were not allowed to communicate with their fellow-countrymen ashore.  In 1850 certain correspondents from Liverpool inquired of King “Eyo Honesty” if he could provide for service in the West Indies 10,000 men, women, and children, as the “quotum from the Old Calabar River,” which would mean 100,000 from the West Coast.  “He be all same ole slave-trade,” very justly remarked that knowing potentate:  he added, that he would respect the Suppression Treaty with England, and that he personally preferred palm-oil, but that all the “Calabar gentlemen” and the neighbouring kings would be glad to supply slaves at a fixed price, four boxes of brass and copper rods.

Followed, in 1852-3, the gigantic scheme of mm.  Regis et Cie, which began operations upon the East as well as the West Coast of Africa.  Having studied it on both sides of the continent, I could not help forming the worst opinion of the attempt.  The agents never spoke of it except as a slave- trade; the facetiae touching “achat” and “rachat” were highly suited to African taste, and I have often heard them declare before the people that “captives” are the only articles which can profitably be exported from the coasts—­in fact, as old Caspar Barle said, “precipuae merces ipsi Ethiopes sunt.”  I subjoin to this chapter the form of French passport; it will serve, when a bona fide emigration shall be attempted, to show “how not to do it.”  Happily this “emigration” has come to an end”:  M. Regis, seeing no results, gave orders to sell off all the goods in his factories, and to retain only one clerk as housekeeper.  The ouvriers libres deserted and fled in all directions, for fear of being “put in a cannibal pot” and being eaten by the white anthropophagi.

The history of missionary enterprise in the Congo regions is not less interesting than the slave-trade.  The first missioners sailed in December, 1490, under Goncalo de Sousa; of the three one were killed by the heat, and another having made himself “Chaplain to the Congolan Army,” by a “Giaghi” chief.  The seed sown by these friars was cultivated by twelve Franciscans of the Order of Observants.  The Right Reverend Fathers of the Company appeared in 1560 with the Conquistador Paulo Dias de Novaes.  According to Lopez de Lima, who seems to endorse the saying, “Si cum Jesuitis, non cum Jesu itis,” they worried one captain-general to death, and they attempted to found in Congo-land another Uruguay or Paraguay.  But here they totally failed, and, as yet indeed, they have not carried out, either in East or West Africa, the celebrated boast popularly attributed to their general, Borgia (1572): 

“We shall come in like the lambs;
We shall be driven out like the dogs,
We shall rush like the wolves;
We shall be icnewed like the eagles.”

The baptism of D. Alvaro I. (1491), the founding of the cathedral at S. Salvador (1534), the appointment of the Bishop and Chapter, and their transfer to Sao Paulo de Loanda (1627), have already been alluded to.