the island of Socotra, they stormed the wealthy city of Ormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. These explorations had the most important results, and Affonso de Alboquerque was glad, when the appointed time arrived for him at the close of 1509, to take over the government of India as second viceroy. Affonso de Alboquerque was the greatest of all the Portuguese heroes who served in India, and he owes his fame not only to his feats of arms, numerous and glorious as they were, but to the wisdom and justice of his civil government, and to the fact that he was a great and a far-seeing statesman, as well as a brave warrior. Like Francisco de Almeida, he had been a favourite and an intimate friend of King John II., in whose reign he filled the Court office of Master of the Horse. He commenced his viceroyalty by making a fresh attack on Calicut, the headquarters of the Moplas. He succeeded in burning the palace of the Zamorin and wrecking the city, but the populace then arose in force and drove the Portuguese back to their ships, killing many of their leaders, including the Marshal of Portugal, Dom Fernando Coutinho. Alboquerque then proceeded to take a more important step; he soon perceived that Cochin was too far south to serve as the headquarters of either the trade or the political dominion of the Portuguese, and that it was necessary to occupy some more central spot on the Malabar coast for a capital. The place he selected was Goa, a port in the possession of the Mohammedan king of Bijápur. Thither he sailed with twenty ships and twelve hundred men; and one feat of arms, performed by Antonio de Noronha, at Panjim, at the mouth of the river Goa, where the present capital of the Portuguese possessions in India is situated, laid the city open to him. The citizens, who had been discouraged by the prophecies of a holy mendicant that they were about to be conquered by a foreign people from a distant land, surrendered at once; eight leading men gave Alboquerque the keys of the gates, and the Portuguese viceroy entered the city in triumph on February 17, 1510. But he did not hold it long, for on August 15th, Yūsuf Adil Shah, King of Bijápur, recaptured the city after fierce fighting. Alboquerque did not despair; he received reinforcements from Portugal, and on November 25th, he carried the city by storm, slaying over two thousand Mohammedans, and firmly established himself there.