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eastern Asia, and to set all the countries bordering them on the defensive, while he now meditated a more decisive stroke—the conquest of Malacca, which then was the head and front of all the Malayan kingdoms—having for his object the establishment of the power of Portugal in the very centre of the commerce of all the eastern Archipelago.

Such then was the first coming of the European filibusters, with which began the real exploration of the lands of southeastern Asia,—lands which were destined, with hardly an exception, to fall under the dominion of the white peoples, lands in which, after a weary period of suffering and of strife, the men of the brown and yellow races were to watch their birthrights pass into the keeping of the strangers.

It was in dramatic fashion that Dalboquerque made his entry into the harbour of Malacca—the entry of the white men into the inviolate lands which destiny had marked for their possession. It was about the hour of sundown, the author of the Chronicles tells us, and to one who knows the Malay Peninsula that phrase conjures up at once a vivid picture. The merciless heat of the tropic day was passed; a grateful coolness, which yet carries with it a suggestion of melancholy, of spent energies, of exhaustion, had succeeded. The sun lay upon the horizon out yonder in the direction of Sumatra, with great banks of resplendent cloud grouped about it; enormous fan-shaped rays of light stretched upward from it till they attained the very summit of the heavens,