Under Manoel I (1495-1521) the Great, the Fortunate, and his son João III (1521-57), Gama, Albuquerque and Dom João de Castro are the most conspicuous names; but Dom Francisco de Almeida, first Viceroy of India, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, discoverer of Brazil, Fernão de Magalhães, the harsh and fiery navigator[4] who first penetrated by sea to the North Pacific and was slain in the hour of his triumph--his name lives in the Straits of Magellan--and many more were almost equally celebrated. But especially among the discoverers and early adventurers in India the men of fame are but types of hundreds of less fortunate heroes who perished. Men left Portugal with their lives in their hands, and for every one who (like Fernam Mendez Pinto) survived to tell the tale scores sailed away who were never seen or heard of afterwards. Yet the population of Portugal in the first third of the sixteenth century may have been but 1,500,000, and certainly did not reach twice that figure. That is a fact that must uplift and inspire those who study Portugal’s history or consider her future. For the Portuguese of the sixteenth century fought not against or not only against hordes of undisciplined savages, but against Moors and Turks highly civilised and well equipped with artillery. Perhaps the secret of their success is that their motto was “God, King, and Country,” and that each man among them relied, under Heaven, on himself, not on this or that sect or party or philosophy, election promises or political programmes. They did not wait and watch for some wonderful Ism, like a brazen serpent, to change the face of the world: they as individuals simply, persistently set to work and--changed it. In less than fifty years after the Portuguese first reached India they were in Japan, converting and civilising the Japanese, and had made possible that tremendous saying of Camões: E se mais mundo houvera lá chegára. And had there been more world they would have reached it. That is, of course, a terrible condemnation as well as an undying honour, for unless each generation were to produce an Albuquerque there could be no hope of maintaining conquests so wide, and Albuquerque had had his hands tied by his own countrymen, so that, like the blinded Samson, he achieved the ruin of his enemies by his unaided strength and at the expense of his own life. But if Portuguese statesmanship was at fault in India, there never failed a sprinkling of individuals who spent their lives in ungrudging service and heroic effort to counterbalance errors committed, and often died heartbroken for their pains.