24 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
kettledrums, and other instruments, and raising shouts 
so tremendous, as to surpass all that the Europeans had 
ever witnessed in Catholic processions and invocations 
to the saints. The king himself was seated in the 
midst of a large park, upon an ivory chair raised on a 
platform. He was dressed in rich and glossy skins of 
wild beasts, a bracelet of brass hanging from his left 
arm, a horse’s tail from his shoulder, and on his head a 
bonnet of fine cloth woven from the palm-tree. He 
gave full permission to erect a church ; and, when mur¬ 
murs were heard from a few of his attendants, he 
instantly offered to put them to death on the spot; but 
the Portuguese laudably dissuaded him from so violent 
a step. He himself and all his nobles were baptised, 
and free scope was allowed to the exertions of the 
Catholic missionaries. These churchmen seem to have 
been really animated with a very devoted and persever¬ 
ing 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 Chris¬ 
tianity, merely amused the people with empty and 
childish pageantry. The presentation 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 con¬ 
sisted in putting into the mouth a certain quantity of 
salt, which, in Congo, is an extremely rare and valued 
commodity; and the missionaries were not a little dis¬ 
concerted to find that the very form by which the 
natives expressed baptism was “ to eat salt.” Thus an 
immense body of the people were very speedily bap¬ 
tised and called Christians, but without any idea of the 
duties and obligations which that sacred name imposes. 
There was, however, one point which the missionaries 
soon began very conscientiously, and perhaps in rather 
