They landed in Calicut, under Gama, in 1498, and speedily gave sufficient indications of the object of their visit, and the nature of their character. But in India they had more formidable obstacles to their spirit of dominance and extermination than they and the Spaniards had found in the New World. They beheld themselves on the limits of a vast region, inhabited by a hundred millions of people—countries of great antiquity, of a higher civilization, and under the rule of active and military princes. Populous cities, vast and ancient temples, palaces, and other public works; a native literature, science handed down from far-off times, and institutions of a fixed and tenacious caste, marked them as a people not so easily to be made a prey of as the Mexicans or Peruvians. Peaceful as were the habits, and bloodless as were the religion and the social principles of a vast body of the Hindoos, their rulers, whether the descendants of the great Persian and Tartar conquerors, and Mahomedans in faith, or of their own race and religion, were disposed enough to resist any foreign aggression. At sea, indeed, swarmed the Moorish fleets, which had long enjoyed the monopoly of the trade of these rich and inexhaustible regions; but these they soon subdued. Their conquests and cruelties were therefore necessarily confined chiefly to the coasts and to the paradisiacal islands which stud the Indian seas, and, as Milton has beautifully expressed it, cast their spicy odours abroad, till
Many a league Cheered with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles.