REFLECTIONS ON PORTUGUESE OFFICIALS 155 their value. A similar policy of permitting their crews " to load some small thing in their cabins," and a modest percentage on the profits of the voyage, was afterwards advocated for the port-to-port trade in Asiatic waters. Such a system could perhaps be kept under check in the return fleets to Lis- bon. At the distant Indian harbours it defied control, and quickly grew into a competing private trade on a great scale. The sweets of sudden and surrepti- tious wealth turned the Portuguese offi- cials into unscru- pulous adventurers, careless of their mas- ter's interest in their own haste to be rich. The abuses inci- dent to such a system fill many pages of the letters home, as a search through the records of the India Office proves. As early as 1513 a cavalier was charged with fraudulent dealing in the rice required for the Portuguese Government. Of two galleons allowed for the king's trade, one was lost through overloading, while the captain freighted the other with his pri- VASCO DA GAMA. After a Ms. portrait in the British Museum.
