great hospitality, and furnished them with a good ship, in which they had a favorable passage round the Cape of Good Hope, arriving at Lisbon August 10, 1584. Four years before, Portugal had passed under the rule of Philip II, of Spain, who had thus united on his single head the crowns of both the East and the West Indies; and to him these ambassadors were charged with a friendly message. The viceroy of Portugal received them at Lisbon with every attention. At Madrid they were received by Philip II himself with the greatest marks of distinction. Having traversed Spain, they embarked at Alicante, but were driven by a storm into the island of Majorca, thereby escaping an Algerine fleet and a Turkish squadron, both of which were cruising in that neighborhood. Sailing thence they landed at Leghorn, where Pierro de’ Medici, brother of the grand duke of Tuscany, was waiting to attend them. They spent the carnival at Pisa, and thence by Florence proceeded towards Rome. Aquiviva, general of the Jesuits (the fourth successor of Loyola), was very pressing with the Pope for a reception without display; but Gregory XIII (the same to whom we owe the reform of the calendar) had determined in consistory that the honor of the church and of the holy see required a different course. The ambassadors were met at Viterbo by the Pope’s light horse, and were escorted into the city by a long cavalcade of Roman nobles. The whole of the corso up to Jesus, the church and house of the Jesuits, where the ambassadors were to lodge, was crowded with people, who greeted their arrival with deafening shouts. As they alighted from their carriage, they were received by Father Aquiviva, attended by all the Jesuits then at Rome, who conducted them to the church, where _Te Deum_ was chanted.