PORTUGUESE EMPIRE IN THE EAST. 



223 



citadel and returned to Cochin. But, as he left one spot to 

 repair to another, revolt was sure to follow ; and, as the Vene- 

 tians now joined the Moors to repel the Portuguese, he saw that 

 his dominion could not be complete till he controlled the naviga- 

 tion of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The city of Aden, 

 in Arabia, was the key to the Red Sea, commanding, as it did, 

 the Straits of Babelmandel; and the island of Ormuz was the 

 key to the Persian Gulf. He failed to take Aden, but he suc- 

 ceeded easily w r ith Ormuz, whose king acknowledged himself 

 the vassal of Emmanuel. Albuquerque then formed a gigantic 

 plan in reference to the Red Sea. Unable to command it by 

 the capture of Aden, he determined to ruin Suez, at the other 

 extremity of the sea, by forming an alliance with the King of 

 Ethiopia, and inducing that monarch to dig a new course for the 

 Nile and make it empty into the Red Sea instead of into the 

 Mediterranean, thus rendering Egypt uninhabitable and Suez 

 desert. The invasion of Egypt by the Turks, however, pre- 

 vented the accomplishment of this undertaking. Thus the 

 people and kings of the East everywhere gave way before the 

 grand plans and deeds of Albuquerque, whom they both feared 

 for his energy and loved for his justice. When, in 1515, he 

 died at Goa, disgraced by his king and worn out by a thankless 

 service, the heathen monarchs wept over his grave, and for 

 many years went in pilgrimage to his tomb, asking his protec- 

 tion against the cruelty or injustice of his successors. 



The Portuguese, in little more than fifty years from the first 

 expedition of Vasco da Gama, had established an empire in 

 these seas of truly wonderful extent and power. They held 

 exclusive possession of the Malabar and Coromandel coasts of 

 India Proper, were masters of the Bay of Bengal, ruled the 

 peninsula of Malacca, and held tributary the islands of Ceylon, 

 Sumatra, Java, and the Moluccas. To the westward, towards 

 Africa, their authority extended as far as the Persian boundary, 

 and over all the islands of the Persian Gulf. In Arabia, even, 



