The history of the Portuguese in South America differs greatly from the story of the growth of their power in Asia; in America they found no wealthy cities and civilized peoples, only poor natives, and it was no wonder that their chief efforts in the sixteenth century were devoted to the development of the lucrative Eastern trade and to Asiatic exploration. Had any one told King Emmanuel that the country which Pedro Alvares Cabral discovered by a mere chance on his way to Asia, would prove of more enduring value to Portugal than the settlements in India, that monarch would not have believed him. Yet such has been the case. Whereas at the present time the Portuguese possessions in Asia have dwindled down to the settlements of Goa, Daman, and Diu in India, and the island of Macao, which are of very little value to the mother country, the great republic of Brazil has expanded into an independent state containing fourteen millions of inhabitants, or more than three times the population of Portugal.[18] It is true that the governments of Portugal and her flourishing daughter across the Atlantic are separated, and that they are politically independent of each other, yet Brazil still continues in close alliance with Portugal, and receives from the mother country the crowds of sturdy immigrants, who are steadily expanding the resources of the greatest country in South America. Brazilians are as proud of the great deeds of their European ancestors as the Portuguese themselves, and even surpass the inhabitants of the mother country in their admiration for Camoens, and the assiduous study of his works. The story of the settlement and gradual colonization of Brazil cannot rival in romantic interest that of the Portuguese exploits in Asia, but it is nevertheless instructive to study the slow growth of the colony which has now become a mighty empire.