Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/132

 86 FIRST STRUGGLE FOR THE INDIAN SEAS Franciscan friars, eight chaplains, and a chaplain- major. Its commander, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, after discovering Brazil on the way out, was well received by the Zamorin at Calicut. With his sanction the Portuguese established a factory, or agency-house, on shore for the purchase of spices. After capturing an Arab ship off the roadstead as a present to the prince, Cabral hastened the somewhat tardy collection of cargo by seizing a Moslem vessel in the harbour. These les- sons in the Christian methods of armed trade made the foreign Arab merchants realize that the struggle between them and the Portuguese was for life or death. They sacked the Portuguese factory, or trading post, at Calicut, slaying the chief agent and fifty-three of his men. Cabral retorted by destroying ten Arab ships, and sailed down the coast to Cochin, burning two more Calicut vessels on his way. Cochin, a rival port to Calicut, loaded his fleet with spices on fair terms. Cabral signed a treaty with the local raja, promised to make him some day Zamorin of Calicut, and established a house of agency on shore with a factor and six assistants to provide cargo for the next ships from Portugal. Friendly overtures from the neighbouring coast-rajas of Quilon and Cannanore, with a visit to the latter roadstead, proved that there were plenty of trading-places besides Calicut on the Malabar seaboard. Unfortunately Cabral carried off, he says by accident, a hostage who had come tempo- rarily on board at Cochin. To the honour of Indian clemency be it recorded that the raja took no reprisals