DISTURBANCES IN CONGO. 
71 
shewn to the place appointed for their residence. 
Next day Riiy de Soiisa requested that a church 
should be immediately erected ; a task to which 
the king applied himself in the most zealous man- 
ner. There being no stone in the neighbourhood, 
it was sent for from a great distance ; and every 
individual was obliged to labour, that the work 
might be finished with the greater expedition. 
Hence, though the Portuguese arrived only upon 
the S9th April, the first stone was laid on the 3d 
of May, and the whole was completed on the 1st 
of June. The intended splendour of the cere- 
mony of baptism was abridged, by the intelligence 
which arrived, that an insurrection had broken 
out among a people inhabiting the islands of the 
Great Lake, from which the Zaire derives its 
source. For this reason, on the same day that 
the foundation of the church was laid, the king 
was baptized, with all his nobles, and a hundred 
thousand of his subjects. Ruy de Sousa then 
presented to him a standard with a cross, which 
would certainly secure victory, as being the same 
which Innocent VIII. had granted to the holy 
crusade, for the war against the infidels. 
Nothing, it appears, could thus be more pro- 
mising, than the original establishment of the 
Catholic faith in Congo. After the first cere- 
monies, however, had passed, the missionaries 
thought it incumbent on them to intimate to 
