This Governor, the fear of whose name extended far into China, to whom the Kings of Narsinga and Persia, Siam, Cambaya, Turkey, and Cairo sent gifts, the conqueror of Ormuz and Cananor, Goa and Malaca, who dispatched his agents even to the remote Moluccas, and who was determined to destroy Mecca (five hundred Portuguese were to ride swiftly inland from the coast, take it by surprise and burn it to ashes) and thought of altering the course of the Nile, did not disdain to occupy himself with the alphabets for teaching children to read, the missals and pontificals for churches, pearl-fisheries, the horse trade, the colour of the Red Sea, how to pack quicksilver, and a hundred other matters of great diversity, while on the question of arms and merchandise to be sent from Portugal to India[17] no modern official report could exceed his letters in accuracy and minuteness. For instance, he declares that lances are sent out unsharpened, as they come from the Biscay factories, to the care of a _barbeiro inchado_ in India, and in 1513 says that he now has workmen in Goa who can turn out better guns than those of Germany. Unfortunately in Portugal India was regarded merely as a mine to be exploited, not as a field that required farming in order to continue productive. Albuquerque, when, as he says, over his neck in work, had to answer great bundles of letters from the King, often filled with carping criticisms of his actions or containing contradictory projects. He complains that there is a new policy for each year, almost in the words of Dante in the _Purgatorio_: fai tanto sottili Provvedimenti ch’ a mezzo Novembre Non giunge quel que tu d’Ottobre fili. It must be confessed that Albuquerque in these letters, filled with the eloquence of the Old Testament, gave as good as he got: the pity is that the King probably only saw them in the official summaries. “Sir, the soldiers in India require to be paid their salaries,” he says on one occasion, or “Your Highness is not well informed,” and he warns him that should matters continue as in the past the empire will come crumbling about the King’s ears. Again he writes that he is not amazed that the accusations should be made, but amazed that the King should believe them. The names of his accusers were withheld, as later in trials before the Inquisition, but he knew whence the trouble came and does not mince his words in telling the King of the corruption, greed, carelessness, and incompetence of the officials in India appointed by the King. “And if I were not afraid of Your Highness I would send you a dozen of these mischief-makers in a cage.”