When taken to the site, Jorges finds lumps of silver lying on the ground. When Jorges returns with a contingent of excited fanatics and prospectors, they can find no sign of the tribe, but they immediately build a makeshift church in which to house the crystal. At the beginning of the eighteenth-century, the Portuguese empire suffers an additional blow with Omani victories in the east coast of Africa. Additional weight is placed on the inviolable colony of Lusitania, the one as yet uncontested Portuguese claim on the Indian Ocean. Settlement in Mistorak flourishes as trepang and pearls provide a flourishing export commodity.
Colonists develop a taste for turtle and crocodile.
There are occasional incursions by Dutch and Indonesian vessels, but these are forcefully repelled. In general, a lawlessness prevails and slaves are imported from India as sexual concubines. By the second half of the eighteenth-century, however, Lusitania undergoes a radical change. Its impetus occurs in 1759, when Jesuits are expelled from Portugal and Brazil. There is sufficient distance from Lisbon for Lusitania to provide sanctuary for exiled Jesuits, who re-establish their missions with much greater determination.