le of Diu.

Mir Hussain, Admiral of the Gran Soldan of Egypt and commander in
chief of the Mohammedan fleet in this battle, anchored his main
force of more than a hundred ships in the mouth of the channel
between the island of Diu and the mainland, designing to fall back
before the Portuguese attack towards the island, where he could
secure the aid of shore batteries and a swarm of 300 or more foists
and other small craft in the harbor. Almeida had only 19 ships
and 1300 men, but against his vigorous attack the flimsy vessels
of the east were of little value. The battle was fought at close
quarters in the old Mediterranean style, with saber, cutlass, and
culverin; ramming, grappling, and boarding. Before nightfall Almeida
had won. This victory ensured Portugal's commercial control in
the eastern seas.

Alfonso d'Albuquerque, greatest of the Portuguese conquistadores,
succeeded Almeida in 1509. Establishing headquarters in a central
position at Goa, he sent a fleet eastward to Malacca, where he set
up a fort and factory, and later fitted out expeditions against
Ormuz and Aden, the two strongholds protecting respectively the
entrances to the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. The attack on Aden
failed, but Ormuz fell in 1515. Albuquerque died in the same year
and was buried in his capital at Goa. His successor opened trade and
founded factories in Ceylon. In 1526 a trading post was established
at Hugli, near the mouth of the Ganges. Ormuz became a center for
the Persian trade, Malacca for trade with Java, Sumatra, and the
Spice Islands. A Portuguese envoy, Fernam de Andrada, reached Canton
in 1517--in the first European ship to enter Chinese waters--and
Pekin three years later. Another adventurer named Mendez Pinto spent
years in China and in 1548 established a factory near Yokohama,
Japan. Brazil, where a squadron under Cabral had touched as early
as 1502, was by 1550 a prosperous colony, and in later centuries
a chief source of wealth. Mozambique, Mombassa, and Malindi, on
the southeastern coast of Africa, were taken and fortified as
intermediate bases to protect the route to Asia. The muslins of
Bengal, the calicoes of Calicut, the spices from the islands, the
pepper of Malabar, the teas and silks of China and Japan, now found
their way by direct ocean passage to the Lisbon quays.

A few strips along the African coast, tenuously held by sufferance
of the great powers, and bits of territory at Goa, Daman, and Diu
in Ind