326 The Slaver and the Missionary 
without privilege of clergy. The missioners insist 
upon their privilege of travelling free of expense, 
and make a barefaced use of the corvie. The 
following is the tone of a mild address to the laity: 
“ Some among you are like your own maccacos or 
monkeys amongst us who, keeping possession of. 
anything they have stolen, will sooner suffer them¬ 
selves to be taken and killed, than to let go their 
prey. So impure swine wallow in their filth and 
care not to be cleansed.” 
A perpetual source of trouble was of course the 
slave-trade : negroes being the staple of the land, 
and ivory the other and minor item, the great 
profits could not fail to render it the subject of 
contention. The reasons why the Portuguese 
never succeeded in making themselves masters of 
Sonho are reduced by the missioner annalists to 
three. Firstly, the opposition of the people caused 
by fear ; secondly, the objections of the Sonhese 
to buying arms and ammunition; and, thirdly, the 
small price paid by the Portuguese for “ captives.” 
The “ Most Reverend Cardinal Cibo,” writing in 
the name of the Sacred College, complained that 
the “ pernicious and abominable abuse of slave¬ 
selling ” was carried on under the eyes of the mis¬ 
sioners, and peremptorily ordered them to remedy 
the evil. Finding this practically impossible, the 
holy men salved their consciences by ordering their 
flocks not to supply negroes to the heretical Hoi- 
