ABSTRACT
The Portuguese monarchs had always loudly proclaimed, that the diffusion of the Catholic faith, and the extension of the spiritual dominion of the Pope, was a more favourite aim in all their conquests than even to enlarge the sphere of their own empire. Without inquiring whether their zeal went quite so far, it cannot be denied, that had the legitimacy of the means corresponded to the ardour with which the object was pursued, this claim to praise would have been very ample. The Church of Rome has never lacked an earnest and eager helpers in the prosecution of its missionary enterprises. Least of all has it lacked them in India. More than one historian has lamented the fact that though Europeans were frequent visitors to almost the whole of Southern India at the time when Babar and his unlucky son Humayun were on the throne of Delhi, no traveller was adventurous enough to direct his steps in their direction.
