CHAPTER VIII (A.D. 1504-1572) THE various processes by which the Portugese acquired their settlements in India form some of the most interest- ing episodes in its history. It was on May 22, A.D. 1499, that the navigator Vasco da Gama arrived at Calicut, on the Malabar coast, after having rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and after having had a venturesome voyage across the then unknown seas separating Africa from India. He set out on his return journey to Lisbon in September of the same year, and his accounts of the wealth of India were so inspiring that in the following year an expedition under Pedro Alvarez Cabral was despatched from Portugal. This expedition arrived at Calicut the same year, and the first Portugese factory was founded there, which was broken up, however, on the return of the expedition to Lisbon in A.D. 1501. Two years later Alfonso da Albuquerque arrived in India in command of a third expedition, who saw that if trade was to be maintained, the settlers must fortify their settlements so as to be able to engage in commerce with safety. Accordingly he established a factory and built a fort at Cochin, and three years later, taking a fleet of sixteen ships and a number of troops, he settled at and fortified Goa and began trading and fighting on a large scale. Using Goa as his base, he sought far and wide for the places he desired which could control all the export and import trade of Western India, and the routes by which such trade passed. This search inevit-