in the Congo River . 
3 l 9 
like Mark Antony, he “ improved the occasion,” 
and sent home the fathers of families to thrash 
their wives and daughters who were shut up in the 
“ paint houses/’ It is gravely related how a 
hungry friar dines copiously on fish with an angel; 
how another was saved by the “ father of miracles, 
the glorious Saint Anthony of Padua,” whom 
another priest, taking as his patron, sees before 
his hammock. A woman, bearing a child in her 
arms and supposed to be the Virgin, attends the 
Portuguese army, and she again appears in the 
shape of a “ beautiful beggar.” The miraculous 
resurrection of a boiled cock is gravely chronicled. 
A certain man lived 380 years “ at the intercession 
of Saint Francis d’Assise.” Of course, the mis- 
sioners saw water-monsters in the Congo River. 
A child “ came from his mother’s womb with a 
beard and all his teeth, perhaps to show he was 
born into the world grown old in vice.” A certain 
scoffer “ being one day to pass a river with two 
companions, was visibly taken up by an invisible 
hand into the air. One of his companions, going 
to take hold of him by the feet, had such a cuff 
given him that he fell down in the boat, and the 
offender was seen no more.” Father Merolla talks 
of a breed in the Cabo Verde Islands “ between 
bulls and she-asses, which they compassed by 
binding a cow’s hide upon the latter:” it would 
be worth inquiring if this was ever attempted, and 
