408 PORTUGUESE HISTORY purpose of talcing possession of them in the name of the king of Portugal, and he was invested with the government. The simple sovereigns of the Moluccas received their treacherous guests with ca- resses, and contended for the honour of entertain- ing them, and giving them a military establishment in their country. Ternate finally obtained the dangerous preference ; and in that island, the seat of the most powerful chieftain of the Moluccas, the Portuguese commander established himself. De Britto, to his astonishment, found in the Moluccas the companions of Magellan, who had reached them in the course of the first voyage round the world. These he seized upon and imprisoned, and the na- tives no sooner knew Europeans, than they were presented with the odious spectacle of their hatreds and animosities. The very first governor of the Moluccas commen- ced the course of violence, intrigue, injustice, and perfidy, which, with little exception, characterized the whole of the Portuguese ascendancy in the Spice Islands. His intrigues deprived the widow of Boleijey the first kind host of the shipwrecked Portuguese, of the regency ; he stirred up a civil war in the island of Tidor, and distributed the mer- cantile adventure with which he was charged, in rewards for the massacre of the unfortunate natives. For sixty years, during which the dominion of the Portuguese in the Moluccas endured, the same
