104f DISCOVERIES OF THE PORTUGUESE. 
tian faith. They were then shewn to an interim 
habitation, which had been assigned till a better 
could be erected. Unfortunately, a herd of goats 
had been dislodged in order to fit it for their re- 
ception ; and the scent of these redolent prede- 
cessors was still very prevalent. The negroes, 
however, assisted in cleaning the abode, and they 
were soon provided with an abundant supply of 
provisions. The people, as usual, came in crowds 
to be baptized, and a great part of the nation was 
soon outwardly Christian. The missionaries, how- 
ever, when they came to touch on their private 
life, and to insist on the reduction of their do- 
mestic establishments, encountered the usual ob- 
stacles. They found, in particular, that the fa- 
vour of the monarch was thus entirely forfeited. 
That prince reproached them with disturbing the 
peace of the state, by introducing innovations, of 
which no one had ever before had the remotest 
idea. He added, that the harshness of their de- 
portment was such, as rather tended to frighten 
the people from the profession of Christianity, 
than to allure them to embrace it. The fathers 
treat this last charge as the clearest proof of in- 
veterate malignity ; yet some circumstances, of 
which they themselves boast, may excite doubts 
in the mind of the reader, whether the strictures 
of the monarch were so wholly unfounded. Meet- 
ing with one of the queens, who, with a nume- 
