[18] _Estimava muito os homens cavalleiros_, says Correa, who knew him personally and insists more than once that he was very accessible. To cope with what Albuquerque himself calls the “mountains of petitions” that beset him he employed six or seven secretaries, but he dealt with them unconventionally, signing them or tearing them up in the street as they were given him, thereby expediting his business but offending the vanity of the petitioners. [Illustration: JOÃO DE CASTRO.] VII DOM JOÃO DE CASTRO (1500-1548) Era tambem de sua pessoa tam esforçado como em letras insigne.--PEDRO DE MARIZ, _Dialogos de Varia Historia_. In that low shady quinta, embowered amongst those tall alcornoques, once dwelt John de Castro, the strange old Viceroy of India.--GEORGE BORROW, _The Bible in Spain_. Castro was still a schoolboy when Albuquerque died. Born in 1500, the son of D. Alvaro de Castro, in high office under Kings João II and Manoel, and a daughter of the Count of Abrantes, he studied with the famous mathematician, Pedro Nunez, and had a scientific as well as a classical education. There is every reason to believe that he was a promising and fervent scholar, but the victories of Dom Duarte de Meneses in North Africa appealed to him even more than did the figures of Euclid, and in 1518 he “took the key of the fields” and fled to Tangier. There he served with the greatest distinction for nine years, and stood high in favour with the Governor, Meneses, who knighted him and on his return to Portugal in 1527 furnished him with a glowing recommendation to the King. Of the next few years of his life comparatively little is known. He received a _comenda_ from the King, was employed on various service, and married D. Leonor de Coutinho, of noble family but poor. Probably he was able to devote considerable time to quiet study. In 1535 he commanded one of the twenty-five Portuguese ships in the Emperor Charles V’s victorious expedition against Tunis. It was on this occasion that Castro’s lifelong friend, the gallant poet Prince Luis, followed his example of 1518 and ran away to join the expedition against the wishes of his brother King João III.[19] In the autumn Castro was back in his favourite Cintra. There he himself planted a _quinta_, to which his thoughts, later in India, constantly turned. Those who go along the delightful shady road of orchard and running streams, rock and woodland from Cintra to Monserrate and Collares come in a few minutes to an archway and green door on the right. It is here, in the _quinta_ now known as _Penha Verde_, overlooking the fertile plain of Collares to the sea, that Castro, like Pitt planting by moonlight or Garibaldi in his island, indulged his love of husbandry.