South of Bombay, on the coast, is the little Portuguese colony
of Goa, the oldest European settlement in India. You will be
surprised to know that there are four or five of these colonies
belonging to other European governments within the limits of British
India, entirely independent of the viceroy and the authority of
Edward VII. The French have two towns of limited area in Bengal,
one of them only an hour's ride from Calcutta. They are entirely
outside of the British jurisdiction and under the authority of
the French Republic, which has always been respected. The Dutch
have two colonies in India also, and Goa, the most important of
all, is subject to Portugal. The territory is sixty-two miles
long by forty miles wide, and has a population of 446,982. The
inhabitants are nearly all Roman Catholics, and the archbishop
of Goa is primate of the East, having jurisdiction over all Roman
Catholics between Cairo and Hong-Kong.

More than half of the population are converted Hindus, descendants
of the original occupants of the place, who were overcome by
the Duke of Albuquerque in 1510, and after seventy or eighty
years of fighting were converted by the celebrated and saintly
Jesuit missionary, St. Francis Xavier. He lived and preached
and died in Goa, and was buried in the Church of the Good Jesus,
which was erected by him during the golden age of Portugal--for
at one time that little kingdom exercised a military, political,
ecclesiastical and commercial influence throughout the world
quite as great, comparatively speaking, as that of Great Britain
to-day. Goa was then the most important city in the East, for
its wealth and commerce rivaled that of Genoa or Venice. It was
as large as Paris or London, and the viceroy lived in a palace
as fine as that occupied by the king. But very little evidence of