xxii THE LAND OF THE LION 



far from all sources of succour and supply surrounded 

 by utter barbarism and in a land where the deadly fever 

 daily sapped the strength of the strongest. Yet they made 

 a bold bid for Empire. 



It would sometimes be well, if the Anglo-Saxon remem- 

 bered, that others than he and his, have paid heavily 

 for the rule of the sea paid and lost. 



"If blood is the price of admiralty" as Kipling 

 says the Portuguese "have paid it well/' 



Look at the main fort. It is larger and incomparably 

 stronger than the original citadel Montcalm held for 

 France. Built so solidly that even to-day its bastions 

 would for a time withstand artillery. 



An old tradition has it, its mortar was mixed with human 

 blood, and, indeed, the loss of life in building such a place 

 must have been enormous. Forced labour was employed, 

 for, from Pharaoh's time onward, none has taken any ac- 

 count of the labourer in Africa. 



They were cruel men, those Portuguese adventurers, 

 as were most of the men of their time. Perhaps even 

 more heedless of human life than their fellows. But 

 surely they were strongest of the strong. They had their 

 short day, and though its sun soon set, they accomplished 

 much in it. Their King Henry, the navigator, half an 

 Englishman, be it remembered for his mother was 

 daughter of "Old John of Gaunt, time honoured Lan- 

 caster," led them in the very van of discovery. But Africa 

 proved fatal to Portugal. In the northern part of that 

 continent in Morocco she strove hard to found an 

 empire; and there, far inland, worn down by thirst 

 and lost in sand drift, the adventurous young King Se- 

 bastian, aged but twenty-three, fell on one disastrous day, 

 with the youth of his little kingdom round him, and from 

 that overwhelming calamity Portugal never quite recovered. 



Then in the southeast, for many a long year after her 



