az off Diu, and after a
battle which lasted the whole day a great victory was won, in which
the Muhammadans are said to have lost 3000 men and the Portuguese
only twenty-two.

After the victory the powerful Muhammadan King of Ahmadabad or
Gujarat, Mahmud Shah Begara, disavowed the conduct of Malik Ayaz, his
tributary, {39} and made peace with the Portuguese. He refused to
surrender the Emir, but he gave up the Portuguese prisoners who had
been taken in the previous engagement as well as the remains of the
Egyptian fleet. On his return to Cochin, Dom Francisco de Almeida
again refused to hand over the government to Albuquerque, and
imprisoned his destined successor in the fortress of Cannanore.

However, on the arrival of Dom Fernao de Coutinho, Marshal of
Portugal, the Viceroy was forced to abandon this attitude, and he
left Cochin on November 10, 1509. On his way home he was obliged to
put in to refit at Saldanha Bay, where his sailors had a dispute with
some Kaffirs whose sheep they had stolen. Dom Francisco de Almeida
went to their help, but he was struck down and killed with an
assegai. Thus died the first Viceroy of Portuguese India on March 1,
1510, and it is a strange irony of fate that the famous conqueror of
the Muhammadan fleet, who by his victory assured the power of the
Portuguese in the East, should die by the hands of ignorant African
savages.

The policy of the first Viceroy of India was not so grandiose as that
of his successor. He did not believe in building many forts or
attempting to establish direct government in the East. He argued that
Portugal had not sufficient inhabitants to occupy many posts, and his
view was that the Portuguese fleets should hold the sea and thus
protect the factories on land. Any idea of establishing a Portuguese
{40} dominion in Asia seemed visionary to the first Portuguese
Viceroy, and in this respect his policy differed entirely from that
of his successor, Affonso de Albuquerque.

A letter from Francisco de Almeida to Emmanuel is published by Senhor
Lopes de Mendonca in the _Annaes das Sciencias e Letteras_ for April,
1858, and reveals the Viceroy's policy. In it he says:--

'With respect to the fortress in Quilon, the greater the number of
fortresses you hold, the weaker will be your power; let all our
forces be on the sea; because if we should not be powerful at sea
(which may the Lord forbid) everything will at once be against us;
and if the King of Coc