Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/35

 any doubts in the mind of the Malabar monarch with regard to the honest intentions of the strangers.

Having concluded a treaty, whereby it was stipulated that the Portuguese should have security to go on shore and sell and buy as they pleased, and that they should be placed in all respects on the same footing as other foreign merchants, the king added his desire that the stranger should be treated "with such good friendship as if he was own brother to the king of Portugal."

De Gama was fully satisfied with the arrangement, and had he been dealing with the king only, it seems probable that everything would have gone on well; the more so as the Malabar monarch was already realising large profits from the new trade. But the merchant Moors were less easily satisfied. They knew from the covetous character of the king that so long as the Portuguese were willing to buy, he would continue to supply whatever they required, and that thus the market would be stripped of the articles best adapted for their annual shipments to the Red Sea. They felt that "whenever the Christians should come thither, he would prefer selling his goods to them to supplying cargoes for the Moors;" and that, in the end, they would be "entirely ruined;" a plea, indeed, repeatedly used in many other countries whenever competition first made its appearance. The Moors further argued that the Portuguese could not be merchants, but "evil men of war," for they paid whatever price was demanded for the produce they required, and made no difference between articles of inferior and superior qualities. But the