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 the Zamorin, received them as saviours, and enabled them to build forts, to gain command of the seas, and drive from them the ships of the Zamorin and the Moors. But the celebrated Alphonso Albuquerque made the most rapid strides, and extended the conquests of the Portuguese there beyond any other commander. He narrowly escaped with his life in endeavouring to sack and plunder Calicut. He seized on Goa, which thenceforward became the metropolis of all the Portuguese settlements in India. He conquered Molucca, and gave it up to the plunder of his soldiers. The fifth part of the wealth thus thievishly acquired, was reserved for the king, and was purchased on the spot by the merchants for 200,000 pieces of gold. Having established a garrison in the conquered city, he made a traitor Indian, who had deserted from the king of Molucca, and had been an instrument in the winning of the place, supreme magistrate; but again finding Utimut, the renegade, as faithless to himself, he had him and his son put to death, even though 100,000 pieces of gold, a bait that was not easily resisted by these Christian marauders, was offered for their lives. He then proceeded to Ormuz in the Persian Gulph, which was a great harbour for the Arabian merchants; reduced it, placed a garrison in it, seized on fifteen princes of the blood, and carried them off to Goa. Such were some of the deeds of this celebrated general, whom the historians in the same breath in which they record these unwarrantable acts of violence, robbery and treachery, term an excellent and truly glorious commander. He made a descent on the isle of Ceylon, and detached a fleet to the Moluccas, which established a settlement in those