Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/146

 100 FIRST STRUGGLE FOR THE INDIAN SEAS Albuquerque's fixed idea was to render every cap- ture by the Portuguese arms a permanent acquisition to the Portuguese crown. He found in Socotra a domi- nant population of Mussulmans and an inferior class of Asiatic Christians, corresponding in some respects to the St. Thomas Christians of Malabar. The Mussul- mans he dispossessed of their lands; the old-world relics of Eastern Christianity he baptized into Cathol- icism, giving them, as the price of their prompt con- version, the palm-groves seized from the Mussulmans. Having built a strong fort and erected a Franciscan monastery, Albuquerque left Socotra in charge of his nephew and sailed for the Arabian coast. There, amid mutinies of his captains and troubles of many sorts, he bombarded Kuriyat and Muscat, and imposed a treaty on Ormuz designed to secure to Portugal the outlet of the Persian Gulf (1507 - 1508). His plan was to cut off Ormuz from her natural supports by making himself master of the smaller har- bours at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, and thus to dominate the Red Sea route from the northeast as his fortress at Socotra threatened it from too great a distance on the south. The mutiny of his commanders in January, 1508, arrested the complete execution of this project. But in September, 1507, the King of Ormuz had submitted to a treaty written " in letters of gold and stops blue " (the latter being doubtless the diacritical marks), acknowledging that he received " from the hand of the Captain in Chief the kingdom and seigniority of Ormuz, from which he, the Captain