PORTUGUESE DISCOVERIES. 53 



animated with a very devoted and persevering zeal ; but 

 they had, unfortunately, conceived an incorrect idea of what 

 they came to teach, and, instead of inculcating the pure 

 doctrines and precepts of Christianity, merely amused the 

 people with empty and childish pageantry. The presenta- 

 tion of beads, Agni Dei, images of the Madonna and 

 saints ; the splendid processions ; the rich furniture and 

 solemn ceremonies of the church, dazzled the eyes of the 

 savage natives, and made them view Christianity only as 

 a gay and pompous pageant, in which it would be an 

 amusement to join. The sacrament of baptism, to which 

 the Catholics attach such pre-eminent importance, was 

 chiefly recommended by a part of the ritual that consisted 

 in putting into the mouth a ceitain quantity of salt, which, 

 in Congo, is an extremely rare and valued commodity ; and 

 the missionaries were not a little disconcerted to find that 

 he very form by which the natives expressed baptism was 

 *' to eat salt." Thus an immense body of the people were 

 very speedily baptized and called Christians, but without 

 any idea of the duties and obligations which that sacred 

 uame imposes. There was, however, one point which the 

 missionaries soon began very conscientiously, and perhaps 

 in rather too hasty and peremptory a manner, to enforce. 

 Aj)palled by the host of wives that surrounded every Afri- 

 can prince or chief, who fulfilled for him every purpose 

 of state and domestic service, and whom it had been his con- 

 stant study and pride to multiply, the missionaries made a 

 call on their converts to select one, and to make a sweeping 

 dismissal of all the others. This was considered an un- 

 warrantable inroad on one of the most venerated institutions 

 of the realm of Congo. To the aged monarch the privation 

 appeared so intolerable that he thereupon renounced his 

 Christian profession, and plunged again into the abyss of 

 pagan superstition. Happily, Alphonso, the youthful heir- 

 apparent, saw nothing so dreadful in the sacrifice ; he 

 cheerfully submitted to it, and, braving his father's dis- 

 pleasure, remained attached to the Portuguese. The old 

 king dying soon after, the zealous convert became entitled 

 to reign ; but his brother, Panso Aquitimo, supported by 

 the nobles and almost the whole nation, raised the standard 

 of rebellion in support of polygamy and paganism. A civil 

 war ensued, m which the prince had little moie than a 

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