72 THE QUEST FOR INDIA BY SEA the honour of Ms mistress. He might know nothing about either, but he was equally convinced of both. This confidence, light-hearted yet profound, led alike to the success and to the failure of the Portuguese in India. It plunged them into military enterprises, rendered glorious by acts of individual valour, but far beyond their collective strength. It. impelled them on a career of religious pros- elytism, illustrated by beau- tiful examples of personal piety, yet ending in political atrocities which left an in- delible stain on the Chris- tian cause. The missionary spirit of the military Order of Christ, with the sword in its hand and the Cross on its banner, had animated its Grand Master Prince Henry and the sovereigns of his house who, during eighty years (1418-1498), carried out the work of continuous discovery. It burned in Da G-ama's breast as he fell on his knees in sight of the Indian shore. It breathes in the prophetic strains of the tenth book of the Lusiad, and in that magnificent vision of a Chris- tian Indian empire which the Portuguese, as the heaven- sent successors 'of St. Thomas, were to build up. It excuses the exaggerated view of Portuguese historians VA8CO DA GAMA. After a contemporary oil painting.
