My visit to the horrible _baracouns_ made me quite miserable, so vividly did they bring before me all the horrors of the but recently-changed system of compulsory emigration. I did my best to forget them; and on the eve of my departure from Macao I went to see the grotto associated with the name of Camoens. It will be remembered that the poet was banished to Macao in 1556 on account of his quarrel with the authorities at Goa, whither he had been sent after the fracas in the streets of Lisbon, in which he wounded a royal equerry. He seems on the whole to have enjoyed his exile, for he obtained a post with a large salary, and in two years made quite a fortune. This so-called grotto is not really a cave now, whatever it may originally have been, but is a picturesque little building perched on a site commanding a beautiful view of the bay and its shipping. Truly a fitting scene to inspire the rhapsody in which Camoens celebrated the glory of his fellow-countryman, Vasco da Gama, and bemoaned the sad fate of the beautiful Iñez de Castro, who, the story goes, after being for some ten years the mistress of the Infante of Portugal, Dom Pedro, was secretly married to him in 1354, and murdered by order of her father-in-law in 1355. When the bereaved husband came to the throne he put two of the murderers of his bride to death by torture; and, according to Camoens, had the dead body of Iñez exhumed, dressed in royal robes, and placed upon the throne she would have occupied had she lived, to receive homage from the court. [Sidenote: THE LUSIADS] In the _Lusiads_, which has been called the "Epos of Commerce," and is to the Portuguese what Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_ is to the English, a vivid picture is given of the grandeur of the poet's native country in the fifteenth century, when it was the rival of Spain, and a leader in the colonization of distant lands. Perhaps one of the finest passages of this remarkable poem, or series of poems, is that in which its author invokes the mighty spirit of the storm, Adamastor, the fierce guardian of the Cape of Good Hope, over whom Vasco da Gama and Magellan, also of Portuguese birth, both triumphed. Now that time has proved how fatal to the real welfare of both Spain and Portugal was the wealth of India and of Mexico, one cannot help feeling that the poet may perhaps have had something of a prophetic intuition of the future decadence of the peninsular kingdoms, when he placed a giant in the pathway of the Conquistadores, to bar the way against them.