[Footnote 371:  This silly story has been retained, perhaps very unnecessarily.  It is perhaps an instance of embellishment founded on the love of the marvellous, and the whole truth may lie in a very narrow compass “an infant coming into the world covered with hair,” while all the rest is fiction.—­E.]

Don Alfonso de Noronha was promoted to the viceroyalty of India from being governor of Ceuta, but was subjected to the control of a council, by whose advice he was ordered to conduct the government of India.  He had orders from court to send back to Portugal all the new Christians or converted Jews, many of whom had gone out to India with their families.  It had been better to have banished them from both countries.  The new viceroy was received at Goa with universal joy, more owing perhaps to the general dislike towards him who lays down authority than from love for him who takes it up.  The Arabs of Catifa in the Persian Gulf had admitted the Turks to take possession of the fort in that city, to the great displeasure of the King of Ormuz, on whom it had been dependent, and who therefore applied for aid to the viceroy to reduce the refractory or revolted vassals.  The king of Basrah had also been expelled from his kingdom by the Turks, yet kept the field with an army of 30,000 men, and sent for assistance from the viceroy, to whom he offered leave to erect a fort at his capital, and to grant many valuable privileges to the Portuguese.  The viceroy accordingly sent his nephew, Antonio de Norenha, to the assistance of these two kings with 1200 men in nineteen vessels.  Antonio was joined at Ormuz by 3000 native troops, in conjunction with whom he besieged Catifa, which was defended by 400 Turks.  After a brave but unavailing resistance, the garrison fled by night, but were pursued and routed.  As the general of the troops of Ormuz was unwilling to engage for the future defence of this fort, it was undermined for the purpose of destroying it; but being unskilfully managed, the mine exploded unexpectedly, and forty of the Portuguese were buried under its ruins.  Noronha then sailed to the mouth of the Euphrates, on purpose to assist the king of Basrah; but he was induced to believe, by a cunning Turkish pacha, that the king of Basrah meant to betray him, on which he ingloriously returned to Ormuz, where he learnt the deceit when too late.

The sultan of the Turks was so much displeased with the Portuguese for what they had done at Catifa and attempted at Basrah, that he sent an expedition against Ormuz of 16,000 men, commanded by an old pirate named Pirbec.  The Turk in the first place besieged Muscat for near a month, and at length obliged the garrison to capitulate; but broke the articles and chained the captain and sixty men to the oars.  He afterwards proceeded against Ormuz, where Don Alvaro de Noronha commanded with nine-hundred men in the fort, where he had provided ammunition and provisions