whence, that their converts, a feeble folk though they be, have persistently clung to their adopted faith amidst all the political changes which have surrounded them, the social influences which both directly and indirectly have been levelled against them, and the strenuous exertions which have been put forth to win them over to a purer creed? And, supposing the case, that British domination in India were to terminate as suddenly as did that of the Portuguese, is it probable that two centuries later there would be found amidst its ruins native communities professing the Reformed religion as we now find congregations of native Christians firmly attached to the Church of Rome? One of our own Bishops in India, after describing some of the old Portuguese churches in the neighbourhood of Bombay makes the following remarks:-" They are melancholy objects to look at, but they are monuments, nevertheless, of departed greatness, of a love of splendour far superior to the anxiety for amassing money, by which other nations have been chiefly