The Portuguese discovered the Cape route to India in 1488, but it was not till ten years later that they first crossed the Indian Ocean and appeared on the west coast of India. They visited all important places on the coasts, and the great Islands of the Malay Archipelago, and established themselves in many places. They were not welcome, however, and were treated as intruders by Oriental traders. Many and fierce were the encounters between the Moors, and Arabs, and the intruders, who were, in the greater number, buccaneers and pirates rather than merchants. Numerous references to opium occur in the literature of those times. Vespucci mentions “opium, aloes, and many other drugs too numerous to detail” in a list of the cargo carried by Cabral’s fleet from India to Lisbon in 1501. In 1511 Giovanni da Empoli mentions the capture of eight Gujarat ships laden with opium and other merchandize; and in a letter written in 1513 by Albuquerque to the King of Portugal, he says “I also send you a man of Aden who knows how to work afyam (opium) and the manner of collecting it. If Your Highness would believe me, I would order poppies of the Açores to be sown in all the fields of Portugal and command afyam to be made, which is the best merchandize that obtains in these places, and by which much money is made; owing to the thrashing which we gave Aden no afyam has come to India, and where it once was worth 12 pardoes a faracolla, there is none to be had at 80. Afyam is nothing else, Senhor, but the milk of the poppy; from Cayro (_sic_) whence it used to come, none comes now from Aden; therefore, Senhor, I would have you order them to be sown and cultivated, because a shipload would be used yearly in India, and the labourers would gain much also, and the people of India are lost without it, if they do not eat it; and set this fact in order, for I do not write to Your Highness an insignificant thing.” Duarte Barbosa[13] (1516) makes several references to opium:— Duy (Diu): “They load at this port of the return voyage cotton ... and opium, both that which comes from Aden, and that which is made in the kingdom of Cambay, which is not so fine as that of Aden.” Peigu (Burma): “Many Moorish ships assemble at these ports of Peigu, and bring thither much cloth of Cambay and Palecate, coloured cottons and silks, which the Indians call patola, which are worth a great deal here; they also bring opium, copper ... and a few drugs from Cambay.” Ava: “The merchants bring here for sale quicksilver, vermilion, coral, copper ... opium, scarlet cloth and many other things from the kingdom of Cambay.” D’Orta described Cambay opium as yellowish, while the Aden variety was black and hard, and apparently the better liked kind.[14]