Page:Colonization and Christianity.djvu/199

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AND CHRISTIANITY.
183

would be more fatal to us than all the evils which it is in the power of your God to inflict upon us. We renounce your alliance for ever. Your arms are more powerful than ours; but we are more just than you, and we do not fear them. The Itons are from this day your enemies;—fly from this country, and beware how you approach it again."

Equally detested in every quarter, they saw a confederacy forming to expel them from the east. All the great powers of India entered into the league, and for two or three years carried on their preparations in secret. Their old enemy, the Zamorin, attacked Manjalor, Cochin, and Cananor. The king of Cambaya attacked Chaul, Daman, and Baichaim. The king of Achen laid siege to Malacca. The king of Ternate made war on them in the Moluccas. Agalachem, a tributary to the Mogul, imprisoned the Portuguese merchants at Surat; and the queen of Gareopa endeavoured to drive them out of Onor. The exertions of Ataida averted immediate destruction; but a more formidable power was now preparing to expel them from their ill-acquired and ill-governed possessions,—the Dutch. In little more than a century from the appearance of the Portuguese in India, this nation drove them from Malacca and Ceylon; from most of their possessions on the coast of Malabar; and had, moreover, made settlements on the Coromandel coast. It was high time that this reign of crime and terror came to an end, had a better generation succeeded them. After the death of Sebastian, and the reduction of Portugal by Philip II., the last traces of order or decency seemed to vanish from the Indian settlements. Portugal itself exhibited, with the usual