Page:The Lusiad (Camões, tr. Mickle, 1791), Volume 1.djvu/299

 himself from his native country. Accordingly in 1553, he sailed for India, with a resolution never to return. As the ship left the Tagus, he exclaimed, in the words of the sepulchral monument of Scipio Africanus, Ingrata patria, non possidebis ossa mea! Ungrateful country, thou shalt not possess my bones! but he knew not what evils in the East would awake the remembrance of his native fields.

When Camoens arrived in India, an expedition was ready to sail to revenge the king of Cochin on the king of Pimenta. Without any rest on shore after his long voyage, he joined this armament, and in the conquest of the Alagada islands, displayed his usual bravery. But his modesty, perhaps, is his greatest praise. In a sonnet he mentions this expedition: We went to punish the king of Pimenta, says he, e succedeones bem, and we succeeded well. When it is considered that the Poet bore no inconsiderable share in the victory, no ode can conclude more elegantly, more happily than this.

In the year following, he attended Manuel de Vasconcello in an expedition to the Red Sea. Here, says Faria, as Camoens had no use for his sword, he employed his pen. Nor was his activity confined in the fleet or camp. He visited Mount Felix, and the adjacent inhospitable regions of Africa, which he so strongly pictures in the Lusiad, and in one of his little pieces, where he laments the absence of his mistress. When