The religious history of Goa is even more striking than its civil Government. It seems to have been a sort of sacerdotal republic--a huge collection of Churches and Convents in a desert place. The province was in its meridian, both civil and religious, 324 years ago. In 1571 it contained 150,000 practical Catholics, and owned half a million of subjects in Portuguese India, and in Old Goa alone there were 200,000 inhabitants. It only _absolutely_ flourished during a space of 135 years. How it must have been cursed by the victims of the tortures of the Inquisition, till God heard their cry, and avenged their blood, so that not one stone remains upon another, whilst the only thing that lives is the shrine of the one saint and gentleman, Xavier, and the tomb of the Christian hero, João da Castro--as if God had preserved them to shine out as everlasting treasures from the ruins of crime! Xavier was the apostle of the Indies; his mission was to reform the manners of Europeans in the Indies, whose lives were a disgrace to the Christian profession, and on the other hand to preach the gospel to the pagan population of the East. There is no space in this book to give an interesting account of him and his works, but he went to India in April, 1541, and was thirty-five years of age. He only lived ten years, and there was no Inquisition in his time. They used to call him the "God of Nature." [Sidenote: _Xavier's Death_.] In April, 1552, he set sail with a little band of apostles for an expedition to China. A shipwreck drove them to Malacca, where they were persecuted and detained. The Governor sent Xavier's vessel, the _Santa Cruz_, to trade at the island of San Chan (Sancian), off the coast of China, with orders to erect no buildings, save shelters of mats and branches. Xavier resolved to embark with the three companions he had kept back--a Chinese, a young Indian, and a lay brother, and after great storms and difficulties Sancian was reached--a desolate sandy region invested only by tigers. To please the Governor of Malacca, the merchants and men on board all turned against Xavier; they denied him sufficient food, and he was struck down by fever.