One morning of late November, 1552, amidst a breaking surf, a boat was lowered from the ship's side, and made towards the island where they had abandoned Xavier. The lay brother, the Chinese, the Indian, and one Portuguese merchant named Alvarez, ascended a sandy hillock and hurried to the prostrate body of a man. There, on a bed of sand, lay the great apostle of the Indies, his head, grey with toil and suffering, exposed to wind and sun. His face was flushed with fever, his thin hands clasped his crucifix, and beside him was a little knapsack containing the necessaries for Mass. They bore him to a shed of mats and leaves; they bled him, but, being ignorant, pricked a vein which only produced convulsions, and the operation was twice repeated. He was delirious, and muttered only, "My Lord and my God! Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! O most Holy Trinity! Queen of Heaven, show thyself a Mother!" He came to his senses, smiling sweetly, and thanking those around him, and told them his end was near. At two o'clock on Friday, December 2nd, 1552, he kissed his crucifix, and saying, with a gleam of joy upon his face, "In Thee, O Lord, I have hoped; let me not be confounded for ever," life departed. He was forty-six years of age, and these events happened 343 years ago. What makes the freshness of the body at the present time extraordinary, is that the merchant Alvarez put the body in a large Chinese chest, filled up with unslaked lime to consume the flesh, and they buried it, set up a cross, and two heaps of stones at the head and feet. The following 17th of February, two months and a half later, by the Captain's orders, the coffin was uncovered; but when the lime was taken off, the body was found ruddy and flesh-coloured as though asleep, and on making a puncture the blood flowed, and the priestly vestments were unhurt. In June it was taken to Malacca, where the whole place (except the Governor who had persecuted him, whose name was D'Atayde, and who mocked at it) came to meet it in procession; then it was conveyed to Goa, and all Goa went twenty miles out to sea to receive the body, with great pomp and ceremony. This happened on the 15th of March, 1554. He was already canonized by the people, but Pope Paul V. beatified him, and he was canonized by Gregory XV. in 1622, and promulgated by Urban VIII. This place had a great attraction for Richard, and this was the third pilgrimage he had made here since 1844. Baldæus, a Protestant, in his "History of the Indies," says, "Had Xavier been of the same religion as ourselves, we should have esteemed and honoured him as another St. Paul;" and he concludes his elegy thus: "Oh that it had pleased God that, being what you were, you had been, or might have been, one of us!" Hakluyt, a Protestant, and Tavernier, a Huguenot, and many other Protestants, speak equally in his praise.