132 T. W. H. Tolbort — Portuguese Sefflemenfs in India. [June, 



dents of Portuguese history, and may be compared, say to the defence of 

 Arkat or to that of Lak'hnau in the history of British India. The third 

 event was a sad contrast to the two former and with other contemporary 

 disasters marked the decadence of Portuguese power. 



Gaspar Correa, who wrote his History about 1561, has preserved a sketch 

 of the fortress of Did as it was in his days. There have of course been 

 numerous alterations of detail since then, but essentially the appearance of 

 the fortress is much the same. 



From the inscriptions it would seem that the bastions of the outer line 

 received their present names and form between 1630 and 1612, but the plan 

 dates from the time of Don Joao de Castro who, after the second siege, con- 

 structed a new line outside the old, to avoid the trouble and delay of clearing 

 away the debris of the bombardment. 



Crossing the outer ditch by a permanent bridge and the inner one by 

 a drawbridge, the visitor proceeds for some distance along a causeway ; then, 

 turning to the right, he passes through a double gateway into the fortress. 

 Over the gateway is a Latin inscription, commemorating the vow of King 

 John IV, who in his Cortes of 1616 dedicated his kingdom to the Virgin 

 Mary, and swore to maintain the doctrine of her immaculate conception. 



There is a similar inscription at the entrance of most Portuguese towns, 

 and one to the same effect, in Portuguese, may be seen in the Museum of 

 the Bombay Asiatic Society. 



The gateway and the landing pier are protected on the harbour side by 

 a bastion, called indifferently after St. George and St. Martin. This is one 

 of the oldest in the fortress. It is shown in Correa's sketch, and perhaps 

 existed in some form or other in the fortress as originally constructed by 

 Nuno d' Acunha. It contains two or three very old cannon, one of them 

 with the following inscription : Nonii da Cunha Presidis jussu conflatum et 

 absolutum an, M. d. xxxiii^ Reimon me fecit. This gun is called the Tiger, and 

 bears a figure and a second inscription in accordance with its name. 



The name of St. George seems to have been given to this bastion be- 

 tween the first and the second siege of Did, for I find no mention of it in 

 the accounts of the first siege, and it bears the following inscription as a 

 testimony to its date. Este baluarte fez Manoel de Souza de Sepulveda 

 Capitao desta fortaleza, e alargou toda a cava de mar a mar ma is houtro tanto 

 do que estava na Era de 1542 governando a India Martim Afonso de Souza. 



This bastion is mentioned in the accounts of the second siege (1546), 

 Correa speaks of it as the ' bastion of the gateway,' while Freire de Andrada 

 gives it the name of St. George. The name of St. Martin was given aftej'- 

 wards to commemorate the victory gained by D. Joao de Castro on St.' 

 Martin's day, when he marched out of the fortress and put an end to the 

 siege. There is an inscription referring to this victory over tlie guard-room 



