Chapter VIII · (continued 2)

Albuquerque was buried with great pomp. The soldiers who had been the faithful companions of his wonderful adventures, and the witnesses of his manifold tribulations, disputed amidst their tears for the honour of carrying his remains to their last resting-place, which their commander had himself chosen. The Hindoos in their grief refused to believe that he was dead, declaring that he was gone to command the armies of the sky. A letter of King Emmanuel has been comparatively lately discovered which proves that, although he were deceived for a time by the false reports of the enemies of Albuquerque, he soon discovered his mistake, and rendered him full and entire justice. Unfortunately this letter of reparation never reached the unfortunate second Viceroy of the Indies; it would have sweetened his last moments, whereas he had the pain of dying in the belief that the sovereign for whose glory and the increase of whose power he had consecrated his life, had in the end proved ungrateful towards him. "With Albuquerque," says Michelet, "all humanity and all justice disappeared from amongst the conquerors. Long years after his death the Indians would repair to the tomb of the great Albuquerque, to demand justice of him against the oppressions of his successors."

Many causes may be adduced as bringing about the rapid decay and dismemberment of that great colonial empire with which Albuquerque had enriched his country, and which even amidst its ruins has left ineffaceable traces upon India. With Michelet we may cite the distance and dispersion of the various factories, the smallness of the population of Portugal, but little suited to the wide extension of her establishments, the love of brigandage, and the exactions of a bad government, but beyond all, that indomitable national pride which forbade any mingling of the victors with the vanquished.

The fall of the colonial empire was hindered for a time by the influence of two heroic men, the first was Juan de Castro, who after having had the control of untold riches, remained so poor that he had not even the wherewithal to buy a fowl in his last illness; and the second, Ataïde, who once again gave the corrupt eastern populations an example of the most manly virtues, and of the most upright administration. But after their time the empire began to drop to pieces, and fell by degrees into the hands of the Spaniards and the Dutch, who in their turn were unable to preserve it intact. All passes away, all is changed. What can be said but to repeat the Spanish saw, in applying it to the case of empires, "Life is but a dream"?

END OF THE FIRST PART.