PRESTER JOHN AND WEST AFRICA 175 



country, and spread their missions still more widely 

 over it. It is possii ;le that the elaborate ritual of the 

 Roman Church, with its crucifixes and medallions, 

 stimulated the very custom of fetish and charm 

 which it was its purpose to destroy, and made 

 more difficult the work of conversion. 



But it is to these early Portuguese missions, 

 and especially that of Fernando Po, who visited 

 Benin, that we are indebted for our scanty informa- 

 tion of the early history of Africa. The Congo 

 kingdom which the Portuguese visited in the 

 fifteenth century was of comparatively modern 

 creation, but possibly its predecessors like Benin 

 and other older negro states of the West had at 

 one time paid tribute and acknowledged allegiance 

 to a great prince called Oganc, who lived " twenty 

 moons of travel away cast." Ogane himself was 

 never seen by the ambassadors of the West African 

 kingdoms, but lived in mysterious seclusion behind 

 endless curtains in a great court, from which he 

 would send to his feudatory chiefs, by their 

 ambassador, a helmet of brass, a sceptre, and a 

 cross, as the symbols of their chieftainship and 

 authority under him. 



Though some have considered that this Ogane 

 was the chief of the State of Gana in the Sudan, 

 my own feeling, after reading numerous descrip- 

 tions of the court of Prester John, is that it was 

 this mystic potentate, who, though 3000 miles 

 away in the east, was acknowledged from the west 

 of Africa, and this belief gains support from the 

 time taken on the journey and the emblem of the 

 cross carried bv the ambassadors. 



