CiiAP. IV.] CEYLON AS KNOWN TO VENETIANS. 



643 



In his dismay the Sultan of Egypt threatened to 

 demohsh the sacred remains of Jerusalem, should the 

 infidels of Europe persist in annihilating the trade of 

 the Desert. Stimulated by the Doge, he attacked the 

 Portuguese merchantmen in the Indian seas, and de- 

 stroyed a convoy off the coast of Cochin ; an outrage for 

 which Albuquerque meditated a splendid revenge by an 

 expedition to plunder Mecca and Medina, and to consum- 

 mate the desolation of Egjq^t by diverting the Nile to the 

 Eed Sea, across Nubia or Abyssinia ! ^ 



But the catastrophe was inevitable ; the rich freights 

 of India and China w^ere carried round the " Cape of 

 Storms," and no longer slowly borne on the Tigris 

 and the Nile. The harbours of Ormus and of Bassora 

 became deserted ; and on the shores of Asia Minor, 

 where the commerce of Italy had intrenched itself in 

 castles of almost feudal pretension, the rivalries of Genoa 

 and Venice were extinguished in the same calamitous 

 decay. 



^ Daett, Hist, cle Venise, lib. xix. 

 p. 114. Eaynal, Hist, des Deux 

 Indes, vol. i. p. 156. Faeia t Soitza^ 



Portiiq. Asia, pt. i. cli. viii. vol. i. pp. 

 64, 83, 107, 137. 



END OP THE FIRST VOLUME. 



