Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/140

 94 FIRST STRUGGLE FOR THE INDIAN SEAS The task assigned to the first Christian Viceroy of India was threefold. As the Portuguese occupation was to be permanent, Almeida was firmly to secure the base on the east African coast, whence the fleets started across the Indian Ocean to Malabar. This he did by erecting a strong fort at Quiloa, or Kilwa, in Africa, by reducing Mombassa, on the north of Zanzi- bar, to dependence, by drawing tighter the Portuguese hold on Melinde, still further north, near the Bay of Formosa, and by establishing a Portuguese pilot service for the Indian seas. Having thus secured the strategic command of the Zanzibar coast from Mozambique up to the equator, Almeida proceeded to the second part of his task the coercion of the Malabar ports at which the foreign Arabs still struggled for the upper hand, and the strengthening of the Portuguese factories on shore. His third duty was to break the Moslem power at sea, not alone the armed merchantmen of Calicut, but the regular navy with which the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt now menaced the existence of Portugal in the East. If the Portuguese feats of arms in India had been brilliant, the policy which directed and supported them at Lisbon was far-reaching and profound. King Em- manuel discerned that it was no longer a question of destroying the Arab commerce on the Malabar coast or of intercepting it at the mouth of the Red Sea. It had become a struggle for the command of the whole Indian Ocean the third and last act in the long con- flict between mediaeval Christendom and Islam. In