VALUE OF PORTUGAL'S EASTERN TRAFFIC 151 to trust to accidental notices rather than to continuous statements. I have mentioned that the first cargo brought home by Vasco da Gama was reckoned to have repaid the whole cost of the expedition sixty-fold. Cabral returned to Lisbon in 1501 with a freight of precious spices, per- fumes, porcelain, pearls, rubies, and diamonds. In 1504 Albuquerque followed with " forty pound of pearls and four hundred of the small, a diamond of wonderful big- ness," and other costly articles. The gains of trade were augmented by the profits of piracy for every Moslem or heathen ship was a fair prize. A single Cali- cut vessel in 1501 yielded, among other treasure, 1500 costly pearls. In 1503 another capture contained " an idol of gold weighing thirty pound," with emeralds for eyes, a huge ruby on his breast, " and part of him covered with a cloak of gold set with jewels." In return for gems and for the pepper, ginger, cinnamon, mace, nutmegs, cloves, drugs, dyes, porcelains, per- fumes, carved work, art products, and textile marvels of the East, the main commodity sent from Portugal, as from the old Roman empire, was silver. But she also exported woollen fabrics, to a large extent woven from English fleeces on Flanders looms, linens, red cloth of state, Genoa velvets, cutlery, metal work, hardware, corals, glass, mirrors, and chemicals. Besides the direct commerce with Portugal, the port-to-port trade from the Malabar coast to the Persian Gulf on the one side, and to Malacca and the Far East on the other, yielded large returns. One of its most
