a port further north
along the coast, took cargo, and set sail for home, reaching the
Azores in August of 1499, with 55 of his original complement of
148 men. They came back, in the picturesque words of the Admiral,
"With the pumps in their hands and the Virgin Mary in their mouths,"
completing a total voyage of 13,000 miles. The profits are said
to have been sixty-fold.

The ease with which in the next two decades Portugal extended and
consolidated her conquest of eastern trade is readily accounted
for. She was dependent indeed solely upon sea communications, over
a distance so great as to make the task seem almost impossible.
But the craft of the east were frail in construction and built for
commerce rather than for warfare. The Chinese junks that came to
India are described as immense in size, with large cabins for the
officers and their families, vegetable gardens growing on board,
and crews of as many as a thousand men; but they had sails of matted
reed that could not be lowered, and their timbers were loosely
fastened together with pegs and withes. The Arab ships, according
to Marco Polo, were also built without the use of nails. Like the
Portuguese themselves, the Arab or Mohammedan merchants belonged
to a race of alien invaders, little liked by the native princes
who retained petty sovereignties along the coast. But the real
secret of Portuguese success lay in the fact that their rivals were
traders rather than fighters, who had enjoyed a peaceful monopoly for
centuries, and who could expect little aid from their own countries
harassed by the Turk. The Portuguese on the other hand inherited
the traditions of Mediterranean seamanship and warfare, and, above
all, were engaged in a great national enterprise, led by the best
men in the land, with enthusiastic government support.

After Vasco's return, fleets were sent out each year, to open the
Indian ports by either force or diplomacy, destroy Moslem merchant
vessels, and establish factories and garrisons. In 1505 Francisco de
Almeida set sail with the largest fleet as yet fitted out (sixteen
ships and sixteen caravels), an appointment as Viceroy of Cochin,
Cannanore, and Quilon, and supreme authority from the Cape to the
Malay Peninsula. Almeida in the next four years defeated the Mohammedan
traders, who with the aid of Egypt had by this time organized to
protect themselves, in a series of naval engagements, culminating
on February 3, 1509, in the decisive batt