of the friendly treatment accorded by Afonso Dalboquerque (for this very political object) to the Chinese merchants at Malaca, was unwilling to act, and Tuão Nacem Mudaliar, partly out of chagrin for the failure of his mission, and partly dispirited at the untimely death of his wife, did not live to convey the news of his repulse by the Chinese court to his royal nephew, but died on the return journey at Yang-chow-fu or Yang-cheu-fu, near Nanking.1

A manuscript Report, in which is embodied a succinct historical relation of the principal European embassies to China, now preserved among the Wellesley papers in the MS. department of the British Museum, very justly attributes to Afonso Dalboquerque the design of establishing friendly relations with the Chinese empire. This design was probably suggested to him in the first place by the intercourse he had with the Chinese merchant junks in the port of Malaca at the time of the siege. The following passage describes briefly the first dealings of Portugal and China :

Alphonso Albuquerque (from whose wise administration, while Viceroy in the East Indies, Portugal derived such advantages) formed the design of opening a communication with China, though he did not live to see it attempted. In consequence of intelligence sent by him to the Court of Portugal, a squadron sailed from Lisbon, in 1518, to convoy an Ambassador to China. The Abbé Raynal's account of this Embassy is as follows:

1 Yang-cheu-fu, in Kiang-su, 32 deg. 26.32 min. N., 117 deg. 4.13 min. E., was, in 1277, under the Mongols, a lu, or chief town of a district. Marco Polo is said to have been governor of this town for three years. He cites it under the name of Yanju. But see Col. Yule's Marco Polo, ii, 138, etc.

"As soon as the squadron arrived at the islands in the neighbourhood of Canton, it was surrounded by Chinese vessels, who came to reconnoitre it. Ferdinand Andrada, who commanded it, did not put himself in any posture of defence, he suffered the Chinese to come on board, communicated the object of his voyage to the Mandarins that presided at Canton, and sent his ambassador on shore, who was conducted to Pekin.

66 Whatever may have been the state of China when the Portuguese landed there, as they had no other object in view than to draw riches from thence and to propagate their religion, had they found the best kind of government established in this country, they would not have profited by it. Thomas Perez, their Ambassador, found the Court of Pekin disposed to favour his nation, the fame of which had spread itself throughout Asia. It had already attracted the esteem of the Chinese, which the conduct of Ferdinand Andrada, who commanded the Portuguese squadron, tended still further to increase. He visited all the coasts of China, and traded with the natives. When he was on the point of departure, he issued a proclamation in the ports he had put into, that if any one had been injured by a Portuguese, and would make it known, he should recover satisfaction. The ports of China were now upon the point of being opened to them. Thomas Perez was just about concluding a Treaty, when Simon Andrada, brother to Ferdinand, appeared on the coast with a fresh squadron. This commander treated the Chinese in the same manner as the Portuguese had for some time treated all the people of Asia. He built a fort, without permission, on the island of Taman, from whence he took opportunities of pillaging and extorting money from all the ships bound from or to the ports of China. He carried off young girls from the coast, he seized upon the Chinese, and made slaves of them; he gave himself up to the most licentious acts of piracy, and the most shameful dissoluteness. The sailors and soldiers under his command followed his example. The Chinese, enraged

at these outrages, fitted out a large fleet; the Portuguese defended themselves courageously, and escaped by making their way through the enemy's fleet. The Emperor imprisoned Thomas Perez, who died in confinement, and the Portuguese nation was banished from China for some years. After this the Chinese relaxed, and gave permission to the Portuguese to trade at the port of Sancian, to which place they brought gold from Africa, spices from the Molucca Islands, aud from Ceylon elephants' teeth, and some precious stones. In return they took silks of every kind, china, gums, medicinal herbs, and tea, which has since become so necessary a commodity to the northern nations of Europe.

"The Portuguese contented themselves with the huts and factories they had at Sancian, and the liberty granted to their trade by the Chinese Government, till an opportunity offered of establishing themselves upon a footing more solid and less dependant upon the Mandarins, who had the command of the coast.

"A pirate named Tchang-si-lao, whose successes had made him powerful, had seized upon the Island of Macao, from whence he blocked up the ports of China, and even proceeded so far as to lay siege to Canton. The neighbouring Mandarins had recourse to the Portuguese, who had ships in the harbour of Sancian; they hastened to the relief of Canton, raised the siege, and obtained a complete victory over the pirate, whom they pursued as far as Macao, where he slew himself.

"The Emperor of China, informed of the service the Portuguese had rendered him on this occasion, bestowed Macao upon them, as a mark of his gratitude. They received this grant with joy, and built a town which became very flourishing, and was advantageously situated for the trade they soon after entered into with Japan.

"The author of L'Idée Générale de la Chine, published at Paris in 1780, adds to his account of this transaction (which agrees with the above) that the behaviour of the

Portuguese ambassador confirmed the Chinese in their aversion to foreigners,' against whom they had always shut their empire. And speaking of the Emperor's edict permitting the Portuguese to settle at Macao, he says, 'but the restrictions with which the Chinese accompanied this favour, and the manner of forming the settlement, as well as the shackles imposed on the liberty of the Portuguese, give to Macao rather the appearance of a place besieged than of a free commercial city'."2

The Viceroy of Canton has just lately expressed himself in cordial terms towards the Portuguese nation, and expressed the necessity of drawing still closer the relations between China and Portugal, which was the first of the European nations to possess commercial establishments in China.

The construction of a powerful, in fact to the Malays an impregnable fortress in the heart of their capital was a natural consequence of the Portuguese victory. The bird's-eye view of this fortress, which has been reproduced for this volume from Correa's invaluable Lendas da India, and the plan of the same, also reproduced for this volume from the equally precious manuscript of Pedro Barretto de Resende's Livro do Estado da India Oriental (by kind permission of the trustees of the British Museum), show sufficiently the imposing nature of this stronghold. Next in importance to the

1 This author adds in a note—" Ammian Marcellin qui écrivoit dans le quatrième siècle de notre ère, parle de cet éloignement des Chinois pour les étrangers."

2 Add. MS., 13,875, fo. 24: "Report of Embassies to China, presented to the British Museum by the Representatives of the Marquess Wellesley."

fortress were reconstructive measures of the victors, as for example the rearrangement of the currency upon a more scientific basis, and the repression of sedition with that iron hand, for which some historians and biographers have been so unnecessarily severe upon Afonso Dalboquerque. Before we condemn this prominent trait in the character of the Portuguese commander we must take into consideration the somewhat ungentle spirit of the age in which he lived, the brutalities practised by Asiatics upon such unfortunate Europeans as fell into their hands, and the absolute necessity that a comparatively small band of men were under to repress unsparingly any and every measure likely to injure their tenure of a territory so far from the natural basis of their operations. Viewed in this light, the execution of Utemutaraja, and the carrying out of the sentence passed upon Ruy Diaz, were measures calculated to procure the security of the whole body, rather than instances of supreme gratification of personal antipathy towards the sufferers.

The incidents of the dispatch of Duarte Fernandez to the court of Siam with specific instructions-an event which helped greatly to elevate the position of Portuguese politics in the east of Asia-the subsequent mission of Antonio de Miranda de Azevedo to the same country, the interchange of presents and friendly compliments, similar courtesies exchanged with the kings of Campar and Java, and the sending forth of a party to explore the Moluccas, then known as the Clove Islands or Mace-apple (i.e., nutmeg) Islands, combine to elevate in a considerable degree the career