As the Portuguese would not pay high prices like the heretics, disturbances resulted, and these were put down by the desperate expedient of shutting the church-doors—­a suicidal act not yet quite obsolete.  Whereupon the Count of Sonho, we are told, “changed his countenance almost from black to yellow,” and complained to the bishop at Loanda that the sacraments were not administered:  the appeal was in vain, and, worse, an extra aid was sent to the truculent churchmen.  Happily for them, the small-pox broke out, and the ruler was persuaded by his subjects to do the required penance.  Appearing at the convent, unattended, with a large rope round his neck, clad in sackcloth, crowned with thorns, unshod, and carrying a crucifix, he knelt down and kissed the feet of the priest, who said to him, “If thou hast sinned like David, imitate him likewise in thy repentance!”

The schismatics caused abundant trouble Captain Cornelius Clas “went about sowing heretical tares amidst the true corn of the Gospel;” amongst other damnable doctrines and subtleties, this nautical and volunteer theologian persuaded the blacks, whom he knew to be desirous of greater liberty in such matters, that baptism is the only sacrament necessary to salvation, because it takes away original sin, as the blood of the Saviour actual sin.  He furthermore (impudently) disowned the real presence in the consecrated Host; he invoked Saint Anthony, although his tribe generally denies that praying to saints can be of any use to man; and he declared that priests should preach certain doctrines (which, by the way, were perniciously heretical).  Thus in a single hour he so prevailed upon those miserable negroes that their hearts became quite as black as their faces.  An especially offensive practice of the Hollanders, in the eyes of the good shepherds, was that of asking the feminine sheep for a whiff of tobacco—­it being a country custom to consider the taking a pipe from a woman’s mouth a “probable earnest of future favours.”  When an English ship entered the river, the priests forbade by manifesto the sale of slaves to the captain, he being a Briton, ergo a heretic, despite the Duke of York.  The Count of Sonho disobeyed, and was excommunicated accordingly:  he took his punishment with much patience, although upon occasions of reproof he would fly into passions and disdains; he was reconciled only after obliging 400 couples that lived in concubinage to lawful wedlock, and thus a number of “strayed souls was reduced to matrimony.”

We can hardly wonder that, under such discipline, a large ecclesiastical body was necessary to “maintain the country in its due obedience to the Christian faith,” and that, despite their charity in alms and their learning, no permanent footing was possible for the strangers.  Nor can we be astonished that the good fathers so frequently complain of being poisoned.  On one occasion a batch of six was thus treated near Bamba.  In this matter perhaps they were somewhat