so much solemnity on the banks of the Tagus proved, indeed, a solemn farce; his own historian adding the shameful statement, that after the capture of these peaceable vessels, “the captain-major commanded them” (his soldiers) “to cut off the hands, and ears, and noses of all the crews of the captured vessels, and put them into one of the small vessels, in which he also placed the friar, without ears, or nose, or hands, which he ordered to be strung round his neck with a palm-leaf for the king, on which he told him to have a curry made to eat of what his friar brought him.”[36] Perhaps no more refined acts of barbarity are to be found recorded in the page of history than those which Correa relates with so much simplicity of his countryman; they would seem, indeed, to have been almost matters of course in the early days of the maritime supremacy of the Portuguese, and may in some measure account for the unsatisfactory condition into which that once great nation has now fallen. Supposing, however, the exquisite barbarism of sending to the king the hands, ears, and nose of his ambassador, _to whom Dom Gama had granted a safe conduct_, not enough to convey to the ruler of Calicut a sufficiently strong impression of the greatness, and grandeur, and power, and wisdom, and civilisation of the Christian monarch, whose subjects he had offended, the captain-major ordered the feet of these poor innocent wretches, whom he had already so fearfully mutilated, “to be tied together, as they had no hands with which to untie them; and in order that they should not untie them with their teeth, he ordered them” (his crew) “to strike upon their teeth with staves, and they knocked them down their throats, and they were thus put on board, heaped up upon the top of each other, mixed up with the blood which streamed from them; and he ordered mats and dry leaves to be spread over them, and the sails to be set for the shore, and the vessel set on fire.”[37] [Sidenote: Arrives at Cochym, 7th Nov., where he loads,]