) 
04 DISCOVERIES OF THE PORTUGUESE. 
tamba. Finding then that the habits of her new 
profession were ill calculated to maintain her in- 
fluence with her subjects, she renounced Christi- 
anity, and strove to surpass them in every species 
of savage enormity. The Giagas were her imme- 
diate neighbours ; every thing was to be dreaded 
from them as enemies ; every thing to be hoped as 
friends. She embraced their diabolical system ; she 
imposed upon them by a pretence of supernatural 
power ; and finally succeeded in being chosen as 
their queen. At the head of such formidable al- 
lies, she soon became the most powerful sovereign 
in this part of Africa, and the terror of all the 
neighbouring regions. In this career of conquest, 
crime, and butchery, combined with brutal volup- 
tuousness, she spent twenty-eight years : Yet she 
is said to have afterwards assured the missionaries 
that she plunged into these excesses with loathing 
and disgust ; and from no motive but the dread of 
losing her influence over her subjects, and even of 
driving them into open revolt. The assertion seems 
confirmed by the narrative of some fathers who 
were in mission at Ovando, when that territory 
was conquered by Zingha. As all the people of 
the town were precipitately flying, the fathers, who 
could hope for no safety in speed, retired to the 
church to await the stroke of death. The soldiers, 
however, entering, merely put fetters on their 
hands, and carried them before the queen. That 
