Nearly 150,000 souls made their way, by land, to Portugal, whose king, _John II._, dispensed with his scruples of conscience so far as to allow his greed to triumph over his creed. He granted them a passage through his dominion on their way to Africa, and the permission of an eight months' stay in his realm, in consideration of a tax of eight dollars a head, which immense sum he levied from the native Portuguese Jews. Ferdinand and Isabella threatened, and Torquemada incited the Portuguese clergy, but _John II._ had over a million of dollars to quicken his conscience and to wage war if necessary, and expecting it, he instantly put such of the Jewish exiles who were manufacturers of arms and miners to work. But his clemency was of short duration. It soon gave away to the most frightful era of the exiles' sufferings. When the news reached the homeless exiles of the atrocious crimes inflicted upon their brethren on their way to the African coasts, by inhuman captains and heartless crews, seeing nothing but cruel death before them, whether going or whether remaining, they preferred meeting death in Portugal, to exposing themselves to the inhumanity and beastly lusts and tortures of barbarous pirate sailors and African savages, and listlessly awaiting death, and praying for it, they remained after the time purchased for their stay had passed away. To their misfortune the plague broke out in Portugal and raged with deathly fury. Immediately the church arose, held the Jews responsible for the visitation of the plague, and lashed the populace into a relentless fury, because of the visitation of the plague, and the breach of contract on the part of the Jews. The king's creed awoke again simultaneously with the re-awakening of his greed. He issued an edict which threw even that of Torquemada into the shade. All Jewish children below fourteen years of age were torn from their parents' arms, dragged into the church, baptized; those under three years of age were given to Christians, to receive a Christian education, or in other words to be raised as slaves; those between three and ten years of age, were put on board of a ship and conveyed to the newly discovered, unwholesome island of St. Thomas, called "_Ilhas perdidas_," "the isles of perdition," which was colonized by Portuguese condemned criminals, to fare there as best they could. Those between ten and fourteen years were sold as slaves. Then, indeed, the cup of the their affliction was full to the brim. It was a stern truth which Lenau uttered, when he said: "Die Kirche weiss die Schmerzen zu verwalten Das Herz bis in die Wurzel aufzuspalten."