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did not, however, abandon the Chinese coast; they continued to infest it as pirates, using as bases of operations Tsuan-chou and Ningpo. Ignorant of these happenings, another squadron of six vessels arrived shortly afterwards under Alfonso de Melo, but when a party of sailors went on shore to procure water, they were fiercely attacked and driven with heavy loss to their ships, which then sailed away. Nevertheless the Portuguese did not by any means abandon commercial operations with China. They continued to trade at Tsuan-chou and Ningpo, but their conduct there was marked by extreme lawlessness. It was from Ningpo that Mendez Pinto and his band of desperadoes sailed to rifle the tombs of "seventeen Chinese Kings," and it was from Ningpo that parties of Portuguese used to sally out into the neighbouring villages for the purpose of seizing "women and virgins." So unendurable did these outrages become that, in 1545, the Chinese inhabitants—whose "good order, industry, manners, and love of justice," Mendez Pinto was constrained to admire when en route for Peking as a prisoner after his tomb-rifling escapade—rose en masse, and attacked the Portuguese colony, "destroying twelve thousand Christians, inclusive of eight hundred Chinese, and burning thirty-five ships and two junks." Four years later (1549) the settlers at Tsuan-chou were similarly expelled, and thus by conduct of which, had the Chinese themselves been guilty of it, no