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the King, however, sent one of the chief Brahmins of the place, with a white flag of truce, in the vain hope that some terms of peace might be agreed upon. But the captain-major rejected every condition, and ordering the Indian boat to return to the shore, and the Brahmin to be safely secured on board of his ship, he bombarded the city, by which he made a great destruction.' Nor was his vengeance satisfied by this wanton destruction of private property, and the sacrifice of the lives of many of the inhabitants of the city; while thus engaged there came in from the offing two large ships, and twenty-two sambacks and Malabar vessels from Coromandel, laden with rice for the Moors of Calicut:' these he seized and plundered, with the exception of six of the smaller vessels belonging to Cananore. Had the acts of this representative of a civilised monarch been confined to plunder, and the destruction of private property at sea and on shore, they might have been passed over without comment as acts of too frequent occurrence; but besides this, they were deeply dyed with the blood of his innocent victims. The prayers he had offered to God with so much solemnity on the banks of the Tagus proved, indeed, a solemn farce; his own historian adding the shameful statement, that after the capture of these peaceable vessels, the captain-major commanded them' (his soldiers) to cut off the hands, and ears, and noses of all the crews of the captured vessels, and put them into one of the small vessels, in which he also placed the friar, without ears, or nose, or hands, which he ordered to be strung round his neck with a palm leaf for the King, on which he told him to have a curry made to eat of what his friar brought him.

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"Perhaps no more refined acts of barbarity are to be found recorded in the page of history than those which Correa relates with so much simplicity of his countryman; they would seem, indeed, to have been almost matters of course in the early days of the maritime supremacy of the Portuguese, and may in some measure account for the unsatisfactory condition into which that once great nation has now fallen. Supposing, however, the exquisite barbarism of sending to the King the hands, ears, and nose of his ambassador, to whom Dom Gama had given a safe conduct, not enough to convey to the ruler of Calicut a sufficiently strong impression of the greatness, and grandeur, and power, and wisdom, and civilization of the Christian monarch, whose subjects he had offended, the captain-major ordered the feet of these poor innocent wretches, whom he had already so fearfully mutilated, 'to be tied together, as they had no hands with which to untie them; and in order that they should not untie them with their teeth, he ordered them' (his crew) 'to strike upon their teeth with staves, and they knocked them down their throats, and they were thus put on board, heaped up upon the top of cach other, mixed up with the blood which streamed from them; and he ordered mats and

dry leaves to be spread over them, and the sails set for the shore, and the vessel set on fire.'

"In this floating funeral pile eight hundred Moors, who had been captured in peaceful commerce, were driven on shore as a warning to the people of Calicut, who flocked in great numbers to the beach to extinguish the fire, and draw out from the burning mass whom they found alive, over whom they made great lamentations.""

"But the King of Calicut, either anxious to avoid war, or to obtain information of the condition and power of the vessels then under Dom Gama, sent a confidential Brahmin to Cochym, with a letter to the captainmajor, in which, after stating the force now at his command, he expressed a wish that there should be no more wars nor disputes' between them, and that he would make compensation for the injury his people had sustained on the previous voyage; but the Brahmin received no better treatment than his predecessor had done. He was tied to the bits, or framework that surrounds the main-mast; an iron shovel, full of embers, was put close to his shins, until large blisters rose upon them, whilst the interpreter kept shouting to him to tell the truth,' as to whether the King his master meant what he said in the letter he had addressed by him to Dom Gama; but as he would not speak, 'the fire was brought closer by degrees, until he could not bear it,' and when he had told all he knew, the captain-major ordered the upper and lower lips of the Brahmin to be cut off, so that all his teeth showed; and he ordered the ears of a dog on board ship to be cut off, and he had them fastened and sewn with many stitches on the Brahmin, instead of his, and he sent him in the Indian boat to return to Calicut!"

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"When Dom Gama had completed his arrangements at Cochym, he sailed for Cananore. The King of Calicut with his fleet lay in wait for him. " Coming along the coast with a light land breeze, there were so many sail' that the Portuguese did not see the end of them. In the van there might be as many as 'twenty large ships, with many fustas and sambacks.' These Dom Gama ordered his caravals, each of which carried thirty men with four heavy guns below, and six falconets, and ten swivel-guns on deck, to attack, which they did with great vigour, and soon brought down the mast of the flag-ship of the Moors, killing many of the crew, and sinking three of the large vessels. Amid this havoc, Dom Gama himself bore down with the rest of his fleet, and, as the wind freshened, he came with great force through the midst of his opponents, doing wonders' with his artillery, and firing both broadsides as he passed, shattering them both in hull and rigging, and leaving the Calicut fleet almost a helpless mass.

"But conquest and submission were not enough for this Portuguese maurauder. His fiendish spirit of revenge seems to have had no limits.

He sent the boats with falconets and swivel-guns, and in each boat twenty armed men, with crossbow-men, to go to the ships which were becalmed, and shoot at them above and kill the crews. This they did, so that the Moors threw themselves into the sea, and went swimming round the ships.' Gama then sent his boat to the ships and caravals, to tell the crews to flock to the Moorish ships and plunder them, and set them on fire.' After which he proceeded on his course for Cananore, 'giving the Lord great praise and thanks for the great favour which He had shown him.'"

"On the 1st of September, 1503, Vasco de Gama completed his second voyage and reached Lisbon, anchoring 'before the city,' with 'ten ships laden with very great wealth, after leaving such great services accomplished in India.'

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"When the King of Portugal heard the news of Dom Gama's arrival he was greatly rejoiced, and sent the captain of his guard to bid him welcome, he himself proceeding on horseback with many people to the cathedral, to give much praise to the Lord before the altar of Saint Vincent,' an example which the captain-major and all his captains soon afterwards followed; when prayers were ended, he kissed the hand of the King, who bestowed many favours upon the officers and crews of the ships, while granting to Dom Gama and his heirs the anchorage dues of India,' and conferring upon him and his descendants the title of the 'admiral of its seas for ever.'"

"De Gama having gone out finally a third time as Viceroy was seized with a fatal illness; and having, as Correa states, 'set his affairs in order, like a good Christian, with all the sacraments of the church, and ordered that his bones should be conveyed to the kingdom of Portugal, he died on Christmas Eve, 24th December, 1524.""

THE CHARTOMETER.-We have received the circular of an ingenious little invention by Mr. Edward R. Morris, of Birmingham, for measuring distances on charts; it is in shape and size like an ordinary watch, with a projection instead of the ring. At the end of the projection is a fine milled wheel, which is connected with what would represent the minute hand of the watch, while the dial is a card (of which there are several), marked round in inches, or parts of an inch, representing the scale of the chart. The milled wheel is moved gently along the face of the chart from one point to the other of the distance required, and the distance is registered by the hand. The great diversity in the scales of our charts, will, we fear, effectually prevent this little instrument being so generally used as it seems to deserve. For river work, the distances are far more easily measured by this instrument than with the ordinary dividers.

WANTED: A MINISTRY OF COMMERCE.

B

EFORE we can issue another number of the Nautical, our national Parliament will have reassembled; and, we earnestly trust, will, looking to Mr. Forster's speech at Bradford, have been afforded, or if not, will have demanded and obtained, a fitting opportunity for discussing the many important topics raised under the simple words, "Our Merchant Ships and Merchant Seamen." It will, indeed, be sad, if one night early in the session cannot be given to our Commerce, now that the claims of Ballot, Reform, Lucifer Matches, Church, Beer, and Bible, have been disposed of.

Beer and the Bible contain in themselves for ever enough of interest and moral force to set the two great parties of the greatest State in the world at loggerheads; and have, but just recently, assisted to turn out of office one of the strongest of ministries. It is our misfortune, as a nation, that brother" Bung" has a political existence, which brother "Jack" never has had, and, en necessitate rei, never can have. It is singular that the people of Great Britain, the chief of all maritime States, will rack the country, and waste months of talk on questions relating either to the exact moment for closing public-houses, or to the length and colour of a parson's vestment, or the details of his gestures, but will not afford one whole night in a session for the consideration of merchant shipping matters. A people dependent for their food and clothing, nay, even for their very existence, on our merchant ships and merchant seamen, not only pay no consistent attention to the subject, but even do not care to provide funds to establish an office of State in which it can be adequately dealt with. At the same time, members of Parliament who can get no votes from seamen, do not take that warm interest in them that they do in publicans and parsons. We do not say that this is the case with all members of Parliament; but a cynic once said, that out of the mystic 658, the eight would very nearly cover the exceptions.

In our foregoing remarks, we do not mean to imply that shipping questions are not sometimes discussed; but what we do mean to imply is, that they are either generally shunted to make way for something else, or that the discussion raised takes a direction that is more personal and less broad and patriotic than the subject demands. It is said that shipowners, like railway directors, are powerful in Parliament; but seamen are not. However this may be, there can be no doubt that, had the nation and the nation's representatives given as much attention to our merchant ships and merchant seamen as they deserve, or had they

given the Chief of the Department dealing with the subject a sufficiently authoritative and important position, such a bewildering but well-meant agitation as that recently led by a member for an inland town would have been impossible.

In every other important maritime State on the globe, and, indeed, in some of our Colonies, there is a high Government Department or Bureau, having charge of maritime affairs. But the empire of Great Britain, with her twenty-six thousand ships, her seven and a-half millions of tons of shipping, her seven hundreds of millions of pounds sterling worth of exports and imports, her lighthouse system (or want of system), a lifesaving organization such as the world never before saw round her indented shores, and her half-a-million of seamen and fishermen always afloat, can only afford that the welfare of her merchant ships and merchant seamen can be entrusted to a petty sub-department in an office, created for different purposes, and already over-burthened with other weighty matters. It thus comes to pass that the English Bureau, dealing with merchant ships and merchant seamen, a Bureau that assumes to lead the whole world in maritime matters, whose motto is "non nobis solum, sed toti mundo nati," occupies, within Britain herself, a position subordinate to, and to a certain extent dependent on, another Bureau, whose functions include the prosecution of criminals, and the numbering and lettering of cabs. But, this is not the worst; for, in the Board of Trade itself, our merchant ships and merchant seamen are co-ordinate with railways, gas, joint stock companies, designs, and so forth, and consequently get just so much attention, and no more, as can be given to them with other matters. A minister (not being in the Cabinet), receiving £2,000 a year, a chief permanent secretary with £1,500 a year, and a Parliamentary secretary at £1,500 a year, are deemed by the people and Parliament of England enough as heads to keep right (or as prickly people, like one or two of our Scotch friends, would say, to interfere with) all lights, buoys, and beacons, the dangers of navigation, cotton statistics, the ownership, measurement, and registry of ships, the training of merchant seamen, the survey of unseaworthy and overladen ships, the prosecution of offenders against merchant shipping laws, the administration of railway affairs, the wardenship of the standards of all weights and measures, the passing for traffic of railways and railway bridges, and metropolitan tramways, the rule of the road at sea, the registration of joint stock companies, the quality and supply of gas, the heavy work connected with inquiries into casualties on railways, the examination of masters, mates, and engineers of ships, the inspection of steam ships and steam boilers and machinery afloat, the accounts of life assurance societies; and to deal with various other subjects and matters, for which no other godfathers have been found. In administrative affairs, "Nobody's Child " may always be affiliated to the Board of Trade.

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