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and undertaking the arduous march to Ayutha overland, and as the men of his race and age were little apt to be daunted by obstacles, we may perhaps conclude that he decided upon the latter alternative. If this be so, we must hail Antonio de Miranda, who to us is nothing but a name, as the first if the least articulate of the European explorers of Lower Siam and a portion of the Malay Peninsula.

The noise which the invasion of Malacca had oc- casioned had not been without its effect upon other kingdoms of Malaya, and before ever Dalboquerque sailed for India, embassies reached him from the Sultan of Kampar, whose kingdom was situated on the western shores of Sumatra, who, though he was a son-in-law of the ill-fated Sultan Muhammad Shah, was moved by his fear of "the fury of the Portuguese” to make terms for himself with the conquerors. From Java too came overtures of friendship, dictated by the wholesome dread which the prowess of the Portuguese had inspired, and the Sultan of the Sumatran kingdom of Měnangkâbau hastened to follow the example set by his neighbours. Thus Dalboquerque's design to build up Malacca as the centre of trade in southeastern Asia, preserving under the flag of Portugal the position which it had occupied under the rule of its own kings,—a design which he had kept steadily in view from the first—was accomplished with little difficulty, and the conquest of this single port served to establish the power of the aliens upon a firm basis in this region, and through the prestige it brought to them secured immediately a political and commercial