ties, by means of the port of Barat in Syria, the Venetians, Genoese,
and Catalonians carried them to their respective countries, and to other
parts of Europe. Such of these commodities as went up the Red Sea, were
landed at Tor or Suez at the bottom of that gulf, whence they were
conveyed over land to Cairo in Egypt, and thence down the Nile to
Alexandria, where they were shipped for Europe.

[Footnote 66: De Faria, Portuguese Asia, I. 82.]

[Footnote 67: Named Kalekare by Astley; and probably alluding to some
place in the neighbourhood of the great pearl fishery in the Gulf of
Manar, between Ceylon and the Carnatic.--E.]

[Footnote 68: Now called Golconda. But the dominions of Narsinga seem
then to have included the whole southern peninsula of India, except the
coasts of Canara and Malabar, from Visiapour and the Deccan to Cape
Comorin.--E.]

Many princes apprehending vast loss to their revenues, by this new
course which the Portuguese had discovered for carrying on a direct
trade by sea between Europe and India, used their endeavours to drive
them from that country. For this purpose, the Soldan of Egypt[69], who
was principally affected by this new trade, gave out that he would
destroy the holy places in Jerusalem, if the Portuguese persisted in
trading to Malabar. Believing him in earnest, Maurus, a monk of Mount
Sinai, went to Rome with a letter from the Soldan to the pope,
signifying his intention to destroy those places, sacred in the
estimation of the Christians, in revenge for the injury done to his
trade by the Portuguese. The pope sent Maurus into Portugal, where the
purport of his message was known before his arrival, and such
preparations made for driving the Moors from the trade of India, that
Maurus returned to Cairo with more alarming intelligence than he had
brought. The king of Portugal informed his holiness by letter, that his
intentions in prosecuting these eastern discoveries were to propagate
the holy faith, and to extend the papal jurisdiction over the countries
of the heathen, by which the pope was entirely reconciled to his
proceedings.

[Footnote 69: This last mameluke Soldan of Egypt was Almalec al Ashraf
Abul Nasr Sayf oddin Kansu al Gauri, commonly called Campson Gauri, the
24th of the Circassian dynasty, who reigned from 1500 to 1516, when he
was slain in battle near Aleppo by Selim Emperor of the Turks.--Astley,
I. 58. b.]

Along the eastern coast of Africa, the Moors or Arabs had s