The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1909-03-05
WAS A MAN OF RtN0WN.

WAC y WAN VI htNo"N'
Four hundred and ffty-six years
ago, in ALEXANDRIA, Portugal, was born
Alfonso Albuquerque. Albuquerque is
a name seldom heard now, but four
centuries ago it was a household word
and he was known as the great AL
buaueruue'' or the MARS OF Portu-
gal" and held in such reverence as we
of today attach to the name OF Wash
ington and Lincoln. 1t Is difficult III
these DAYS of Portugafs unimportance
to understand that she once occupied
a place in the political and commercial
world second to no other nation. Her
rise to this eminence came in the 10Th
and the 10th centuries and by the
middle of the latter century she had
reached the height of her prestige and
ranked as one of the most powerful
European monarchies, while Lisbon was
one of the most important commercial
cities of the continent. There was no
one who contributed more to Portu-
GALS fame and to Portugals wealth
than Albuquerque. Her period of eX-
mansion began with the rediscovery OF
MADEIRA in 1910, and the Azores fif-
teen wears later. Before the close OF
the century Diaz, a Portuguese navi'
gator, had discovered the cape of Good
Hope. and this made it possible for
De CANA to find his way to India
Pope Alexander VI by his famous
bull of demarcation, made Brazil Por-
tuguese territory by right of discov-
ery.
While all these rapid strides in Por-
tugaFs future greatness were being
made Alfonso Albuquerque was re-
eeiving the training necessary for his
future adventures. He was of the
highest rank of nobility in his own
country and was connected by blood
ties with the royal families of Spain
and France, and besides he was reared
IN the house hold of his own king, AL
fonso V. His military training was
received in his service in Morocco in
the amending contest between Portu-
gal and the Moores. He became an &C.
complished sailor by accompanying
several of the expeditions sent out by
the king to explore the African coast
When the wealth of the Indies had
been attested by numerous voyagers
hence by Portuguese ships, Albuquer'
que was fired with the ambition to
place the trade relations upon a
securer basis and to that end he was
given a fleet with which he proceeded
to Indian, where he built fort at
Cochin on the coast of Malabar. This
visit convinced him of the importance
to Portugal of securing a firmer foot
ing in the far east, and he returned
to kindle the fires of enthusiasm with
the king and his advisers. He was
commissioned to return as governor
in-chief of the Indies with almost alb
solute powers. While en- route he cap
tured OrmuZ barren rock in the
Persian gulf, of which the Orientals
said, 1.-THE world is a ring and Ormuz
is its precious stone" 1t was the seat
of the pearl fisheries and one of the
chief commercial cities of the world
Ormuz really was the guard to the
Persian gulf and the key to the trade
of the Indies.
Calicut, city which then held the
rank among the cities of India now
enjoyed by Calcutta, was his next con
quest and it was at Calicut where Por.
tuguese merchants grew rich and Por-
tuguese priests labored to convert the
heather until the country fell into the
hands of Britain century after. Al
buquerque spent a whole year in sub
DUNG the city of Goa, from which it
is said he eXacted the unheard-of trib-
ute of one hundred millions of dollars
and it was here that he died after re-
ducing the shores and the cities of the
two great peninsulas of southern Asia
to Portuguese rule. These conquests
seem to have served to sharpen his
appetite for more worlds to conquer
and he turned his attention and his
guns against the cities commanding
the Red sea and the Persian gulf. He
even contemplated the conquest of
Egypt and conceived a scheme for
turning the river Nile from its source
and thus leave Egypt desert. The
rise of Portuguese conquest could be
made to read as fiction and yet it
is strange fact of history that
within one-quarter of century from
the zenith of her glory she virtually
became a Spanish dependency.