Page:The Lusiad (Camões, tr. Mickle, 1791), Volume 1.djvu/301

 The accomplishments and manners of Camoens soon found him friends, though under the disgrace of banishment. He was appointed commissary of the estates of Defunct in the island of Macao, on the coast of China. Here he continued his Lusiad; and here also, after five years residence, he acquired a fortune, though small, yet equal to his wishes. Don Constantine de Braganza was now viceroy of India; and Camoens, desirous to return to Goa, resigned his charge. In a ship, freighted by himself, he set sail, but was shipwrecked in the gulf near the mouth of the river Mecon, in Cochin-China. All he had acquired was lost in the waves: his poems, which he held in one hand, while he swam with the other, were all he found himself possessed of, when he stood friendless on the unknown shore. But the natives gave him a most humane