The eleventh century was at first marked by great Christian successes, especially in the west of the peninsula. In 1055 Ferdinand “the Great,” king of Leon, Castile, and Gallicia, invaded the Beira; in 1057 he took Lamego and Viseu; and in 1064 Coimbra, where he died in the following year. He arranged for the government of his conquests in the only way possible under the feudal system, by forming them into a county, extending to the Mondego, with Coimbra as its capital. The first count of Coimbra was Sesnando, a recreant Arab vizir, who had advised Ferdinand to invade his district and had assisted in its easy conquest. He had married a Christian, and was ready to defend his new religion and the dominions he held under the Christian king with all the more vigour from the knowledge that the Moorish emīrs and wālis to the south regarded him as an apostate. But though Sesnando’s county of Coimbra was the great frontier county of Gallicia, and the most important conquest of Ferdinand “the Great,” it was not thence that the kingdom which was to develop out of his dominions was to take its name. Among the counties of Gallicia was one called the “comitatus Portucalensis,” because it contained within its boundaries the famous city at the mouth of the Douro, known in Roman and Greek times as the Portus Cale, and in modern days as Oporto, or “The Port.” This county of Oporto or Portugal was the one destined to give its name to the future kingdom, and was held at the time of Ferdinand’s death by Nuno Mendes, the founder of one of the most famous families in Portuguese history. [Illustration: VIEW OF OPORTO AND VILLA NOVA FROM THE SERRA CONVENT. (_After a print by Godhino._)]