TIIE PORTUGUESE AND THEIR FOLLOWERS. 27 
unable to resist such affecting arguments in favour of 
the Catholic doctrine. It was found, however, that she 
had hastened to the king with loud complaints respect¬ 
ing this mode of spiritual illumination, and the mission¬ 
aries thenceforth lost all favour both with that prince 
and the ladies of his court, beiug allowed to remain 
solely through dread of the Portuguese. In only one 
other instance were they permitted to employ this mode 
of conversion. The smith, in consequence of the skill, 
strange in the eyes of a rude people, with which he 
manufactured various arms and implements, was viewed 
by them as possessing a measure of superhuman power; 
and he had thus been encouraged to advance preten¬ 
sions to the character of a divinity, which were very 
generally admitted. The missionaries appealed to the 
king respecting this impious assumption ; and that 
prince, conceiving it to interfere with the -respect due 
to himself, agreed to deliver into their hands the unfor¬ 
tunate smith, to be converted into a mortal in any 
manner they might judge efficacious. After a short and 
unsuccessful argument, they had recourse to the above 
potent instrument of conversion; yet Vulcan, deserted 
in this extremity by all his votaries, made still a firm 
stand for his celestial dignity, till the blood began to 
stream from his back and shoulders, when he finally 
yielded, and renounced all pretensions to a divine origin. 
But the fact is the Portuguese missionaries long main- 
tained their position at San Salvador, in the kingdom of 
Congo. Churches were built and education fostered ; the 
chiefs took ambitious Portuguese titles like duke, mar¬ 
quis, count; and a certain amount of cultivation was 
introduced. As late as the end of the eighteenth century 
a mission was sent from Loanda to San Salvador, and 
found still some remains of the old Christianity, and of 
the old Portuguese titles. But in 1817, when Captain 
Tuckey explored the Congo, and, still more recently, 
when English missionaries and travellers have been to 
San Salvador, almost all traces, except a few ruins, had 
vanished, and the people were as confirmed heathens 
as their neighbours. 
