Page 260 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

260 EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST

the settlement. It proved a poor sort of satisfaction, for
the Portuguese had removed their more valuable posses­
sions and stores, and a quantity of inferior rice was about
all that was secured in the way of loot.
If the Portuguese historian, Faria y Sousa, is to be trusted,
the Dutch performed their part of the work of destruc­
tion with a special display of religious fanaticism. Accord­
ing to this writer a Dutch captain, entering the Church of
Our Lady of Hope, hewed in pieces a crucifix which he fouud
there. The story goes that Botelho, when he heard of the
outrage, secured a fragment of the mutilated emblem and
swore upon it that he would continue the war until the
insult to the Faith was avenged. The Portuguese admiral
was true to his vow. He died some time afterwards in a
fight with a Dutch ship, the commander of which, who is
believed to have been the brutal iconoclast of Bombay,
was slain.
Incidents of this character were common in the long-
sustained fight between the Dutch and the Portuguese. They
grew out of the cruelties practised in the name of religion
by the Inquisition at Goa upon the unfortunate Dutch
and English captives who fell into the hands of the Goa
government. Amongst the Dutch records is preserved a
veritable human document in the shape of a diary of a
Dutchman, one John van der Berg, who was imprisoned
at Goa for four years, ending with April, 1624, two years
before the occurrence related in the Bombay church. Van
der Berg tells of his confinement for long months in heavy
fetters, weighing 58\ lb., in a dark dungeon “ called by
many people, Encenceye, or also Inferno.” Here he under­
went horrible tortures. One day his condition became so
insupportable that he begged the jailor to put him to death.

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